By the way, in the manga Kaworu was told by SEELE that Gendo had Adam (Gendo actually swallows Adam in the manga): he was supposed to merge with Lilith in the first place. Love being lukewarm and pooling in his chest so he can't breathe, giving him the creeps is how Rei's love for Shinji felt to Kaworu when they were placed in him. Maybe I'm referencing certain lines from the manga too much, but they're good lines. I wasn't impressed by the early volumes of the manga, so I stopped reading when I got to the cat scene first time: I just wanted to see what happened in that scene to begin with. I wish I'd kept going: it gets much better.

Unlike the others, this chapter is not a happy fixit. It is a 'What If?' but it's a bad ending route, as opposed to a good ending or a joke ending (Like the early Silent Hill games…). Consider yourself warned.

As a fan, one wants to give the characters happy lives and endings (see the vast number of 'badass Shinji' fics, although that's also wish fulfillment), but as an author, sometimes one has to be a bitch. If happy endings are certain, there's no dramatic tension. Eva wouldn't be so powerful a series if it wasn't willing to be absolutely brutal to the characters.

Misato smiled grimly, flipping up the night vision goggles. The body wasn't even hidden this time: they must pressing him too hard for him to take the time. Unless he'd decided not to bother because the heat vision equipment they were using could find a quickly hidden human body.

One of the others went forward to check his pulse, but Misato wouldn't have bothered even if she wasn't busy looking around. By the temperature of the body the agent had been dead for some time. NERV's or SEELE's? It would be impossible to tell the difference without checking for ID, but Misato wasn't sure there was a difference between NERV and the group it worked for: Kaji's information proved that the Committee for Human Instrumentality was just a front for SEELE.

Which had sent them an angel disguised as a pilot.

"Snapped neck," the medic reported.

"So after the order to evacuate the district was given," Misato murmured, automatically checking her gun. Before that, he'd made at least two of them look like standard robberies. The poor refugee district of Tokyo-2, which blended into ruins of the surrounding urbanized area of Tokyo-1 was a warren. Japan's pre-Second Impact anti-gun laws and the current legislation that gave licenses only to actual Japanese citizens, as opposed to the poor refugees from other countries and even some of their own who didn't have the documents to prove they were of Japanese ethnicity meant that guns were valuable. Actually shooting them here was stupid, the cops would lock down the area, but no mugger with a knife was going to go after a family with a gun. Guns meant safety. So some suited, obviously prosperous, obviously government bastards coming down here carrying concealed were an instant target: not only were they a symbol of the governments that kept these people a permanent underclass, but they were carrying money and safety.

At first the operation to search Tokyo-2 was supposed to be conducted 'discreetly,' which was one of the stupidest things Misato had ever heard. Yes, if it was just announced it would be easy for the angel to escape, hidden among all the other panicking escapees, but what they should have done was put Tokyo-2 in lockdown right away, no one getting in or out without bloodwork. Not when they could shapeshift like that.

Not when this one could look human.

Oh, it was certain to lead to riots. Misato had served in the UN forces: she knew riots and mass chaos. Everyone would suspect everyone else of being an angel in disguise, and once people started killing anyone suspicious, they would have had to be wary of their fellow humans, too. The violence would have escalated until the damn thing – not Kaworu, not a person, not anymore – had to use its AT field and they could get a lock on it.

They weren't even sure how many of the agents they'd lost to muggings had been the angel making it look ordinary and how many were real muggings. Hell, Misato didn't even know how many agents had been lost. No one in NERV's security was talking to her, forget SEELE, and for all she knew there were UN agents like Kaji in this mess too in addition to actual troops.

An angel loose in the nation's replacement capital, though? An angel that had made it to the heart of NERV, only meters away from causing Third Impact, and then escaped? After destroying Units 01 and 02, of course. The damn thing wasn't stupid, and as a former pilot he knew the Eva's capabilities.

They would have had to find the damn thing before they could send Shinji, but it claimed it didn't want to see him again. Misato would have hauled him along no matter what state he was in if Shinji hadn't been arrested and hauled away somewhere immediately afterwards.

She was going to kill that boy, she thought, eyes hard.

After she killed this one.

At least most of the civilians were out of this district now. The city had finally been placed in lockdown, though, so all they could do was avoid the areas with soldiers. Fortunately, most of them wouldn't have survived the chaos after Second Impact if they didn't know to run away from the people with the semiautomatics and other serious hardware.

When what happened finally leaked, probably by someone at SEELE hoping they could blame and discredit NERV by claiming the pilot had been replaced by an angel while he was there, and there was no actual operations plan already being put in place, the UN panicked. Tokyo-1 had been destroyed in Second Impact, then nuked for good measure. Now Tokyo-2 had come this close to being N2 mine'd. Or nuked.

It still was very close. If Ritsuko hadn't released the data on the Twelfth Angel's AT field strength, which proved that it was able to block subatomic particles and wouldn't even be affected by radiation, a nuking would have happened already. If they'd had a working Eva, it would also have happened already, because the angel would have needed to use its AT field to survive a blast like that. Then there would be nowhere to hide, just a large crater perfect for Eva deployment.

The millions of people who would die hadn't really factored into the decision. This was an angel. As long as it was alive they were looking at another Second Impact or far, far worse. The deaths of billions at best, and from what Kaji'd gathered most likely the extinction of the human race.

The angel turning down the chance to merge with Lilith didn't matter. The angels came to NERV because they were tricked into thinking Adam was there: they couldn't let it find its true progenitor.

So why was SEELE trying to kill it now, when before they'd practically laid out the red carpet on a path right through NERV's defenses? What difference did it make if it merged with Lilith or Adam, when both would trigger Third Impact?

Well, apparently it made a difference to both SEELE and the angel, Misato thought as the noise of shouting and gunfire erupted nearby. It was hard to tell exactly where it was coming from in this warren, but "Spread out!" she ordered, her team already doing so. She'd managed to call in some friends and favors from when she was in the UN forces, so at least she wasn't in here with 'security' more used to looking intimidating and dealing with single decisive moments instead of the chaos of a battlefield.

One of the riflemen pulled open a nearby door, intending to head for the roof and get a good vantage point, and Misato and the two still with her instead of heading along different allies to block the retreat stared, deafened.

Who the hell had set the old 'grenade pin tied to doorknob' trick? That was practically as old as grenades! Who would set something like that when there were friendlies running around they couldn't communicate with?

Unless, Misato realized, whoever set it was operating alone and didn't have any friendlies to worry about. "Shit," she cursed. She'd known Kaworu was a crack shot: unlike Shinji he'd actually trained to pilot an Eva. In hindsight, it was obvious that someone must have shown him how to snap necks: that kitten would have been a bigger red flag if she wasn't drowning in a sea of them. Hell, sometimes she felt like the sanest person among the pilots and NERV command staff, and when she'd spent years voiceless practically in solitary that was saying something.

Evas used guns, and knives, but angels didn't have necks to snap. What the hell had SEELE been thinking, giving their so-called tame angel assassination training, teaching it how to kill humans?! Unless they were making sure that it could defend itself from anyone who got suspicious without raising its AT field and confirming those suspicions? Could silence people the way Kaji had been silenced? Wouldn't fall for a booby trap like this one?

Well, she didn't have to ask where it had gotten the grenades: the same places, or people, it was getting its guns and ammo. Probably the knife too, for that matter.

As callous as it was for it to head for a populated city, it was also smart. Kaworu could act more human than Rei at her best, and both Ritsuko and Gendo must have known all along what the Fifth Child was: it was too much like Rei to… Her fingers were trying to clench in anger: so that was what an 'itchy trigger finger' was.

They had to worry about shooting civilians in this mess, although one of the reasons Misato couldn't work with them was that SEELE's agents and/or NERV's clearly didn't. Who knew how many innocent people had already died because of confusion or unfriendly fire, in this warren? They wouldn't be able to count the bodies until it was over, and no one would want an accurate count, not when NERV, SEELE, Japan and the UN would all be trying to avoid being brought down for this, but this city was eating men alive. Urban warfare did that.

A single thing that looked like a teenager, taking weapons and supplies from the dead: was the angel treating this like a video game?

"Hold your fire! UN!" someone called from up ahead.

"NERV operations!" she called back.

"That you, Katsuragi?" someone else said from around the corner as Misato's companions carefully took up positions.

"Yeah."

"Thank god. Three of us, out of a full squad."

It wasn't until they rounded the corner that Misato recognized the accent: Australian. He must have been out of the country when Second Impact hit. No wonder he'd volunteered to hunt an angel, then. "Sergeant Hilbert," he told her. "We were in… Nevermind. Damn thing's been laying traps, or someone has. We're just lucky the power was cut to this area."

Misato's companions winced, knowing what determined electric and civil engineers could do in the way of a defense grid and Misato thanked God that, "He's not an engineer: we don't know what the hell SEELE taught him, but he just knows a few tricks. Like being able to hack open electronic locks that aren't connected to any outside network." In order to get into Central Dogma. He'd just looked at a lock that should have required more calculation capability to figure out the code than could potentially exist in the universe and it opened for him. He probably just encroached on it and made the code what he said the code was, but he hadn't touched it, either. 'The light of the soul,' huh? Ritsuko thought Misato was just going to get herself killed and she should have let the expendable people handle this because he could block out subatomic particles, but that was just putting up a block. The kind of control that lock implied, though? Whether it be over his abilities or the systems around him, it was the kind of worrying that was making Japan jam every possible frequency or signal in this entire area. It left them without radio, but when that would let it listen in? Or control what each side of the conversation heard?

Or who knew the hell what it could do, except possibly SEELE and had it even showed them all its tricks? When it had double-crossed them and might have planned to do so from the beginning, gone to Tokyo-3 just in order to get out from under their thumb?

It said something that their plan, SEELE's entire plan, was to keep him too busy to sleep, make him exhaust his supposedly-human body so the consequences of going without his medication (like Rei's?) happened faster. Who knew if exhausted angels made mistakes, but while he was asleep he couldn't put up his AT field and he'd be as vulnerable as a human teenager. Supposedly. A human teenager who might be able to shapeshift.

Well, that was why the night vision gear, which would have been wistful thinking if it weren't for the fact he contained a core, the angelic S2 engine, and a power source with that kind of output would produce waste heat. That was how her father found Adam: it was the power of the S2 engine they'd detected, not the angel itself.

Keep him trapped, keep him contained. If he took to the air they'd start launching N2 missiles at him, or at anywhere he landed, and send in more men. Using his AT field would give away his position, even in this jammed zone, and even if he lowered it right away that would help Ritsuko track him.

"We came this way because we heard fighting," one of her men was telling the sergeant.

"That was us and some of SEELE's goons. That information Katsuragi sent in that Kaji gathered: we've been ordered to arrest all of them we can." He frowned a little, leaning against an old brick wall. "If it was up to me I'd let them get killed by the damn angel instead of our men, but we need to know what else-"

That was when he died.

Everyone dove for cover, but one of his soldiers and two of Misato's didn't make it, and since they weren't sure where the shots were coming from Misato's last man was hit in the back as he raised his gun cautiously over the cinder-block garden wall he'd taken cover behind.

Misato somehow met the eyes of the last UNSF soldier, both of them united in their awareness of what was happening. The killer was hitting the sniper's triangle, not going for headshots or anything else unprofessional, but they were only firing one shot and Annie Oakley aside, it just wasn't humanly possible to switch between moving targets and fire that accurately and that fast. The trick shots of old Wild West Shows had practiced their routines by shooting objects at the same position with the same velocity every time, not shooting off the cuff. It could have been multiple enemies, but multiple professionals should have triple-tapped to be sure, since they had time to set up the shots. They hadn't missed, but they could have missed, and three shots would have made sure of them.

To err was human, after all.

Single shots meant someone who wasn't worried about missing, but was worried about running out of ammo and having to reload without anyone to cover them.

I'm going to die, Misato thought, not for the first time, when the other soldier's wide eyes became a dead man's.

She felt oddly cheated, first because she'd been so close, so damn close, just this one left and then Adam and she'd have her revenge after all this time.

Then, as the seconds ticked by, blood on her urban camo and none of it hers she felt even more cheated that she was still alive. Did it think she wasn't worth killing, when it had fooled her so easily? "Well?!" she yelled into the chaotic air, sounds of more shooting and screaming in the distance as the rioting continued, as panicked civilians rushed the barricades because before the jamming went up someone'd found out that there was an angel in here, not to mention that they planned to nuke this area if that was what it took, and there were rich gang lords in here with private armies of their own (not so different from Gendo, at that).

"You are an idiot," she heard Kaworu say finally. His tone was annoyed but oddly casual, at least at first, before the bitterness set in. "Spreading even a fraction of the truth about SEELE, letting them know it was you and then going somewhere they could have you shot and it would be perfectly natural. It's clear you don't care about Shinji or his feelings at all."

Misato bared her teeth, wanting to yell at him to shut up but the longer he remained talking the longer he stayed here and wasn't killing her, which meant she could kill him.

Even the angel knew it was odd of her not to respond. "You're the last of the people he cared about, and he's already lost so many he refused to care about anyone else, although it didn't help that he hated me." A note of regret, or it might even be grief slipped past the mask there, and he wondered. "I wonder what will happen to him now? Shinji's refusal surprised the old men, and Ikari." The angel's resigned tone indicated that he wished the refusal had surprised him. "They won't be pleased."

Misato finally heard rock slide on rock, just slightly, the way it did when someone stepped carefully on unstable rubble. She quietly got into position and drew her gun, watching the ramshackle shed that blocked her view of one of the alleys that led into this little makeshift urban garden.

The footsteps carefully drew closer, and Misato was still focused on them when a gun was pressed to the back of her head. "Drop the gun. If you don't, I will shoot," Kaworu said. "Shinji will blame me if you die in here regardless of who kills you."

"Why aren't you? You murdered the rest of them." She dropped the gun, honestly wondering why he bothered to give that order.

"Correction: I killed them. 'Murder' is unlawful killing, while this is self-defense. This is a battlefield and they were trying to kill me. I don't want to kill them, I want to live. Not that you care." His left hand was already patting her down. "I'll hold onto this," he said, removing her belt with the knife and holstered sidearm. "Until we're done."

Ah, so he had been told that humans were far more likely to try something if they had a weapon. An angel certainly wasn't going to leave her armed as a sign of good faith: he knew she hated his kind, he wouldn't trust her worth a damn.

It was too late to try to pretend to be on 'his side' or at least Shinji's: it was all she could to do hold back the hatred that was trying to push her under into a sea of red rage. Still, there was one thing he might believe. "I don't suppose your offer to let Shinji kill you is still open?"

"No. Like I said, I made that offer for my sake, not for his. I wanted him to do it because he cared about me and wanted to spare me the pain of living like this, with every man's hand raised against me, until I grew weak and constantly pained as this body fell apart," without the medications SEELE's hybrid needed to survive, "until the old men finally had me brought down. That was what would prove how he felt about me, and he would never forget taking my life. But he hates me," he said, unhappy and resigned to it, "He didn't care no matter how much I would suffer, he refused and demanded that I leave him alone. That's why I'm alive right now. And now he'd just kill me because all of you are making him: if I'm brought to him it wouldn't be his choice at all, definitely not something he'd do for my sake. Just one more thing to hate me for. So I'm going to stay in this world where I can't survive on my own, with no one to care for me or watch my back, until I die a shameful death. Like the cat would have if Shinji'd had his way. What do you think, Misato? Isn't that better revenge than killing me now, yourself? And it will be even better when you die in here and Shinji blames me while you get to rejoin Kaji." His voice was bitter, and she was sure his red eyes were cold. "And your father. Do you want me to kill you?"

"What? No!"

"Are you sure? It's amazing how many Lilim want to die. SEELE knew they were sending me to my death one way or another, either having my personality obliterated along with everyone else's in Third Impact or letting that selfish bastard kill me, and either way they believed I'd do it. I wouldn't have lasted this long if they'd made real plans instead of spending two days too shocked by the deviation from the prophecies to make any real effort to find me." The angel was clearly insulted, but was it that he felt they weren't paying enough attention to him or that they didn't think he'd do the sane thing and want to live? "Aren't you going to try to kill me? I thought you'd at least have made an effort by now. What if I told you that I'm responsible for your father dying?" he wondered.

"Are you?" she asked, because it sounded like he was considering a lie, not a confession.

"No, but I was involved. More so than my true-born siblings. I wondered if Armisael wanted to torture me, giving me Rei's feelings for that bastard? No, obliterating me when she reached our father would have been enough. She was willing to try to convince Rei to merge with her, but not me, when either of us and Shinji's Eva would have been enough for Third Impact," he said, or rather monologued.

Kaworu hadn't seemed like he loved to hear himself talk before, but if he-Misato vetoed the thought 'if he was human enough,' but she was still willing to listen if it kept him in one place and gave him time to make mistakes, leave her openings. She drew the line at asking leading questions like who Armisael was: probably the other angel that infected Rei's and Kaworu's Evas, that Rei blew herself up to kill. The Rei Misato knew, anyway. She might had been human enough to do that for Shinji, but the replacement was definitely an angel, less human than even Kaworu. An emotionless doll: was her inhumanity the reason for Asuka's immediate animosity towards her, even if none of them had known she was an angel?

"The Magi and Ritsuko's best estimate is that your creation set off Second Impact," she told him. "You are a damn angel, but I'm not going to blame you for being born." That would make her the ridiculous, the unfair one, just like the angels who wanted to exterminate humanity. "But you are an angel, and a traitor: your existence is a danger to the whole world." So she had every justification to do what she wanted to do.

"No," he realized, "You're not going to take pity on me, not when Shinji wouldn't. If you offered, it would be hatred, not mercy. He accepted Rei even though she was an angel, but not me."

"Shinji knew she was an angel?"

"No, but she obviously wasn't human. Her weirdness he tolerated, mine he hated. Was it just that he met her first? Or if SEELE used two X chromosomes to make me? Or was it her resemblance to his mother?" Or all of them? Kaworu seemed to despair that he'd ever had a chance. "The old men created me, you're right, and they sent me to die. Adam wouldn't want anything to do with me, when I was created by violating his sleeping body and soul. I wonder if that cat was abandoned by its mother? I thought she must have died in one of Shinji's battles, but…" Was his hand shaking, just a little, or was that feigned emotion? "Anger doesn't feel as nasty as love does. It's hot, but not a sick, feverish lukewarm feeling. Or is that my body is already starting to destroy itself. I wonder if I should give in to hate. For my own sake I should, it would feel so much better." He pressed the gun against her harder, now. "I left. I wasn't going to hurt anyone, but you just won't let me live, not even long enough to die in peace! You won't let me live and you won't let me die on my own terms. Your race had your chance to survive: you would have survived me if he'd been kind enough to accept that-There was already blood on his hands! You know, he knew that we're sentient, that we're of the same blood as you! And he'd kill others when… but not me, when I asked him. It was my last request. It would have been my choice, prophecy or no prophecy!" Who was he trying to convince?

She still heard footsteps coming towards them from the direction of the shed: if she delayed the angel enough, would someone take a shot at him? Would she have accomplished that much?

"If I can't live, why should you get to? No," he told himself. "No. The old men will kill you once I'm gone and they don't have to worry about an angel's will directing Third Impact. I'm sure that's what Ikari plans for Rei. So they'll take my revenge for me, even killing themselves. But, Shinji…" He'd die too. No, "There's nothing I can do. I can't even save myself, not for very much longer. Because of you." And the others like her, who feared and hated him, wouldn't let him live because he was an angel. "Tiring me out like this, dogs yapping at my heels: they could at least have sent their Evas, but why waste valuable property when they can just run me down like an animal until I can't run or fight anymore?"

"They have Evas?" They had Evas, and SEELE was sending humans to die? Just throwing away so many lives so they didn't have to reveal that they had tricks up their sleeves? Like Gendo, when Rei was an angel, and he could have dispatched her to fight Kaworu? Misato wished she was surprised that he'd let her go off to die instead.

"Yes, and a dummy system. With my combat data, my real combat data, not holding back to match the other pilots." Who didn't understand the reality of what they were doing, except for Rei, and even she didn't know much about how to use her own true abilities, much less the Eva's. "They're saving them to trigger Third Impact. Once I'm dead, all of you will follow me." He wished he could find some satisfaction in that. "And instead of stopping them, you came in here where they could silence you permanently in order to have a snowball's chance in hell of killing me, at this point." He sounded like he wished he could say he was disappointed she'd chosen her hate over her duty and humanity's future, but of course she had. When so many humans were throwing their lives away trying to kill him, and she had more reason than most to be blind with hatred.

When he put it that way? She really was failing to do her duty. To the world, to Kaji.

"What about Shinji? You're the last of the people precious to him, and you clearly don't care about him if you're willing to die and let him mourn you too, while I do, and…" And yet Shinji cared about her and not Kaworu even when Kaworu had begged Shinji to kill him, wanted just one person to care about him. In his entire life. Before the end. "I can't even get you out of here: they'd kill you to get to me and the old men and Gendo would be glad to do it." So what was he supposed to do? Why did this world keep doing this to him?

Suddenly, the gun was whipped away from her head, the angel firing a moment later.

Shit. "How did you do that?" How had he seen someone coming before they saw him and fired, when whoever that …was should have heard his voice?

"What you call the AT Field is the light of the soul," he told her. "You have them too, so I can sense you coming. Especially if you're calling it up in order to kill, even if unlike us you can't channel it for that." Not like the Evas. "Luckily for me, you're practically blind." He still hadn't replaced the gun against her head. "I don't know why Lilith made you so stunted, but Lilith doesn't even remember being the Rei Shinji knew, so I can't ask her what the hell she was thinking back then. It's not fair to blame her for this world when she doesn't remember," he said with a sigh. "Not that any of this is fair." Apparently even angelic teenagers complained about the world not being fair. "I wonder: you Lilim are the Thirteenth Angel, and it was Lilim that forced my father to produce me and set off Second Impact. Will you start killing your own kind after you've killed me, Misato? I don't mean SEELE, I mean innocent people who never hurt anyone, just because all of you are angels." Just like him.

"So now you want me to kill you?" Misato asked, carefully turning her head and inching her hand towards her gun.

"No, but now you seem to want me to make it eighty-eight that I've killed since you started hunting me." Provoking him by going for her gun when he'd told her to drop it? "I need to start moving again if I want to live." If?

She stopped reaching for the gun but still turned to face him: she at least wanted to see her killer. He was reloading one of the two handguns he carried, but if he was telling the truth he would be able to sense her making the decision to attack and use the other one. He was wearing urban camo too, probably taken from one of the soldiers once the operation started since it wouldn't have helped him blend in with the general population before then, and his slightly gray skin and pale hair just added to the effect, made him seem part of the rubble left behind by Second Impact. "I should die my hair again and hide myself in the crowd, but once you humans realized I wasn't in this area anymore someone would give the order to gun down those people to reveal me." He finished the reload and checked both guns,

She started to make an outraged objection, but he snorted and cut her off, saying, "Like the UN hasn't threatened to N2 or nuke the city if I'm not found and killed quickly enough. If they don't, some other government will." Just like Tokyo-1, after Second Impact: the memories of that time, the billions of dead civilians in the disaster and the aftermath were still fresh. Human life was still cheap, and he was right: firing into a crowd was merciful by comparison. The Japanese army might even give the order, trying to save as many civilians as possible. Once the angel died and the body was found, the others could live.

Misato's eyes narrowed. "If you cared about their survival-" He should turn himself in.

"Why should I? When no one cares about mine?" Fifteen and already so bitter. "I'd like to save you, I'd like to save Shinji, but I'd also like to live." He wasn't going to get what he wanted: she knew that, when she'd come in here personally to stop him. No, to hasten his death, when without his medications his days were already numbered. "I have some sympathy for them, since they're going to get killed because they were in the wrong place in the wrong time instead of for something they did, but no one's ever done me the courtesy. I've been alone since I was created: I shouldn't have let Armisael and Rei delude me into thinking…" Thinking it was possible? Longing for it? Asking Shinji to grant him a peaceful death? Either way, he shook his head and stood up. "I'll leave you your gun, since you're dead without it, but follow me and I'll kill you. If you give a damn about anyone but yourself, you'll try to get out of here. The other Children need you." Asuka was a wreck, Rei was going to be used for Third Impact and Shinji was probably getting roughly interrogated somewhere, since Gendo would want him held responsible for this instead of his father.

Misato hated that he was right. "They'll get you eventually," she told him, even if it wouldn't be her.

He shrugged. "I'm thinking of jumping off a building when I start to get too tired. Everyone dies: the old men are just deluding themselves into thinking otherwise. I'd rather die on my own terms then let any of you bastards claim victory over me, moral or otherwise. If only they hadn't created me in a human body, I wouldn't need to sleep the way you do and this body wouldn't be rejecting its own tissues. Of course, if my body was made out of the same matter as my siblings, I'd never have passed a physical." Ah well. "I should have taken poison when SEELE gave me the order to go find Lilith, but too late now." Someone would just shoot up his body and no one would care that he'd been dying already, by his own hand and choice. "Goodbye, Misato. See you in hell."

"…What would it take for you to let me kill you?" she asked as he stepped behind the shed.

The sound of footsteps cut off abruptly, and when he hesitantly came back into her view he was carrying a portable music player, one of the ones with recording & playback capability. Well, she noted, that was a much better trick than the old throwing pebbles to make them look the other way. He looked skittish now, like the wild animal he was. Certain he should run, but she'd guessed right and the bait she was holding out was so very tempting.

She'd known it wouldn't take much, not when all it took was hope for him to offer his death to Shinji. She met his eyes: yes, she was offering. Even if she wanted to kill him because of her hatred, she'd do what he wanted first.

"Let me fall asleep by the sea, watching the waves, and never wake up?" No, that wouldn't happen, he would never be able to leave this place alive: he knew humanity that well. "…Hold me," he said finally, voice almost cracking like that of a younger boy, even if he wasn't yet a man. "Hold me and let me pretend."

That was an odd sort of bait, Misato thought, but suddenly his white hair and oddly-innocent eyes reminded her of a story she'd heard, one operation when they were trying to trap some bandits. About an old tapestry, and hunting the unicorn.

It was a divine beast, a symbol of god, so the only way to take it down was with purity, not with all the hunters in the world. To send out a maiden, and let it rest its head in her lap.

Then kill it.

So she nodded, and tried not to let her triumph show in her eyes as he slowly walked forward, watching her with red eyes that were more frightened of her than she was of it and clearly ready to run. Misato didn't want to take the risk of standing up, so after a moment he knelt down, now watching her to see if he had permission, and sat in her lap, first tucking his head under her chin and only then letting his gun leave his hands so that he could wrap them both around her. Not tight enough to make her be the one to jerk back, which would have made him leave, thank goodness.

She wrapped her arms around him equally carefully, trying not to hold him like he was a scorpion but also trying not to dig in her fingernails or restrain him. She knew it was working when she heard a soft, vulnerable sound, even though it had been so long since either of her parents held her.

She knew she was somehow doing this right, or he was just that desperate, when his chest shook and he started to weep. So easily.

Maybe it helped that she was older, if Ritsuko was right and Kaworu was telling the truth when he said he'd been created by humans, with human DNA. He'd never had a mother: even Shinji had parents before they abandoned him. Gendo at least cared about Rei's survival, even if for his own twisted reasons: he'd panicked when there was that accident and she almost died, then he'd sent Shinji out to save her from the angel. From Armisael.

She doubted the old men of SEELE had felt the same way.

He'd never had a mother, or a father, and when he was finally introduced to love it was for someone else's crush and he'd been crushed, rejected so thoroughly. Not even friend-zoned: Shinji didn't even consider him a friend.

His hands were clinging now, not to her but to the back of her jacket, and since she was human it was impossible not to be moved to pity him. To reach up with one of her hands and comb it through hair that was too soft, the strands so fine it made her think of a baby penguin's down. When angels lived for billions of years, wasn't he a baby? She felt his breath hitch in his chest when she touched him willingly, and the sobs that until now had been soundless intensified, as though being touched so gently hurt.

When no one else ever had? When he'd gone without his entire life and now he was going to die, never finding love? Desperate enough to beg mere sympathy or the imitation of it of two people he knew hated him, her and Shinji?

She didn't have to stand it for very long before he said "Please. Please kill me now." Because he couldn't take the pain or because he wanted to die before reality set in, before she pushed him away and he had to face the fact this wasn't real, that she didn't really care about him, not any more than it took to kill him?

"With my bare hands, right?" she asked, because that was what he'd told Shinji.

He nodded, almost a spasm, and trembled when she placed her hands on the bared skin of his neck. So vulnerable, but he didn't cringe back, almost pressing forward into her hands. She wondered if he was trembling with fear, eagerness, or both.

She wondered if he had ever been touched like this before. Who would hug an angel? Unless it was absolutely necessary, like now.

The muscles at the back of his neck were so tense she was certain his shoulders were one solid knot. Days of living in constant fear would do that. To humans, anyway, but either this, at least, was real or he was a better actor than she thought.

"Please," he begged her again, truly afraid now that she would let him go, show the same cruel, uncaring mercy as Shinji. For a moment she toyed with the idea of doing that. Pushing him off her, walking away and leaving him crying where he fell, helplessly and hopelessly. Utterly abandoned. Would he even have the strength to pick up his own gun after being so devastated, or would he be easy prey for the first hunter to find him? Either way, it would be a truly shameful way for him to die. Utterly defeated. "Oh, please." Please have mercy.

"Shh," she said. "It's alright," and rubbed at the back of his neck a little, feeling how that kindness made him stiffen up more, afraid of something he'd never experienced before. "Just relax, Kaworu."

"Tabris. It's Tabris, the… angel of free will," he said, breath hitching.

"They named you that to mock you, didn't they." Damn. SEELE was responsible for Second Impact, and yet they made her idea of how to torment this angel look utterly pathetic. "Poor thing," she said, and he shuddered with the force of his reaction to those words, to the need that had him in its grip.

The closer anyone let anyone else, the more they could be hurt, she knew. She could hurt him now, she could make him suffer so much, just like Shinji, but it felt utterly redundant. His heart was already broken, he already longed for the mercy of death. Buying this false comfort with his life, and so grateful for the chance. "Just relax," she said.

He tried to obey, because she was being so kind, but he still asked, "Why are you doing this?" It felt so nice, and didn't she hate him?

"Because humans tense those muscles for self-defense, to take a blow. You want me to kill you, don't you? Like the cat?"

She could picture red eyes closing. "Oh," he breathed, and from the tape of his conversation with Shinji in his room, if angels really could feel love, she thought he loved her right now. It was taking so little. He leaned against her now, trying to be closer, shifting just a little to fit better. "It feels good, Misato…" Was she sure that wasn't a mistake? Or was it generosity that he needed to repay? Unnecessary kindness, to something like him?

"Shh," she said again, because she didn't want to hear it. Didn't want to hear anything that would interfere with her mission or make her regret killing him. Didn't want to be reminded that her excuse was flimsy, that she really was trying to comfort him. If he was weak enough to long for death, then he should die. He was an angel, so he should die. "You don't have to say anything. Just die, just like this." That was all she wanted from him.

He nodded, lifting up his head and arching his neck in offering, white marble face the image of bliss even marked with teartracks as she took his life in her hands and carefully, efficiently, ended it.

The most powerful of the angels. A boy with such a fragile heart, even more vulnerable than Shinji. Provided he was telling the truth and this was enough to kill him, but she didn't feel like cutting him open to try to find and smash a core, not here. She needed to carry the body out with her to prove that he was dead and so Ritsuko could examine him in the lab. She didn't think he was faking, though. Not when what he said about SEELE rang too true for him to need vengeance on anyone, not when he could have the satisfaction of remaining the hunted innocent (he'd killed, but surely a unicorn's sharp horn wasn't just for decoration) while humanity destroyed itself, did to itself what he had supposedly been killed to prevent.

If having him alive had actually delayed Third Impact, since they couldn't start until he was dead? Provided he hadn't just been trying to trick her, then it would be karma, wouldn't it? Humans causing Second Impact with his birth, according to the Maji's estimates, and Third by hunting him down instead of letting him live in peace, for as long as he could live without the pills his faux-human body required.

Even with his body limp he was still lighter than she would have thought, although once she took a good look at how thin he was…

No, Shinji had the right of it. She didn't want to feel sympathy for humanity's enemy. Even if she did, if Kaworu, Tabris deserved anything it was vengeance. Like Kaji, and on the same people.

Convenient.

She'd let him die happy, she told herself. That was more than anyone else would have done for the angel.

She needed a drink.

They could scatter his ashes on the sea when Ritsuko was done, at least. If any of them were alive to do it.

There's a line of 'XX' angel figures, which include a female version of Tabris/Kaworu.

When Kaworu dies in the anime, the one the viewer feels sorry for is Shinji. Whether it's viewed as a willing sacrifice for humanity's survival or some kind of evil plan, it's clear that Kaworu doesn't mind dying and it's Shinji that suffers, having to kill something pure and blameless when people who do that tend to get cursed.

In the manga, Shinji smiles when he kills Kaworu: it's a cruel mercy but it's mercy, and something he chooses to do. The one who's in real pain is Kaworu, who clearly doesn't want to die since that's his reason to reject instrumentality but knows he won't be allowed to survive and no one wants him to survive. It's an absolute loneliness and heartbreak that is so very NGE.

The manga-ka's note at the end of Vol. 11 shows how well this version of Kaworu got his sympathies, so I thought it was fair for even Misato to not be totally unmoved.