Birthday giftfic for Petrichorre. They requested manga!Kaworu (whose nickname should be babyworu), but the original bunny I came up with wasn't going to have a happy ending in just a thousand words. After that I discussed a second idea with them, but my brain…

He felt wind around him, metal grabbing him. The second wasn't that odd, but wind, mmm.

Drifting for awhile, how long he didn't know, he began to slowly wake up, wondering that the feeling of wind on his skin didn't go away. Harder than any wind he'd felt before, gusts of it almost like blows.

"Wait," he belatedly realized. "Why am I alive?"

He was supposed to be dead. The wind that until then had felt nice, been a new and interesting thing was now an annoyance, was proof he was alive instead of dead like he'd wanted and that made him realize that his lips weren't pursing together the way he wanted, weren't curving into a frown. The novelty of his body had made him pay attention to it, and now instead of being dead he was in a new one again?

"Like the First Child." The one who was like him.

SEELE. Those damn old men. So even death was no freedom from them? Even though Shinji, Shinji had… and that was when the metal released him and he found himself falling through the air.

Flying was fairly easy to figure out, although he would have used his AT field the way he did in NERV if something hadn't pushed him to spread these new wings and wait a minute… Yes, that impulse hadn't come from him.

Computers, like the one Iruel tried to take over. This was like Bardiel… this was an Eva.

"Dummy plug system," he read, the knowledge of the other angels pouring though him. "The one like me… is that why she thought she was expendable, was stupid enough to think it didn't matter if she died?"

Oh, hey, that was Unit 02 down there. He cocked his new head to the side. Maybe he could take control of it again? The other Evas belonged to the old men, and he wanted to break their things. Especially since he was one of their things.

The Lilim soul in the Eva was awake and ignored him, though, which was just like a Lilim.

If his new body was destroyed, his soul would go into one of the other clones they'd cut up and loaded into these Evas for their dummy plugs, but perhaps if that happened he would wake up there. If he broke all of them, then if he died maybe he'd die properly this time?

The big white head looked around, even though it didn't have eyes and he was seeing with the sensors. Habit, from his old body? Whatever, what mattered was that he didn't see Shinji and Unit 01. Where was Shinji? Maybe he was in Unit 02, since Asuka got broken?

He turned back to the other Evas, which were attacking Unit 02, ignoring the commands sent to him and finally cutting off the connection, annoyed. It was one thing if it was just some Lilim in there, but what if it was Shinji? The thought made his new wings flare out, shaking with the need to do something and oh, this was worry. Also maybe anger? Like when Shinji got angry after seeing the kitten hurt, the thought of these things made to trap his soul hurting Shinji?

Kaworu tackled one of them and bit off its head before he felt the power in the body under him, the presence of a core.

Then they did something to the two-handed blades they were holding, turning them into spears. Like the lance Rei threw to kill Arael, after Asuka was already broken because it wasn't like the other Lilim cared enough to move faster and actually save her.

Shinji, though… he wanted to save Shinji. When Shinji granted his wish.

Kaworu jumped back just in time, wishing he could talk in this body. Talk to Shinji.

Try to convince the Lilim in the red Eva not to attack him, although the white Eva Kaworu had decapitated getting up was probably why Unit 02 didn't, not even after Kaworu started hovering over the Eva's power cord in order to protect it, so Shinji wouldn't end up on a timer.

So even Lilim were smart enough to figure that two against eight was better than one against nine, although the Lilim wasn't stupid enough to hand him one of the two spears it quickly captured. That was fine, Kaworu could fetch his own.

There were four of them left when Unit 01 launched.

Unit 01.

Shinji.

Shinji: that was all Kaworu could think about, vibrating with excitement now and leaving Asuka's side to hover around Shinji, landing next to him and leaning forward but not touching because Shinji wouldn't want to be touched, even though Kaworu would love him forever for granting his wish and that meant he wanted to touch Shinji, and kiss Shinji, and absolutely keep him safe. He wanted Shinji to live, since Shinji ceasing to exist? For Kaworu to cease to exist was one thing, something that would put him beyond the reach of the old men, but for there to be no more Shinji? He couldn't bear that.

Unit 01 was standing there, frozen, trying to figure out if he was an enemy or not or what he thought he was doing.

He really wanted to kiss Shinji… Oh!

If he kissed Shinji, then maybe Shinji would realize this was him?

His mouth wasn't the same, but the people on the screen were talking about hearts, and that was probably something like a core and his should be about the same, since it was all based on Adam.

Shinji flailed, losing his balance and falling when the supposedly-allied Eva tackled him. He wanted to yell for Misato, or scream for Asuka to pull it off him when the thing's mouth opened impossibly wide and engulfed Unit 01's, its arms wrapped around his Eva and excited wings flapping and pulling even the bulk of both their Evas up off the ground a little. What kind of maniac would just go and kiss someone in an Eva?! …Wait a minute.

"Kaworu?!"