Aside from making it fit with the anime, I had to wonder why in the manga Armisael tried to get Rei to merge with her and ignored Kaworu, when he has Adam's soul and the angels were supposed to try to merge with Adam.
Possible reasons: underage/not fertile yet, since fifteen is 'born five minutes ago' in geological time, or they're just pissed off by the whole raping their father thing and don't want anything to do with the product of it.
However, he still is a seed, and a seed of life instead of wisdom, so if they really did despise him because of how he was born? Notice that Rei gets asked nicely to merge with Armisael, while Arael mind-rapes Asuka. It's possibly that Armisael's nicer than her sister, but it's also possible that the rules angels follow/their moral code (like waiting their turns to go after Adam and try to become the new god) mandate respect for some (and seeds have godlike power), while weak enemy wisdomlings can suck it. Think about castes in a lot of human societies, how someone who was a good person by that society's standards could be absolutely respectful to one person and treat another like less than dirt and not see anything wrong with this picture.
Manga!Kaworu is fun to abuse, and he is an Eva pilot. When the ingredients for Third Impact are a seed's soul (in him), a seed's flesh (in the eva) & an angel? Is mind rape still mind rape instead of rape-rape when if successful it would result in children?
"Won't you become one with me?" the angel with Rei's face asked again, kneeling on the endless watery plain within her mind. "All of the darkness inside you… it's the only way you'll ever have that Lilim you want."
Rei raised her head: something had changed. Instead of sensing only loneliness (so like her own) from the angel, sensing the desire for someone, anyone, to accept her that was present in Rei as well, now the angel's attention was divided.
Alarm flashed through her as she felt predatory triumph, and the kind of cruelty that must have been there in this angel's sister, when it did that to Asuka's mind. So far, this angel had tried to convince her with words instead of forcing her. Some of those words were cruel truths, yes, but Rei had been relieved enough on some level when she felt that this angel was like her instead of simply an enemy that she forgot what it meant that it was like her.
When Rei was capable of hating Asuka, of being cruel to Shinji for the crime of sitting by Asuka's bed and hoping she recovered?
She turned her mental head, following the angel's gaze to see another figure appear in this place, rising out of the LCL beneath them. No, dragged up, forced to appear here. The other pilot, the other one like her: his Eva had also been trapped and infected.
He wasn't struggling: red eyes looked annoyed instead of afraid, and he had the air of someone who was holding himself back instead of someone who was helpless the way Rei was in the angel's grasp.
"This is your last chance, Lilith," the angel told her, smirking at Rei with her own face. "Two seeds within my grasp? If I merge with him instead, you and your children will be overwritten instead of becoming one with us." At least there was a trace of pity there, a bit of mercy for the black seed.
"I refuse," Kaworu said shortly, climbing to his feet on the unreal surface and folding his arms.
Within this place, all three of them were connected enough now that Rei felt the angel's smile on her own lips, felt the twitch of will that altered the tentacles assaulting his body, no longer keeping the intrusion from being painful but instead making him scream.
Rei, for some reason Rei (Lilith), deserved a choice. It was her prerogative whether or not to accept this angel, merge with it and let it become the core of this world's new god. But Kaworu?
"Like Asuka," Rei thought. "She's treating him like Asuka." As soon as that thought crossed hertheir mind, she knew it wasn't that.
A flash of Arael's memory that was now Armisael's, a vision of an obstacle that had no right to stand in her way: it wasn't the Lilim's turn yet, so trying to stop her was cheating. Those who refused to play by the rules were not protected by them. So Asuka was worthy of contempt instead of consideration, should be broken and forced aside so she couldn't repeat this crime, but Kaworu…
To Armisael, Kaworu's very existence was a crime. She wasn't just willing to break him the way Arael had Asuka.
She wanted to.
"She wanted him to refuse," Rei said both aloud and inside her mind as Kaworu's screams came from her Eva's speakers, echoing inside their shared mental space. "She doesn't want there to be anything of his self left when they become one, so she doesn't have to…" Wasn't contaminated by the thing born of the rape of her father by the Lilim.
Lilith's host could feel Kaworu's struggle to hold his sister off while holding his AT field back as her own (no, he must not reveal himself now, not when there was time left!) as she reached for the modal switch.
She couldn't let Armisael merge with him, not when the reason Kaworu was like her was that he was born of Adam. If Armisael merged with him, an angel spawned of the white seed with a white seed, then instead of being absorbed and uploaded, all the minds on this planet born of Lilith would be overwritten.
Shinji, Commander Ikari: they would all die.
Rei's hand reached the switch without Armisael noticing Rei's intentions, too focused on Kaworu and the approach of Shinji's Eva, but was it too late? Armisael was now in Kaworu's mind instead of just Rei's: inverting the Eva's AT field would divide her and reduce her power, but it wouldn't kill her. It wouldn't even be enough to stop her if Kaworu didn't fight back.
She didn't even need to say it now, not with Armisael tangled within them both. Just as she'd felt Armisael's loneliness she could now feel Kaworu's (both of them, so like her own) and the knowledge of how the people here hated angels, how Misato and Shinji would loathe him for being one of the enemy that had taken people from them, and, "This feeling… It's my feeling." Not just so alike, the way the two of them were so alike: what she sensed from Kaworu now was her feeling. Her desire to hold Shinji's hand, to have him stay with her instead of waiting by Asuka's bed. Her desire to be loved, even though she was an angel and knowledge that even though there wasn't room in Gendo's heart for anyone else, Shinji was like Gendo. Shinji could grant her wish.
The same wish Kaworu had, that he hadn't even been aware of until now. He, he really was like her. Before he hadn't known that it was possible for someone to exist who could grant that wish, but now his heart had seized on the hope offered by her own hopes, her own knowledge of Shinji.
"Detecting another AT field! It's coming from inside Unit 00's entry plug!"
Rei winced to hear those words, even as she pulled all of the angel out of Kaworu as best she could, using the angel's desire to be with a seed to her advantage. "Come to me," Rei told the other with her face. "We'll go together."
Modal switch, the Eva's AT field pressing the two of them together, Armisael's hatred of Kaworu and hope that Rei would accept her tangling with Rei's wish that Shinji would accept her, her desire to protect him. Shards of Kaworu's despair, ripped out of him with the angel made her frown with worry: was it too late? Was he too damaged to carry out her wishes?
Her hand still reached for the self-destruct, ignoring Shinji's words, Misato's order to give her an explanation. She didn't want to explain, she didn't want to see Shinji's face when he realized that she was an angel all along.
She'd rather die than have him hate her, lose all hope of ever having someone for her.
So she did.
Shouldn't exist.
Shouldn't exist.
You have no right to exist.
That is simple truth.
A monster in the eyes of your kin and even the Lilim that made you, when your birth stole so many lives and souls.
You shouldn't exist and can't exist. You're just a tool to let someone obtain godhood: you think you can refuse your purpose? You know you can't survive, but you should know that even your death isn't yours to choose.
Your identity? What right do you have to value it, to hold on to it so selfishly, when it exists to be surrendered to a greater power, to something more worthy? What right do you have to possess an identity in the first place, when making 'you' from the soul and body of our father destroyed his identity and those of billions of the hosts of Lilim?
The sooner you surrender the power of your soul and cease to exist the better. That which is most precious to you? The only thing you have?
Your self is trash, and your death was never yours. I will break it now, I will take it from you now.
And she had: he'd felt her breaking his mind wide open as his body thrashed and cried out, just like what he'd watched Arael do to Asuka, but the lance was gone and Rei was trapped with him. No one would come and save him.
Especially if they knew he was an angel.
The light of his soul: it was what Armisael wanted, his own sister clawing at his mind, trying to gain purchase, trying to violate the absolute territory that must not be breached.
He couldn't keep her out: her words, thoughts, feelings were spikes, breaking him open because they were true and they made him want someone, anyone. Made him want the pain of this accursed existence to stop and she, she wanted to give him oblivion.
Eventually.
He couldn't keep her out or Rei out, and who knew what Ikari's angel would find in his mind. SEELE would be furious, and he'd thought his last days would be his own time, his only freedom. Would even they be taken from him? Would he never have any freedom at all? Was there nothing that was truly his?
Not his body SEELE made, not his soul that was Adam's, not his life that was under the control of the Lilim, not his destiny that was laid out for him, and now Armisael would take everything from him, even his death. He wouldn't even be able to die as himself, not if he was reduced to nothing but a part of her!
Longing grew in him, made the tears he'd begun to shed when Armisael connected him to Rei come harder and faster, an undignified, disgusting blubbering that made him curl up with shame as well as the futile wish to hide, to escape from Armisael's righteous contempt for all he was, her thoughts smashing at him, pounding him to dust and nothingness.
SEELE had trained him to fight angels. Unlike Rei he knew much of how to use his AT field and other powers, but Armisael was billions of years old, even if she'd spent that time asleep. As a seed he had the raw power, but all of it was stolen strength and he was young, weak, an insignificant thing that should not be, even as he shook his head, trying to deny that reality, screaming, "No!" as Rei joined Armisael, reaching into his mind not to free him but to reshape him to her will, make him love Shinji as she couldn't, make him protect the Lilim after she was gone even if it meant revealing himself, regardless of what he wanted to do.
No matter how much he was hurt in the process, when she'd made him care (made him realize he cared) about the Lilim and their rejection of him. Even SEELE rejected him, for all they praised him. They wanted an angel that would grant them godhood, but they'd kill the boy who just wanted to live, and despise him for betraying them when he'd never agreed to any of it, never asked for this!
There was no one and nothing that would accept him. That would help him no matter how he begged for it: his weakness only invited them to use him.
Kaworu screamed as Armisael's last assault burned through him, the angel putting the last of her strength not into resisting Rei but into hurting her 'younger brother.' Even the other angels… He was even a monster and a tool to his own kind.
He screamed long past the point a Lilim would have lost their voice. He screamed until Ritsuko put a sedative in the entry plug's LCL, knowing better than to try to restrain a hysterical angel long enough to get a needle into him.
Shinji couldn't bear to go home with Misato and he didn't have anywhere else to go. Maybe that was why Ritsuko took pity on him and let him take another bed in the room where Asuka slept, now joined with Kaworu.
She was probably thinking that Shinji would go insane and join them before too much longer, so it was more efficient to have him here anyway.
He hadn't been able to save anyone. He'd felt his own hands kill Touji, another angel had possessed Rei's Eva and Rei'd had to kill herself. Asuka and now even Kaworu were reduced to this… Why was he alive? Why was he fine when Rei, Touji…
A soft groan snapped him out of those thoughts, made him look at Asuka hopefully, but it was Kaworu who was shifting in the hospital bed, kicking sheets off legs almost as pale as the white linen.
Shinji knew he had to be almost as much of a bastard as his father to be annoyed that Kaworu was coming to, but the last time he had the crying made it impossible for Shinji to sleep or focus on Asuka, so he got up and headed to the button he was supposed to press to summon an orderly. Kaworu couldn't be just having a nightmare: one of the nurses had explained the brain wave monitors to him, trying to give him some encouragement that Asuka was still in there, and she might be okay. People were supposed to work things out in dreams, right? She, she might get better. She had to.
Kaworu hadn't had any dreams, though. Not that Shinji had been paying a lot of attention to him, but it was so quiet here and there wasn't anything to do but pay attention to the two of them and think.
Yeah, here came the crying again, and Kaworu was clearly trying to curl up in a ball. Ritsuko had put his arms and legs in restraints, though, which was a little weird when it was Asuka that woke up that time and attacked Shinji. Kaworu'd just lain there and sobbed so far.
Looking abandoned, thin and helpless like that kitten, and Shinji knew that he'd wanted to strangle him before the nurse sedated him again and made the crying stop.
"You're here for her, aren't you?" Kaworu's words were a little slurred, probably because of the sedatives. "Not me… No, why would you be here for me, that has to be her feeling… I'm not even myself anymore, I can't tell what's me or her or Armisael… I wanted to live before, but now I don't know why." Blank red eyes stared up at the tiled ceiling. "I wanted to be myself, but now I think… I never cried before, but now I want the tears to stop. It always hurt, all three of us were always alone, but it will never change, will it? I should hurry up and die." He sighed, eyes closing again, as Shinji grabbed the front of that hospital gown.
"Shut up! How can you say that, when Rei…" and Touji, people who wanted to live and couldn't? "Rei, you survived because Rei killed herself!" He wasn't allowed to throw away that sacrifice!
"Bitch," was Kaworu's hateful reply, lips twisting into a snarl.
"What?!" Shinji slammed him down against the bed, feeling the cuffs wrench at Kaworu's arms. "Say that again!" If he said that again, Shinji would kill him!
"I didn't ask her to: she's just like all of you! You Lilim, that's where you get it from! Selfish bastards, only caring about yourselves: I bet she just wanted, wanted you to remember her." Kaworu's voice broke, letting out another sob. "She didn't care about my feelings, she just made me… I hate this, I hate all of you, I can't stand the thought of being one with you! I'd, I'd always rather have died, but now…" Kaworu threw his head back and keened.
The tiles on the ceiling shattered, ceramic shards raining down on Shinji's head as he tried to cover it with his hands. Earthquake, he wondered, becoming sure of it when the ground under his feet began to shake.
When that shaking resolved itself into a steady hum, though?
When Kaworu began to rise into the air, the chains at his wrists and ankles (one of the nurses had said that wasn't a very professional way to restrain someone, which made another one roll her eyes and say 'Dr. Akagi' as though that explained it all) dragging the bed with him?
Someone, Shinji wasn't sure who, was brave enough to pull the pilot away, Shinji's hands gripping the paper hospital gown hard enough to tear most of it off as he was hustled out of the room, thrown into his Eva without even changing.
"The geofront… The entire structure is responding."
Ritsuko thought a much better word was, "Resonating." A spacecraft meant to transport angels: it hadn't helped any of the others break in, so why was it responding to this one's distress?
"Shinji, we're trying to calculate a route to get the Eva there without destroying too much of the structure," Misato told him. The way everything manmade around Kaworu was shaking itself to bits - the bed was already gone, leaving only chains that were useless for restraining an angel – would help Shinji get there, but it wouldn't help keep the rest of the NERV's headquarters from coming down around their heads.
Screaming like this, curled up with his arms wrapped around his knees: the angel masquerading as their new pilot seemed more like a baby throwing a tantrum than a dangerous enemy, but the power level their equipment was sensing?
"What happened?" Shinji asked. "Did the last angel survive inside Kaworu?" Had Rei died for nothing?
"Kaworu is the Twelfth Angel," Misato said shortly, not wanting Shinji to ask for an explanation because it was hard enough to keep herself from demanding one, not least of the reason why Gendo and Ritsuko were anything but surprised by this. "We need you to kill him, Shinji." At least, Misato told herself, this wouldn't be as bad as Touji. It wasn't like they'd had very long to get to know each other.
"Another set of bulkheads has shattered!" Maya reported. "At this rate, all the barriers between him and Terminal Dogma will…"
"I'll go," Shinji said, gripping the Eva's controls and not meeting their eyes.
While that was a relief to Misato, who had expected more opposition/complaining, but that left the main problem of how Shinji was going to kill him.
As Shinji made his way to the angel the ground shifted under their feet again, and the holographic display in front of the command center blinked out. "Get that back up!" Misato ordered.
"Already working on it." Ritsuko didn't look happy. "I don't know how long the Magi will last: if we didn't have multiple redundancy of every system they'd already be down a hundred times over."
"Damn," Misato cursed. They needed the Magi to have any chance of calculating a way past that AT field, unless the commander was going to pull another Lance out of his hat by revealing that oh, by the way, sending an Eva down there to get it wouldn't cause Third Impact.
"We're moving!" Maya reported. "The uplinks to the other Magi systems… our elevation's changing. The entire geofront is being pulled up out of the ground!"
"The S2 engine," Ritsuko realized. "So that's why… the angels were the power supply and the engine. No wonder we never found any conventional systems in here: of course they'd be suited to life support, and if they were piloting it would explain how two ended up on the same planet." One not recognizing another's claim. "But this… Does this angel really have power equivalent to Adam?"
Misato stared at her friend. "You mean this thing might not need to reach Adam to initiate Third Impact?"
"Misato?" Shinji asked to get her attention, now that he was in range.
"Just attack!" Misato wished she had more of a plan than that, but at least a frontal assault would give her more information to work with.
Shinji charged in with the knife, but all it did was get stuck in the hexagon of light that appeared, Kaworu's AT field.
A shriek and it shattered. "Go away!" The boy who before had seem so aloof and unflappable now snarled, red eyes glowing. "Go away!"
"This pattern: he's generating a-"
Maya's warning came too late: Shinji's Eva had already vanished into the growing Sea of Dirac.
"All of you, just leave me alone!"
The tape showed a glowing figure appearing in lunar orbit, seizing the lance used to kill the Tenth Angel and disappearing with it.
From the perspective of most of the world, this was absolutely fantastic. The Black Egg was past the orbit of Mars and accelerating: since the thing the angels were after was gone, the attacks should stop, right?
In fact, public opinion had turned massively against NERV and SEELE. All that money, sending children to fight, die and get mind-raped, developing ungodly war machines and for what? An angel won and instead of causing Third Impact, it just took what was obviously an alien spacecraft, recovering what was their property to begin with and left peacefully? All that fear and hysteria for nothing? Just a waste of everyone's time and the UN Budget? The Committee for Human Instrumentality was already being audited.
They still had the MP Evas, but instead of dying the Twelfth Angel had survived and taken Adam's soul with him. Not to mention Lilith's soul, both halves of Lilith's body… They still had Adam's flesh, or at least flesh cloned from Adam and used to make the MP Evas, but Instrumentality required the flesh and soul of a seed to merge with an angel. Humanity itself was the Thirteenth Angel, but they were missing both of the keys, the one Gendo Ikari kept to himself and the one incarnated in the angel they'd thought was under their control.
It was the white seed, the Seed of Life that possessed the spiritual 'DNA' coding necessary for true immortality. There was all the data they'd gathered on Tabris, but with no remaining angels born of the white seed, where were they going to get a soul? True, they could keep the dummy plug clones around, but what were the odds a Seed in a Black Egg would die anytime soon, say before Earth became a burnt cinder? Much less before they died of old age or the truth of their project leaked! It wasn't like a White Seed needed to worry about falling down some stairs or an infected papercut! Especially if he was putting himself into suspended animation with that Lance, time would have no power to touch him.
Unlike them, poor damned spawn of the black seed. All Keel could do was clench old fists powerlessly, feeling how almost all of their strength had gone. How could the angel who was supposed to die rather than destroy humanity decide to just abandon them like this?! Abandon them to age and death! Remove all hope that humanity could ever evolve, either becoming gods on Earth or taking to the stars themselves as that heretic Yui Ikari had wished?
Or had Keel misread the prophecies? What if Tabris was destined to choose death not out of compassion but out of hatred? Instead of choosing not to take the risk of annihilating the Lilim present even if he merged with Lilith, would he have died just to spite them, just to deny them true instrumentality, with the power of the White Seed? He wouldn't have known that they had the clone bodies ready to catch Adam's precious soul either way.
Now, though, it was all so far outside their grasp.
Two members of the committee had already stopped responding, and Keel had no doubt more would follow. They had failed. Second Impact, all their efforts to save the human race had been for nothing. Failure like this… there was only one way to atone for it.
"Well, at least we have air?" Maya said with determined cheer as she pushed ahead.
Aoba just looked at her, pushing another branch covered with silver leaves out of his way as he climbed towards one of the several places where the food stockpiles (NERV HQ had been prepared for a siege) might have ended up.
Artificial gravity was now pushing them against the outside of the sphere, but first everything got pretty shaken up and then they'd been in zero-g for awhile, even as the branches grew to replace the walkways.
"I'm just amazed we're alive," was what Hyuga said, adjusting his glasses again.
The obvious response was 'for how long?' Aoba looked at the branches, not trusting any of them one bit. Ritsuko had theorized aloud that they were made of particle wave matter, that this 'Tree of Life' was the true form of the Twelfth Angel. It might be ignoring them for now, but since obviously the surviving NERV staff would have to destroy it to try to find some way to get back home? Or maybe it wasn't ignoring them. Maybe their efforts to survive were entertaining. Like that reality show.
It really boggled the mind that as far as they could tell, none of the people who were in NERV had died while all of that shaking was going on. Why would an angel save them unless it was saving them for later? Especially when the remaining Evas had been smashed in their cages, and Evas were a lot more durable than people.
That was when Maya screamed.
"What… The…" The clearing made by the impact of a huge tank or something was strewn with dead bodies. Dead blue-haired bodies.
Hyuga was already using his radio to contact Misato. "Are any of them still alive?" Commander Ikari demanded, interrupting his report and ignoring the implicit request for an explanation.
"I don't think so," Hyuga said, which was an understatement. "All of them are… decaying." It wasn't rotting, not when they didn't stink. Not when it looked more like the dismembered pieces were melting.
Just… What the hell had gone on here? Why didn't the Commander sound surprised?
"Looking for this, Ikari?"
Hyuga and Aoba both raised their guns, Maya shrinking back as the angel appeared hovering over the middle of the clearing, another girl that looked like Rei in his arms.
"The girl you called Rei: you knew she was an angel all along. She's like me and she owes me, for what she tried to do to my mind after the other angel broke into it for her. So I'm keeping her." The thing that looked like a teenage boy smirked, rubbing his cheek against blue hair as the girl looked at them with what barely qualified as mild curiosity. "This is my world now, and I'm in control here, not you Lilim. I was going to cast you all down to your world and let you die on the vine with it, now that there are no longer any sources of new souls there, but this way you can have a taste of your own medicine."
"They're not in tubes," the girl (angel?) that looked like Rei pointed out in a voice that was almost neutral but not quite: she seemed a little disappointed. "Or tanks. You're letting them walk around freely."
Kaworu made a disgusted face, looking like he was definitely a teenager for a moment. "You're right, that would be fair, but I'm not going to be as cruel as they were. Not quite. You can put them in tubes if you want, though," he offered, acting as though it was generous of him.
"I will consider it."
"Rei," Gendo Ikari said, voice stern, as though ordering her to snap out of it, certain she would obey him.
For a moment the other angel might have looked a little worried that she would obey the Commander and side with the humans against him, but instead Rei began to glow. "I remember seeing you smiling just for me as I died. Then I awoke in the tank and knew it must have been a hallucination, because you would never smile for me: the only one you care about is her. This body remembers many hallucinations caused by sensory deprivation. Being locked in the dark in the tank full of LCL. Kaworu is like me. The Lilim that kept him also only cared about him for what he could do for them and because he was a symbol. You also intended me to die in order to accomplish your goals. From now on, I will follow Kaworu, not you."
"Hear that, old man? Putting Rei in a copy of your wife's body, giving half of Rei's original body to your wife so that she could steal her power: you Lilim aren't getting away with it anymore. You're not using us for your damn scenarios! Maybe we'll put the rest of you back, for good behavior, but you can die here cursing your powerlessness." Kaworu laughed. "I don't need to bring my old men here to know that's what's happening to them right now. Or perhaps the other Lilim will take revenge for me. Revenge for my birth." That thought seemed to kill his good mood.
Rei touched his shoulder when he closed his eyes. "Go back?"
He shook his head. "I wish I'd remembered to bring that piano." He was the only one who knew he was talking about the abandoned piano he'd been playing when Shinji found him. "It was probably smashed. Oh well. I want to sing. There's all kinds of music in the transmissions that the old men never let me listen to." Along with TV programs and movies.
Part of him thought that he probably would relent and put them back after giving them just a taste of their own medicine, so until then he wasn't going to go FTL. That would make it harder to get them back to Earth without too much time passing while they were gone. Being around the old men made him aware how short the lives of Lilim were.
And they'd still tried to make his so very short… Selfish bastards.
So it was alright for him to be selfish for a bit. It was still something of a comfort that he was usually the one restraining Rei, that she was more selfish than he was. She was the one who had Shinji tied up when he demanded to see Asuka and Misato. Kaworu had just pitched Eva 01 out an airlock. If that woman wanted to float around in space all alone in a stolen body, then she could be all alone instead of reminding the angel whose body she'd stolen of how Gendo had never loved her. At least meeting Yui had made sure that Rei would stay on his side instead of deciding to go back to earth and give the Lilim instrumentality or anything like that.
They would play with the Lilim for now, and sing, fly around, watch trashy TV: all the things they weren't allowed to do before. If freedom ever started to grow boring, they could put themselves to sleep with the lance until they arrived at their very own world. Well, Kaworu's very own world, but the loneliness was his feeling, not just Rei's. A feeling they shared instead of one that was forced on him. So she could stay.
"So it's supposed to be this hot… but how do I tell how hot I'm making it by their measurements?" It was the smell instead of the muttering that woke up Shinji.
Kaworu was hovering over a flat piece of metal that looked like he'd pressed a bit of wreckage into service as a cookie sheet. Literally hovering, although there wasn't any particular reason to hover. He just liked flying and liked being able to use his powers without worrying about Lilim detection equipment. Various bags and tins that hadn't been there when Shinji fell asleep were scattered around the room, with several of those silvery branches serving as shelves.
"Oh, you're awake. According to Rei, you can cook. I'm listening to programs, but there are a lot of things I don't know and we've only got preserved food." Kaworu had re-frozen the frozen stuff, and he could make more of what he'd scanned in theory, but he didn't want to mess with that when he was still figuring out how to tell the difference between flower, flour and baking soda. "I'll untie you if you help me with this."
"You aren't going to do anything weird, are you? And I want clothes!" Shinji blushed. He thought he had a chance of getting some this time, because at least Kaworu had wrapped himself in a sheet or something, probably because he'd encountered the reason normal people wore aprons.
"…Rei asked me not to give you clothing, but if you give it back to me when she comes back, you can have half my sheet," Kaworu offered, shaking his head and clearly thinking that Lilim were weird about clothing and contact. Possibly they got it from Lilith, since she seemed to have a strong opinion regarding Shinji's degree of coverage, not just clothing but how he'd been tied down. "And I don't know what you think is weird." It wasn't like there was any internal sense or rules to it.
"Don't kiss me or, or anything else!"
"Anything?" Kaworu tilted his white head, and Shinji saw that yes, he'd gotten flour or something else powdery on him already. "I only kissed you because Rei asked me to, although… Since she forced her feelings on me, I do wonder what it would be like to be loved by something like you, but Rei will touch and kiss me, and she doesn't want me to die, so I'm already loved." He smiled with his eyes closed for a moment, radiating happiness. "I don't care if she loves you more or not as long as I'm loved, but it matters to Rei. If you keep acting like seeing Asuka and Misato is more important to you than spending time with her, then she'll never let you see them. It's irrational, but even I can figure it out, so you don't have any excuse." When Shinji was used to irrational things.
Shinji just stared at him like he was the idiot here, but Kaworu was in a good enough mood to ignore the Lilim's impertinence instead of showing Shinji exactly who was the god here. "Well, are you going to help? Do you want half my sheet or not?"
Since Shinji wanted food, there wasn't really much of a choice.
Armisael has a little speech about how Rei's heart is evil and full of jealousy and such over Shinji. I think in this scenario, Shinji would end up seeing Kaworu as the one he can count on to be saner/not molest him… Or mostly not, unless there's some reason to do so.
If it seems as though Kaworu recovered a little too easily from Armisael's mental assault, not really. It's part of why he went from 'all go away' to wanting people near him, even Rei. Wanting those people to acknowledge his existence. Also, the thing is that he was already suicidal: both anime and manga versions accepted death (despite the anime version understanding the value of life, see Ode to Joy's lyrics and some of what he says) which isn't exactly a sign of a healthy ego. Still, at least his will to live was strong enough that instead of using the lance to put himself into nearly-eternal dreamless sleep, death without the actually dying part and hence even more tempting (the psychological mechanics of teenage suicide attempts, especially why they pick methods that don't work, are interesting), he went looking for reasons to live. Including giving the Lilim tastes of their own medicine, although he's nice enough that he probably will keep Rei from putting them in tubes of LCL. Most of them. Since Gendo and Ritsuko are her old men-equivalents...
A consequence of forcing powerlessness on people is that they never learn how to deal with power morally. When Rei was used as a tool and Kaworu was confined, either of them deciding to break those mental chains and going, 'Screw this, why am I putting up with the Lilim treating me like this when I am a god in their religion?' is that their role models for having power are Gendo Ikari and SEELE. So they'd have the concept that to have power means to be evil, too. Also, well, teenagers.
Kaworu and Rei aren't fundamentally bad people, nor are they really antisocial/misanthropic people (which is why Shinji got fished out of the Sea of Dirac and Kaworu protected the people in the Geofront even when he wanted them to go away/just die), but there's a reason that in most of these oneshots, when manga!Kaworu makes the decision to make use of his power, it's often for something morally questionable at best, and often something that infringes on the will of others - that's the application of power he thinks of because that's what he's seen it used for. SEELE are not especially nice. It's also inspired by the tendency manga, anime and Rebuild/pachinko versions of Kaworu have to manipulate Evas into fighting for them, although in manga!Kaworu's case, I theorize that part of that is the subconscious desire for someone to want to protect him.