I facepalm when I see people call children innocent and say this is a good thing.
Innocence is a very, very bad thing. It is a deadly condition that needs to be cured.
Ignorance of good and evil just means that you can do evil without realizing it is wrong, and it means you are less able to prevent evil from happening to you.
An innocent person is functionally no different from a sociopath. If they don't know that certain things are wrong? If they don't know that they need to be mindful of others?
Children are not 'innocent' of prejudice, for example. We are hardwired to sort the world into groups, and the group we're in is better than all others. Prejudice is the default. It is something we need to work to overcome, for example by teaching children that 'us' should be more than twenty-thirty people.
An innocent being with godlike power is something that should be regarded as incredibly bad news. Read the Old Testament sometimes.
"-In other news, the new fungus that has recently caused a string of crop failures across Japan, China and Central Asia has spread to Europe. The UN Agricultural Committee reports that efforts to sequence the new fungus' DNA and alter the standard crops are underway, and summer this year is projected to last long enough for a second harvest in the afflicted areas. This is the third major crop die-off thanks to the rapid spread of a single organism in the past five years: while similar blights were not unknown in the years before Second Impact, the increase in global temperature coupled with-"
"Kaworu, can I change the channel?" Shinji asked, sitting cross-legged on the floor in Kaworu's room. He'd come here as a refuge from the reality of Rei's death, but with the news on? Any minute now there'd be a report on the latest Eva battle. Speculation or worse, confirmation, that the pilot of Unit 00 was dead.
He could hear the reporters taking about how wrong it was that Rei died so young, and he cringed.
Kaworu kicked idly in the air, sprawled out on his bed reading a magazine. "If you want," he decided.
"Thanks." Shinji hurriedly reached for the remote. The hairs on the back of his neck pricked up, and he turned to see that Kaworu was watching him. "What?"
"You don't watch the news."
"No." Shinji tried to think of the last time he had. "Hardly ever." Ever since he started piloting, he hadn't wanted to hear a catalogue of his failures, what a disappointment he was as a pilot to everyone.
Kaworu hadn't really phrased it as a question, but the confirmation made him smile.
The soap opera Shinji selected for the sake of having something mindless, something that would help him not think of Rei didn't manage to distract him from how creepy Kaworu was, but even the awareness that someone was watching him out of the corners of their eyes was a distraction.
The scrolling ribbon of a public advisory appeared at the bottom of the screen: something about pollen, an air quality warning in effect for Tokyo-2 and Tokyo-3, along with a reminder about the annual beach closings – it was the season for dangerous microorganisms in the water. Since Shinji was staying inside NERV with Kaworu instead of going home to Misato's apartment, he was just glad it wasn't about the battle. Even though that was just silly. The battle was over, the danger was over, Rei was already dead, and he'd hear about the next angel from the people who wanted him to pilot, not the tightly-controlled media.
"Pollen," Kaworu said thoughtfully. "What's that?"
"It's something flowers make," Shinji told him, a little surprised that Kaworu's Japanese wasn't perfect. "In order to reproduce, I guess? Some people are allergic to it, and it makes them sick."
"I thought so," was Kaworu's answer.
"What are you smiling about?" Shinji wondered, because the way that smile had just deepened was, well, creepier than Kaworu's usual.
"It's a good thing that you decided to stay here even though you hate me, isn't it?"
Shinji said, "I guess," because he had just been thinking that.
When Shinji woke up in the middle of the night, Kaworu was sitting on the bed with a hand on Shinji's shoulder almost proprietarily, the TV's volume turned down low. Was it the flickering light that woke him, or the unfamiliar human contact?
"Even though the origin point of the 'White Tide' has been traced back to the greater Tokyo area, thanks to satellite footage, the government has asked us to remind you that there is no evidence the new species is of angelic origin, and it is composed of normal matter so it is not, I repeat, not, the true form of the latest angel. Anyone who may have been exposed to the White Tide is still urged to report to their local hospital, and all beaches on both sides of the Sea of Japan will remain closed for the duration."
Kaworu sighed. "That's a shame."
Had he wanted to go swimming, Shinji wondered muzzily. Had he heard someone on the TV say 'angel?' "Nnn," he said, shifting pointedly under Kaworu's hand.
"Oh?" Kaworu wondered, looking down at him. "You aren't sick, are you? No, you're not," he said quietly to himself, and Shinji crankily wondered what made him so sure.
"Stop touching me and turn it off," Shinji forced out around a yawn, wishing Kaworu could figure out that was obviously what woke Shinji up and done the considerate thing and not made Shinji wake up enough to say that.
If he'd been thinking more than "Finally!" he would have been surprised that Kaworu obeyed, after looking down at Shinji for a moment, clearly thinking weird Kaworu thoughts. Shinji was just too sleepy to give a damn, even when Kaworu slid back down under the covers and it was either let the gap between their bodies let all the warmth escape or press back against him. See how Kaworu liked having someone in his personal space when he was trying to sleep, Shinji decided with the logic of those drunk or barely awake.
The second time he was woken up that night, Kaworu had to poke him and say, "Shinji," several times before Shinji was willing to take his cell phone instead of pulling a pillow over his head and waiting for it to go to voicemail. Wait, "Rei's alive?"
"We're not sure it's the Twelfth Angel, but I want all of you to stay inside NERV, alright?" Misato told her three – well, still her two pilots. Rei didn't have an Eva, and how was it even possible that this was the same Rei? "They're sending men out with hazmat gear, gas masks and flamethrowers, but burning it will put more of that toxin into the air until they're done."
"They're burning them?" Kaworu asked.
"The black plants? Yes," she told him. "They're absorbing so much of the sunlight that they're growing abnormally fast, like nothing on earth. According to Ritsuko they're not made of particle-wave matter, but something so poisonous… it has to be an angel." What human would bioengineer something like this?
"The death toll in the Japanese islands is increasing, and everyone is advised to stay inside as much as possible. In addition to gas masks, the UN has made a webpage with instructions on how to treat layers of clothing for those who need to go outside for short periods of time."
"Why are you watching that?" Shinji asked Kaworu, annoyed. "Didn't you hear enough about the angels during that sync test?" Nothing to do but listen to Ritsuko and Misato talking about how frustrated Misato was that there wasn't anything they could do this time. So far, the angel hadn't shown its face: this was worse than the one that got Asuka, how it stayed all the way up there so they couldn't do anything while it hurt Asuka, not until Rei got the lance, whatever that was.
Kaworu looked almost delighted as he turned to Shinji. "Aren't you worried at all?"
Shinji just blinked at him. "…Not really."
The weird boy frowned. "Why not?"
"Well, it's not like I can do anything about it, is there? Not until they find the angel, anyway." So he was useless now.
Kaworu blinked, and Shinji could practically see the light bulb go on over bright red eyes. "You don't care if you die, do you? Is that why you were willing to sleep with someone you hated?"
"Sl-sleep with…" Shinji sputtered. "It's not funny, Kaworu! We didn't sleep together, we just…" Slept slept, but did he want to explain the difference to Kaworu?
It was a huge relief to hear a knock on Kaworu's door. "Coming!" he said as he pushed Kaworu's arm away and got up, wincing at the pun. Thank goodness Kaworu didn't seem to have noticed it. "Misato?" Had she come to make him share her quarters?
Misato looked right past Shinji and said, "The Committee wants to talk to you, Fifth Child."
Kaworu smiled to himself. "I couldn't go make my reports when we're not allowed to leave NERV, could I?"
When he said that, Misato just looked more suspicious and, and was she angry? "Commander Ikari told me to take you to a room inside the facility, after we got the call from the Committee."
He looked a little disappointed, but shrugged it off. "Do you want to come?" he asked Shinji.
"Why?" Shinji wondered. Having some time with Kaworu gone sounded good, even if most of the time over these past few days he'd found he wanted the company. Just for the sake of the distraction.
"It is just the old men," Kaworu agreed, making a face at the thought of them like he'd tasted something icky. "I wouldn't want to talk to them either, but you've come to me for company, haven't you?"
"I guess," Shinji said, getting up. He didn't want to be kicked out, so he guessed he'd go.
"You want Shinji there when you make your report?" Misato asked. "Why?" So he'd have a witness? So the Committee couldn't discuss certain things, secret things, things they didn't want NERV to know?
"Loneliness," Kaworu said, looking unusually thoughtful. "The old men think it's the curse of the Lilim, but even that angel felt it. Well," he said, cheerful again, "It's too late now."
Shinji was the one to ask "Huh?"
"I don't want to talk to the old men. I came to NERV to get away from them. They're just going to yell at me for letting Commander Ikari throw away the lance and not giving them what they want, but it doesn't matter anymore." He stretched. "I suppose it won't be too bad to talk to them this time. Take us there," he told Misato. Frowning, he wondered, "Why are you glaring at me like that? Are you an agent of the old men?"
"As a member of NERV, we are overseen by the UN Committee for Human Instrumentality," she reminded him. "But that's not what you're talking about, is it? No, then."
Finally picking up the tension in the air between them, or Misato's half of it anyway (Kaworu just looked bored now), Shinji glanced back and forth between them, wondering what was going on, before deciding that he didn't care and there wasn't anything he could do anyway. "Let's go, then," he said, because the sooner this was over, the sooner he could get back to, well… Nothing really. Not thinking.
About Rei's death, the new Rei or how useless he was against the threat from this new angel. How more people were dying, right now, because he was so useless.
"There you are," Ritsuko said when they left Kaworu's room. "Come with me."
"Of course, Ritsuko," Misato said, a little surprised by the strange smile on Ritsuko's lips. "Right after."
Shinji and Misato froze: Kaworu just tilted his head curiously.
"Now," Ritsuko said, leveling the gun at them. "And drop your gun, Misato, or I'll shoot…" the tip of her gun shifted towards Shinji, but no. "I'll shoot myself."
"This is…" Shinji stared at the clones floating all around them, bile rising in his throat.
"This is disgusting!" Kaworu said, punching the glass. "So that's why she said she was the third… If Ikari can do this, to trap Lilith's soul, then… Damn them. Damn them all!" His shoulders hunched in, as he leaned his forehead against the glass, braced on it with his forearms. "Either way they would have had their instrumentality, their godhood: even death wouldn't have let me escape from them! To go from herself, who loved Shinji, to an empty mind without any memories, tamely obeying the Lilim that did this to her…" He fell to his knees, sliding down the glass, shoulders hunched in and crying without a care for the three people and near-dozen soulless clones watching him.
"Kaworu… You too? They used you for a dummy plug system too?" Shinji asked. Was that why Kaworu was so like Rei?
He cringed, shoulders pulling in as he braced himself in anticipation of a blow, or in memory of a blow, before he nodded. "Yes, for the Eva Series. So the old men wanted to control me, control the Evas made from Adam's flesh using me, even if I died to escape my fate: it wouldn't have been an end, no escape…" He wrapped his arms around himself almost violently, gripping himself so tightly, fingers practically digging into his back. Light tinted red by the tank's LCL cast bloody shadows on his back, as thought he was tearing into himself, trying to destroy whatever bound him to these things and this disgusting fate. He sobbed now, and Shinji took a step back out of shock, because for the aloof Kaworu who wasn't bothered by what happened to Asuka or watching Rei die to collapse like this, to lose all his dignity and sound like a broken child?
Watching him, all of them had forgotten about Ritsuko, her gun and that remote control. "…Kaworu," Shinji said, feeling utterly pathetic because what could he do, for Kaworu or for Rei? Was that why she was so cold now, was she going crazy inside from this, from her life not mattering to Gendo at all, the way Kaworu was?
Shinji cried out when he found himself slammed back against the tube in the center of the room. Hot, desperate lips pressed against his, Kaworu slipping his tongue inside Shinji's mouth when he cried out, pressing against his body so hard, so desperate to be close. Shinji clawed against the tube, trying to dig into it and get away, instead of into Kaworu's back, trying to get him to let go. Or press closer?
The sounds Kaworu was making, whimpers full of so much pain and pleading for Shinji to make it better somehow: it was just cruel of him, when Shinji couldn't do anything to make anything better for anyone. Kaworu was so close like this and moving, demanding Shinji's attention, making it impossible to ignore his body or the wetness of Kaworu's tears on Shinji's cheeks.
All Shinji could do was mentally flail as Kaworu touched him and kept touching him, reaching around Shinji and running his nails down Shinji's back in a way that just forced Shinji to press up against him, forced Shinji to realize that oh god, he had reacted and Kaworu's noises sounded like begging and this really shouldn't be the most turned on he had ever been in his entire life.
Misato swallowed, too taken aback by the sight to even use the opportunity to get that gun away from Ritsuko.
What was this about Lilith's soul?
The cooking, the cleaning: she'd thought to herself several times that Shinji was going to make someone a very good wife someday, but she hadn't actually meant it like this. So this was why Shinji was spending all his time in the new pilot's room, huh?
When Shinji finally found the strength to grab Kaworu's sides and demand Kaworu "Get off me!" the panicked glance in Misato and Ritsuko's directions wasn't read as a cry for help, for them to save them from the weird person, but rather that he was upset at being kissed in front of other people. That they now knew about his secret lover.
It made Ritsuko frown: even if Kaworu definitely was an angel, he seemed genuinely upset and Shinji was treating him like this because he was more worried about appearances than about his lover's feelings?
Just another like Gendo.
She hit the button to destroy the Rei clones almost absently, glaring knives at Shinji, who froze in the act of trying to push Kaworu away again to stare. "What's happening to them?!"
Kaworu detached his mouth from Shinji's neck to whirl and look at her with a wild grin. "Did you do this?"
"Mmmph!" Ritsuko protested when she found the angel boy kissing her next.
"Freeing her, even if it's too late for the Rei that had feelings for Shinji: You get to live!" Kaworu declared, pulling back to smile at her before wrapping his arms around her again for another kiss. The honest enthusiasm was so different from Gendo's commanding calculation that Ritsuko stood there almost numbly, caught off-guard by the assault of raw affection. And her inner scientist noting the part about how she got to live.
She'd known Kaworu was an angel sent to them by SEELE, the angel last born from Adam, but if he was intending to kill almost everyone instead of merging with Adam or Lilith? Was he the angel responsible for the White Tide and Black Bloom? For the half-dozen other, related new species that were being identified as part of the same phenomenon, some of which had been released into the environment years ago?
Ritsuko was too stunned to say anything when Kaworu pulled back to look up at her with happy, exuberant red eyes before turning to pounce on and kiss Misato, probably on general principles, or because he was happy and she was there. All she could do was hope Misato let him, hope that she got added to the list of people who were allowed to live, because even though the UN had clamped down hard on the media Ritsuko knew enough about science, about the true nature of angels, to know that the process that was already beginning couldn't be stopped by the UN's efforts any more than angels could be stopped with conventional arms. If the plants and other organisms were part of the angel's body, or if they were powered by his core then killing him would destroy or at least weaken them along with him, but they weren't.
When the Black Seed arrived, had the life it created overrun this planet, with Adam sealed in sleep and unable to generate new life that would fight back? Colonizing new planets: wasn't that what Lilith and Adam had been designed for? If this boy contained Adam's soul the way Rei did Lilith's, if he was reclaiming the planet that the prophecies said should have been his from the beginning?
She almost let out a sigh of relief when Misato let him kiss her. Then Kaworu paused, and Ritsuko lowered her gaze to where Misato's gun was pressed into the flesh of Kaworu's side.
Misato nudged him again, hard. "She gets to live?" Ritsuko should have known that Misato would notice the same thing she did.
"Haven't you figured out what the old men sent me here to do?" the angel asked the colonel, still happy enough there wasn't any trace of annoyance at being threatened with an ordinary gun.
Ritsuko opened her mouth to warn Misato that this was an angel, but she shut it again. The angel was in a good mood, for now, and realizing that Misato didn't know, or thinking she was brave enough to try this anyway, might impress him? Maybe?
The doctor might want to die, but Misato was her best friend.
"What did they send you here to do?" Misato asked him, the soldier's eyes hard because she would shoot, even with Shinji here.
Kaworu paused. "You were supposed to take me to the old men, weren't you? You can hear it for yourself."
Misato hesitated, in case this was a trick or a trap, then looked at Ritsuko, who hid a shudder at the thought of Gendo sending her to report to them in Rei's place, how she'd been forced to strip naked. "They only sent me back because I wanted revenge on Gendo and that would benefit them," she told Misato. "I'm not going with you." Leaning against the glass separating them from what was left of those things, she crossed her arms. "I'm staying here. I want to see his face."
"Give me the gun," Misato told her.
"No. Don't worry, Misato, I'm not going to shoot myself. I'm keeping the gun because I may need it." Gendo would be that furious.
Her friend gave Ritsuko a long, hard look that made it very clear that Ritsuko was not allowed to die, because she owed Misato a fucking explanation for all this. Ritsuko had known about… whatever this was besides the dummy system all this time, and kept the information from Misato?
Yes, and Misato hadn't noticed that Gendo was using Ritsuko, or that she'd been sent off to be interrogated naked by perverts, so Ritsuko found that she really had zero fucks to give about Misato's moral outrage. Instead, she just gave her the world's smallest wave goodbye, then shooed her in the direction of the door. "Go on, get out of here. Good luck saving the world," Ritsuko said, and wasn't surprised to find that the sentiment was entirely sarcastic.
This world didn't deserve to be saved.
Misato nodded, because she was taking this seriously even if Ritsuko wasn't. "Keep your hands where I can see them," she told the Fifth Child.
He held them up in front of him: like this?
On the way to the meeting room, Kaworu had put his hands behind his back after walking backwards got awkward, so he could look forward and Misato could still see his hands.
Shinji just kept Misato between him and Kaworu, grateful that Misato and Ritsuko hadn't commented on the, the kissing. He wanted to run away, but what if Kaworu asked where he was going and Misato wondered why he was going and noticed? Maybe if he acted like it had never happened, it would have never happened? He couldn't go back to Misato's now, she'd tease him mercilessly.
The Third Child almost jumped out of his skin when nine black monoliths appeared out of nowhere in the dark room Misato led them into.
"You're late," came from one of them, in a distorted, disapproving voice.
"Dr. Akagi had a gun," Kaworu said calmly. "I have been instructed to avoid trouble in situations like that."
"Dr. Akagi?" another monolith asked, surprised.
"She showed me something interesting," Kaworu said, sitting down on the single metal folding chair in the room and crossing his legs.
"Colonel Katsuragi, thank you for retrieving the Fifth Child. You are dismissed."
"No," Kaworu said calmly. "I want them here for this."
"Tabris… what do you think you are doing?" the sixth monolith said, wariness coming through despite the distortion.
"It is unimportant," came from the first. "We all know his place in the scenario."
"To grant you Lilim godhood, with the power of the White Seed and the flesh of the Black," Kaworu said, nodding once. "I know. I also know that this," he said, pointing to his chest, "isn't the only vessel you have for the soul of Adam, isn't it? The data you took from me, including my brainwaves: that was just to make sure the soul would be drawn to those vessels instead of going with me into death, wasn't it? So even if I failed… No, even if I chose to die as myself instead of becoming one with you disgusting Lilim, you could still use my soul to get you what you wanted!" He had surged up out of that chair, red eyes flashing, nonchalant pose utterly forgotten. "Were you planning for me to die instead of granting you Instrumentality? Is that part of the prophecies, of your ridiculous scenario?!"
"You will die at the hands of Shinji Ikari and Unit 01, Tabris. The vessel of Adam, the final messenger, will be slain by the work of the Lilim. You are merely an ingredient for our ascendance: you should have known this all along. What did it matter that you would fail to reach Lilith? You should thank us for allowing you to think that your precious individual existence had any greater significance at all," came that disdainful voice. "No, Tabris. We Lilim will achieve Godhood through our own efforts, not yours. Your rage against your fate, this tantrum of yours is insignificant. Just as Adam's fury signified nothing. Ikari will do his duty with Unit 01, and all will proceed in accordance with the prophecy. The Eva series is made from the flesh of Adam: your little toys will have no effect on their ability to perform the ritual. Instrumentality will unite the soul of the Lilim into one, incorporating all the Lilim that have ever existed: you have not even managed to reduce the perfection of our complementation."
Kaworu's head had bowed down under the weight of those words, or so it would have seen if Misato and Shinji hadn't seen his hands clench into fists. "Using Shinji to kill me… Is that why you told me to observe him? To make sure that this emotion would be inflicted upon me? So that was your scheme." He laughed, low and darkly. "Too late, old men. He can't kill me if he can't sync with Unit 01, and that Eva is made of the flesh of Lilith, not Adam. As for sending your assassins to kill me? Go ahead. Let them come to play with me in my garden. Spend their worthless lives. You're the one who taught me that Lilim were a cursed, evil existence that should not be, Keel, and you think I'll sacrifice myself to bless you with godhood? No, you weren't that stupid all along, were you? You knew that I would rather die than give you bastards what you wanted!"
His head snapped up to glare at Keel's monolith, red eyes glowing in the darkness of the soundproofed room, a flickering grey light beginning to fill the room. Misato didn't need to hear the sirens to know that the Magi must have just detected an AT field.
That of the Twelfth Angel.
"You damn old man… I'll kill you myself," the angel said, low and dangerous, ignoring the three shots that pinged off his AT field in rapid succession. Misato didn't dare fire any more, not after the triple-tap failed and a ricochet might hit Shinji. He didn't even spare her a glance as the monoliths wavered and faded to static, shifting his gaze to the ceiling.
Well.
That was the first time an angel broke out through the roof of NERV.
"Sync ratio… Zero," was all Maya could say.
"Damn," Shinji said to himself, head bowed, trying to make the Eva move again. "Damn…"
"It's not your fault, Shinji." She'd expected this.
"What do you mean?" Fuyutsuki asked Misato.
"The angel said something about this, how Shinji couldn't kill him if his sync ratio was zero. If he couldn't pilot the Eva. It looks like the Twelfth Angel went after our last pilot, after the Tenth and Eleventh took out the other two." Asuka insane, Rei dead and now Shinji powerless. They had Rei's replacement, but if Rei was really Lilith, an angel just like Kaworu? "Get on reformatting Unit 02's core so Rei can pilot it." It was still the best chance they had.
For revenge, if nothing else. "Hopefully Ritsuko will be able to figure out how to undo… whatever he did to you, Shinji," Misato said, trying to sound reassuring. "We'll bring both Evas with us to Europe." Where NERV Germany had already been reduced to rubble in the battle between Kaworu and two of the Eva Series. Or rather, despite the efforts of those two Evas.
"Unit 01 will remain here," Gendo said from behind his folded hands. "Along with Rei."
"We'll see about that, you bastard," Misato thought, but said nothing for now.
"Where did all these people come from?" Shinji asked her, staring about them in the halls.
"Refugees," Misato told him. "They're why I can't give you your own quarters." Well, half the reason. The other half was keeping him under guard, after the results of Ritsuko's genetic analysis of Shinji. And Ritsuko herself. Misato dreaded finding out what her own test results would show: the result she should want was the one that horrified her. "The geofront is easy to seal up." She put her hand on his shoulder. "Keep your head down." There were enough glares being cast at her because she was in a NERV uniform, because NERV couldn't do anything to protect them. At least Shinji's face had mostly been kept out of the media. Maybe they thought he was her brother or something.
They'd already had to set up airlocks for the military convoys coming in, carrying supplies for a siege. If only NERV's defense budget hadn't been slashed, they would have been able to repair the exterior of the geofront faster. At least they'd already patched up where Kaworu smashed his way out.
Since the angel had left, the most dangerous place on the planet was now the safest place.
He pulled at her out of the entry plug, and all she could do was try to scrabble at his arms, fighting to return to the safety of the LCL before... She tried not to inhale, but her cheeks, every bit of exposed flesh burned.
"You should have stayed in the Black Egg and waited," he told her, and she couldn't answer, couldn't even breathe in through her nose when she was desperate enough for air her body overrode her mind. "It's your children that I hate… but if you hadn't come here, hadn't taken my world from me, then those bastards would never have been born. I owe the previous yous for two things, but this is all I owe you: to die here, and be free of the Lilim. I'll make sure they don't have any more vessels to trap you in, don't worry."
Blood pouring from her right ear, the Third Rei didn't live long enough to hear his final words.
He let go of her plugsuit, and the last vessel of Lilith fell among the pale octarine flowers.
"Why didn't you let me go?" Shinji demanded of Misato.
"Because you can't pilot, remember? He made sure of that. That's why we can't give Asuka the counteragent, in case she can ever pilot again." The woman who had replaced Commander Ikari after he died resisting the troops that came to take Rei to pilot Unit 02 shook her head. "At least they were able to recover Unit 02." Unit 01 was functional, but they couldn't take it outside the geofront. They'd hoped that since Rei was an angel, she could survive outside her Eva for more than a few seconds but no, not when those idiots sent her to fight Kaworu in Switzerland, where he'd spent two months already trying to dig SEELE and their supporters up out of deeply-buried vaults and hidey-holes. The country was carpeted by his creations, but they weren't willing to wait until he moved on to somewhere else, no. That would be sensible, and who could be sensible when the wind kept blowing, the ocean's currents kept moving, and those things of his kept spreading? There were animals now, ten sucker-legged burrowing, acid-spitting things that might as well have been designed to bore holes in tanks, to decimate the troops sent to recover Eva Unit 02. "And we need you here, in Ritsuko's lab. Until he gets here."
"He'll just do something else if we don't kill him!" Shinji said, brown eyes glaring at her, and she wondered where this venom had come from? Shinji had gone practically catatonic after finding out that his lover had done all this, had been planning all this for years and was responsible for Second Impact to begin with, but he'd never shown this much of a killer instinct before.
Was it watching all the people die in Ritsuko's labs, as the doctors scrambled to try to create antivenoms? Everyone who was brought here was supposed to be clean, but half of them had already died of cancer from trace exposures, and they'd lost entire wards before they identified who had something growing in their lungs, or in a sweater that hadn't been decontaminated thoroughly enough…
Adam and Lilith: those entities were meant to create entire biospheres, to colonize worlds. And what happened to the targets of colonization? What happened to the native life?
Even if Kaworu, if Adam, hadn't been deliberately trying to eliminate humanity, that was the nature of the beast. Earth's native species couldn't hold out against organisms designed to take over, to wipe them out. An ecosystem wasn't just plants and animals: it was the bacteria that returned nitrogen to the soil, the fungi that broke down rocks and dead trees and countless more things too small to see that served as a foundation for everything else. That had to be there for those other things to thrive.
In order to recover their planet, they would have to sterilize everything and then rebuild from the ground up, reseed countless species of insignificant things no one had bothered to add to DNA libraries yet, even in the aftermath of Second Impact, because they were taken for granted. It was multicellular life that was fragile, that couldn't adapt fast enough to massive climate change and other hazards, not singlecellular.
It hadn't taken long for the UN's researchers to admit that saving any of earth's original biosphere was just not going to happen.
Was this what happened to Adam's creations when Lilith landed? With their progenitor sealed away, unable to counter the species Lilith released?
Honestly, Misato didn't fucking care. It was their planet now, there were, or had been, billions of people living on it. No kind of history could make it okay to murder them, whether it be in the fire and flood of Second Impact or the choking, whimpering deaths of this new assault from Adam.
What the hell had SEELE been thinking, raising that thing? Not noticing that it was creating life and releasing it when their own damn scrolls said that this was what these things did?! Even if they needed it to keep Adam from getting its soul back, they could at least have kept it locked away as an obvious biohazard!
Too late now. Almost too late.
There were people who thought Misato was the one who should have been shot, not Gendo. Because now it was looking like SEELE might have been right about one thing. Instrumentality would overwrite all life on Earth. It might be the only way for humanity to survive in any form.
Well, not just yet.
Of course, the origin of that other way wasn't helping Misato's credibility either, but she was trying to keep Shinji as insulated from that as she could.
"Well, you have to let me go this time! They showed me that psych profile too: Ritsuko's a scientist, there's no way he'll let his guard down!"
"I am," Misato told him. "Letting you go," she said, to forstall his angry response at the idea that she was the one who was going. "As long as you don't try to save us, you hear me? He has to think that he's smashed this place. He has to think that everyone here is dead or dying. He can't find out what we've been working on."
"But…"
"He knows that the prophecies said he'd let his guard down around you. If you attack him and it doesn't work, then it could be years before you have another chance. Years, Shinji. Years we won't have if you don't keep him distracted. Except for SEELE, and now us, he hasn't bothered to make an effort to destroy the vaults. Your job is to keep it that way." She gripped his shoulders, tight. "What he did to the three of us to let us survive in his new world: he can design new things, alter his creations, to kill us just as easy as everyone else." So few genes, such small adaptations. Just like how angels were almost completely identical to humans. Almost.
What Kaworu did to Shinji to enable him to survive in the new biosphere was simple enough human science could replicate it, could create a retrovirus to patch those adaptations into other people's genes, with the expertise gained after years of trying to modify species to let them survive the massive environmental change of Second Impact. Human genetic modification was a last resort, but right now it was the only alternative to instrumentality, and with Rei dead they couldn't set off Third Impact, not without catching Kaworu. "And if he doesn't want to keep you alive, if he doesn't design countermeasures, then how can you get them to us? You need to stay alive and make sure he wants you to stay alive: do you understand, Shinji? It doesn't matter if you kill him if we're left with a world we can't survive in!" Misato said, and knew that it was a lie. What mattered to her, what she wanted, was for the angel to die. To finally have revenge for her father and her entire world.
But it wasn't about her and what she wanted. This was about survival.
"Hello, Shinji," Kaworu said happily, a flower tucked behind his ear and dried blood staining his shoes and socks, and it was hard for Shinji not to throw up at the wrongness of it. How someone could look so cheerful and innocent, so oblivious when they'd knowingly, deliberately killed so many people. How could Kaworu not care? How could he snap that kitten's neck and not care? How could he smile to see that Shinji was still alive when he'd killed so many people who deserved to live so much more than Shinji?
He didn't need to see their names on a list to know that there was no chance, no chance at all, that Kensuke and Hikari were still alive. Or Touji's little sister or anyone who had been in that school. There was too much risk that people who left Tokyo-3 that late had already been exposed: none of the shelters would have taken them in, at least none of the shelters that were possibly still functioning.
That white hair: Kaworu looked like, Kaworu was death. The death of this entire world.
Creating behemoths, like the angels if they weren't angels themselves, to smash in here? Walking to his old room over dead bodies, and hopefully he thought that all of them were dead, when he'd ripped some of those gas masks off himself?
At least Ritsuko had self-destructed the Magi before his hack got far enough that he could have possibly seen what they'd been working on all this time, the retroviruses that were the reason that there was any chance that even a fraction of those bodies were only playing dead?
He didn't have to pretend helpless horror as Kaworu knelt down on the bed next to him. Didn't have to pretend that he was far too overwhelmed to possibly come up with a plan to kill Kaworu when that hand touched his face, and there was blood and some sort of silvery dust on that hand, just like the petals of that flower and in that moment he was convinced that Kaworu was going to kill him too.
Because that would be the sane thing. A monster that killed billions of people shouldn't greet him with a smile, shouldn't frown when he saw that Shinji was upset, shouldn't stroke his hair as one of the great white shaggy beasts, as though he'd made them while remembering that murdered cat, prowled past the open door.
All of a sudden Shinji couldn't breathe, and he wondered if Kaworu had realized the plan somehow, if that flower was something meant to kill Shinji and all the people who were counting on Shinji, on what Kaworu did to Shinji, to save them.
He let out a sound that he couldn't even describe, because god, this was, this was insane and he'd held it together watching death after death after death, after Asuka breathed her last because they hadn't managed to keep the ward sterile enough, and now Kaworu was stroking his back gently and asking what was wrong like he didn't know, like he wasn't the one who had done this, and that was when Shinji started to laugh hysterically.
At least it worked, even if Kaworu didn't understand it at all, even as he carried Shinji out of there, to some valley like something out of a postcard of fairyland. As he coaxed Shinji to eat with strange fruits, holding them to his lips and asking how Shinji liked them as though they were just, just nice things, not deadly poison. He knew that he should try to remember what they looked like, since they were something that people could eat. The people who had been altered like Shinji, anyway.
It wasn't like there would be anything else to eat before too much longer, as stockpiles wore out or were broken into. One of Kaworu's lichens loved concrete, and thinking of that killed Shinji's appetite even though he was trying to stay alive and let Kaworu spoil him, really he was.
Because while Kaworu was here with Shinji, then he wasn't anywhere else, doing anything else.
When Kaworu kissed him, then he wasn't kiling people. Except he was, because the retrovirus still had to be made, still had to be transported, and Shinji hoped there were still people alive it hadn't gotten too yet, because the alternative was that those people were dead, were dying right now, as he lay here and…
"You hate me, don't you," Kaworu said, and smiled. "I don't mind: you Lilim do want to touch and be close to people more if you hate them. I'm letting Dr. Akagi and the other one live for now, but not forever."
Wait, did that mean that he already was planning to make something that would kill them? When their adaptations were the same as the one he'd given Shinji, the same everyone was using?
"I'll keep you with me forever," Kaworu told him, pushing Shinji down. Startled, he landed with a whump amidst the flowers, so many of them he couldn't feel the ground or any rocks under them. "That's what love is, wanting to touch someone," he said, touching the front of Shinji's chest, "and kiss them." When he removed his lips from Shinji's unresisting ones, he finished, "and wanting them to live. We'll be together forever, Shinji, and once the last of those bastards are dead, I'll fill this world with my children. Our children." He smiled, and it was clear that he had no idea why that would possibly not sound wonderful to Shinji, and all Shinji could do was lie there and try not to throw up.
No one came, not even Misato or Ritsuko. There were still spy satillites up there: sometimes Shinji could see lights that couldn't possibly be any star. It was easy to see the stars: he doubted there were any city lights left. Not when they could be seen from overhead, not when that would have let Kaworu know that people were still alive. If Shinji couldn't keep him busy enough.
Sometimes Kaworu did want to travel, to show Shinji somewhere else, and there was only so much Shinji could to do dissuade him, when he didn't want Kaworu to wonder why, realize that Shinji was trying to protect anyone. That there was anyone left to protect.
Shinji could hardly bear to talk to him, so it was better to let Kaworu talk at him, and even to let Kaworu do things to him. He'd thought before that he preferred to be alone, but to be alone with nothing but silence and the calls of alien animals? He thought of running away a few times, making Kaworu take the time to track him down, but if Shinji really was immortal, then what if Kaworu didn't chase him? What if he waited for Shinji to come crawling back? What if Shinji found people, or they found him in order to make contact, and then Kaworu found them too?
Or what if he didn't find anyone, if he spent decades searching the world and didn't find anyone because he'd failed, and then, when he saw Kaworu again, he was so desperate for someone, anyone, that he couldn't hate him anymore? If that happened, then Kaworu would have gotten everything he wanted, and Shinji couldn't let that happen. For the sake of Misato, Rei, Asuka: everyone.
How would he even go about killing Kaworu? Forget his AT field, he'd need a weapon. A gun, a sharp rock, something. Since Kaworu was an angel, Shinji would have to destroy his core, and he didn't know where that was. Would cutting his throat even keep him down long enough for Shinji to dig around and find it, before he started healing himself?
He wished he could ask Misato, but the only person there to ask anything was Kaworu.
"It's the same place yours is," Kaworu said, tapping the center of Shinji's chest as they lay there under the watchful stars.
"What?" was all Shinji could say. Kaworu had talked about making him immortal, but, "That's…"
"You weren't eating enough, so you needed the energy," Kaworu said matter-of-factly, as though he was talking about trying to cook someone's favorite foods instead of turning them into an angel.
"I don't feel any different," Shinji said, and immediately wished he hadn't, because he didn't want to feel different.
"Do you want me to show you how to use the light of your soul? Oh, that's what you Lilim used to call the AT Field."
"I know." Shinji had asked him about his AT field before, figuring that was safer than directly asking about where Kaworu was vulnerable. "Use it? Like an Eva?" If he had an AT Field now, then? It took an AT field to fight another AT field.
Being turned into an angel meant he could fight Kaworu.
Kaworu was delighted, happy to teach Shinji to use it. It was the first thing he'd been genuinely interested in for… how long? Shinji had no idea how much time had passed. Months? He hoped not more than a year.
It stung, how much Kaworu wanted him to be happy, how much Kaworu wanted to play with him. How he'd brought so many plants and animals, flowers and still-working instruments to make Shinji happy, completely failing to grasp why Shinji was so unhappy.
Shinji didn't even want to try to explain it to him. What would happen if Kaworu did understand? It wasn't like what he'd done could be forgiven. It wasn't like Shinji wouldn't have to kill him anyway: what he was doing was the nature of these creatures, according to Ritsuko. Or maybe that was an excuse for why it was becoming hard to hate him. Why Shinji almost wanted to hurry up and kill him before he understood the horror of what he'd done.
Before humanity ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, weren't they supposed to be innocent? That was the thing about Kaworu, that horrible innocence, how he didn't understand the difference between good and evil. He didn't know. He was trying to be good to Shinji, trying so hard, and Shinji knew that Kaworu really did love him.
That was made him raise his own hand to touch Kaworu sometimes, to smooth that lengthening silver hair back and do things to make him smile. Not just that keeping Kaworu happy meant keeping him distracted and other people safe.
He needed a haircut, Shinji thought. They both did.
And that was when it hit him.
It was easy.
He hadn't thought that at the time.
At the time, he'd been in a panic of this is taking too long, and what if he recovers while I've still got my hand in his stomach like this, before I find the core, and he's looking up at me make it stop, make him stop.
But then he'd found it, and the hardest part hadn't been slitting Kaworu's throat, or turning him over, or slashing open his stomach or even smashing the core. The hardest part was feeling up through his stomach, up under the ribs, and finding the damn thing.
A little ball maybe three centimeters across, no more. So much smaller than Kaworu's heart.
And he could tell that Kaworu was alive until Shinji found it. That heart had kept beating, coating Shinji with blood, he'd kept breathing, kept looking up at Shinji like that, and Shinji had wished he could tell him that it would all be over soon.
He thought he'd seen Kaworu move his lips, try to speak despite his cut throat. Try to ask why.
He'd died not understanding why Shinji, why the person he loved, was killing him.
"Good," Shinji managed to say finally, feeling on the edge of hysterics again. "Good."
He closed Kaworu's eyes, even if there was nothing he could do to make the rest of that body presentable at all, not with its-his guts hanging out like that. "So it really was right around here," Shinji said, touching his collarbone, and knew that he didn't want Misato to see him like this. Not when he'd been turned into an angel, not when he'd used his AT field to cut through Kaworu's skin, breaking through it so easily he hadn't really needed to avoid the rib cage, had he?
All he would really have to do would be to stab through right over the core, like this…
"So it wasn't Stockholm Syndrome," was all Misato could say when the autopsy revealed that Shinji had a core. "He didn't kill himself out of guilt, he did his duty as a pilot by killing the last angel." She'd do everything she could to make that the official interpretation, use this to shut up everyone who thought Shinji had been hesitating. Tricking the angel into training him, finding an excuse to get a weapon: he'd even cut some of Kaworu's hair with that knife before striking, to lure him into a false sense of security. She couldn't have done it any better herself.
She could only hope that was what the history books were going to say.
And I write an actual Evil!Kaworu 'verse, finally.
"The Colour Out of Space" (English spelling) is a cosmic horror story. Rough premise in modern terms: alien organisms land on Earth, start outperforming native ones and gradually spreading, like the theory that Mars was dying because the previous ecosystem was being overrun by an incompatible one (Something like this is a Dothraki legend in the Game of Thrones TV series). In the Evaverse, this happened because of Lilith's arrival.
In our universe it was caused by air pollution: a new form of energy generation released a byproduct in the form of an incredibly corrosive gas into the atmosphere, the perpetrators not only killing almost every living thing other than themselves but destroying the molecular compounds practically all other life on Earth fed on, too. The name of this deadly substance? Oxygen.
Do not fuck with plants, because they will poison your ass. Using a WMD (chemical weapon) to wipe out almost all other life on Earth is pretty impressive, no?
Since earth-type life in the Evaverse is panspermia, taking over other planets, eliminating native life is something seed-generated life would do by default, or rather design.