Chapter Text
The night is cool and quiet. Kaworu was already used to spending part of it out by the lake, watching the stars tinkle above until they faded into dawn. It feels different this time. He stands at the edge of the shore, letting the water lick at his toes and feeling the cool night breeze against his skin.
Kaworu has never felt so very alive before. He feels like he’s actually whole and real instead of living inside someone else’s skin. His body is his, free and clear. He is the only one who can dictate his own destiny. Free will in the truest sense of the words.
It’s marvelous. It’s terrifying. He wouldn’t give it up for the world.
Tabris was the angel of free will, but he’d used it only once and even then, it had been merely choosing the method of his own destruction, not the fact of it. Kaworu has fought countless lifetimes for what he wanted and now… Now, after everything, he doesn’t quite know how to handle the fact that he doesn’t have to fight anymore. He is free to do what he wishes. The obvious, staying with Shinji, is entirely attainable but doesn’t mean he can’t want something else as well. He just doesn’t know what that might be.
Having a future, just for himself, feels heavy. He revels in the weight of it. This is what being alive is like. This is what makes him human. He’s unsure and scared but he can’t help grinning as his heart pounds. This makes everything worth it.
“Nagisa. You can’t sleep?”
He’s startled but even that can’t take the smile off his face. Kaworu just turns and beckons Rei to join him. She glances over his face, impassive herself, and then looks out over the lake.
“I keep thinking I might wake up,” Kaworu says. He’s been vibrating with energy for days now, barely able to settle at all, much less actually sleep. He’s afraid he might wake up and everything have been a dream. Might wake up back in his bunk at NERV-
“You won’t.” Rei clasps her hands behind her back. “I haven’t.”
Kaworu pauses. He glances at her then, reading the calm in her body, the lack of cues whatsoever, but somehow, he can read more. She’s been just as worried as he has that it might happen. He feels a flash of embarrassed guilt for not thinking she might.
“It’s just new, not having to think about it,” he murmurs and she nods, just barely.
“She said they had no reason to come back again.” Rei looks to him, her gaze as piercing and direct as ever. “They have Adam now, and it isn't as if we're important to them.”
He can’t help but wonder about that, now. Wonder if they can trust this resolution. Kaworu remembers the way he used to think once, when he was one of them. He had not been truly sentient then, more a tiny piece of a larger whole than anything else. He had bowed to the will of more powerful voices until the one moment when a human boy became the most powerful one he knew. A human body, individual and small, had given him what he needed to become something on his own.
But the Angels had all their pieces now. They’d already repudiated him once and Lilith certainly hadn’t wanted him longer than she had to. They were as complete as they would ever be... Gods, even....
“How did you do it?” he asks because Rei has said nothing of it since separating Lilith and Adam from him and the others were hesitant to ask. They’ve been so very careful around the two of them.
Rei looks at him long and hard before she shrugs a shoulder inelegantly. “You contained them inside yourself. Locked away their destructive potential to burn out within yourself. I let them out. They wanted to leave, but you were holding on too tightly.”
“Me?”
She inclines her head. “You were too human to truly contain them. Even changing your body didn’t make it more welcoming to her, but then you wouldn’t let them escape. They needed someone else to.”
He thinks about this, wondering what to feel, how to get past the strange sucker punch feeling that he had been too human. He hadn’t felt human, not with the wings on his back and the knowledge of what he had come from, but Rei has no reason to lie. No notion to do so.
“But you were able to let them go.”
“I’ve never cared if I was human or not,” Rei reminds him, almost gently and it’s not really the answer to the question he asked, but he feels strangely like it’s the answer he needed.
“You are,” he tells her.
“Thank you,” Rei replies as if he’s said something meaningless. He’s not sure she will ever believe him but he would know, wouldn't he? If she were anything but the unassuming young girl she looks to be, he would sense some otherworldliness from her. He simply cannot accept that they are any different from one another.
They enjoy the night a while longer before Rei murmurs, “I wonder if Ikari could have held them.”
And now Kaworu wonders, too. Shinji's potential is unmatched and unknowable. No outside obstruction had ever truly beaten him and he had risen to every challenge to carve out the one path that didn't lead to true annihilation. Had Kaworu been overtaken in those moments on the beach months ago, would Shinji have been able to absorb Lilith and Adam and hold them within himself the way Kaworu had not quite succeeded in doing...?
There is a strange faith in Kaworu that sings sweetly in his ears that Shinji could and would have.
“Well, it's over now.” He glanced back up to the sky. “It's really over.”
“Perhaps.” She sighs, closing her eyes a moment, and then takes in a deep breath of cool, night air. “Even if it weren't, we would continue on the same path.”
He can't help chuckling faintly at that. “Maybe I just want to hope for the best.”
“Admirable.”
A sudden exhaustion settles into his bones. Rei doesn’t seem surprised when he heads back inside, only steps along behind him to find her own bed between Asuka and Misato. Kaworu drops along Shinji’s side. Sleepy brown eyes slide open as Shinji reaches out, catching his hand.
“You okay?” he whispers with a drowsy drawl to his voice.
“Fine. Go back to sleep.” Kaworu smoothes back a bit of messy hair from Shinji’s forehead and soothes him back to rest. He doesn’t tarry long from it himself.
It’s been three weeks since the Angels faded away when someone from the other camp arrives. He’s nervy and sheepish but Misato recognizes him as trustworthy enough to invite to their meal. He’s NERV personnel, as little as that means anymore, so the children watch him carefully even as Misato jokes and teases.
When they’re done eating, he offers them a place back in the other camp. All of them. His eyes linger on Kaworu but there are no wings to object to anymore. It’s silly but Kaworu still makes sure to stare right back at him, challenging him to find some other reason to reject him.
The other camp has had the benefit of dozens of adults, many with knowledge of all the things for a civilized life. They’ve built a city out of ruins, even gotten running water and other basics set up once more. The hundred or so their small group had left numbered nearly a thousand now and were still growing with every day. Humanity would retake the planet, little by little.
Kaworu has no interest in going back but he knows the others have faced fierce loneliness being so separated from what they had once known. Humans are pack animals, meant to be together, and their group is unique but not immune to that same need. He glances at the others, reading their warring independence and loneliness. And then he watches as one by one, they all look to Shinji. Even Asuka and Toji, headstrong as they are, simply wait to see what he will say.
If Shinji notices, he doesn’t make it known. He stares at his hands, thinking it over himself, and then he asks quiet, “Did my father ask you to come?”
“The Commander hasn’t come back. We… don’t think he will. There are reports… well…”
“He won’t,” Rei says with a strange finality that has them all quieted.
Shinji takes in a slow, unsteady breath. Kaworu wishes he knew what that meant. He reaches out, takes one of Shinji’s hands in his, and gives it a faint squeeze. Shinji graces him with a faint, uneasy smile.
“…I guess it can’t hurt to check it out?” he murmurs.
Asuka shrugs, relaxing as the tension breaks. “Plumbing isn’t overrated, you know.”
“What are you implying?” Toji shoots back at her without meeting a beat.
“Oh, I don’t know, maybe that you smell like a monkey instead of just acting like one!”
“Hey! I clean up!”
Aida’s caught between trying to break up the fight and laughing but Kaworu’s attention slides back to Shinji. He watches amusement break up the flood of insecurity on his face as Shinji latches onto the distraction. Kaworu’s pretty sure that was Asuka’s aim the entire time.
It isn't until later that Shinji pulls him aside and asks bluntly, “Are you okay just going back to them?”
Kaworu had hoped no one would ask him. He doesn't really want to lie but... He still remembers the beating, how no one but the other pilots bothered to stop it. He remembers suspicious eyes following his every move. He remembers the knowledge of why they moved to the lake in the first place. No, he isn't okay with it.
“I'm fine,” he says instead.
“Really?” Shinji searches his face as his own brows furrow tight. “Because I'm not.”
Kaworu feels himself tense. “Shinji-”
“I don't want to go back,” Shinji insists, cutting off any reassurance Kaworu might have uttered. “Going back means having to throw myself into that... that ocean of people and expectations and... I don't want it, but isn't it better to? Maybe because I don't want to.”
With a blink, Kaworu begins to understand. “Facing things like this allows you to grow."
“It's better to try than to run away.” Shinji turns away, gripping his arms tight. “I won't run away... but I won't tell you that you can't.”
And, Kaworu senses, he wouldn't vilify him if he did. He thinks about that, the nature of what he is now and what his choices mean, because it is his choice. He's free to make it and Shinji is giving him full autonomy in a way few have ever allowed to himself, much less to Kaworu.
“If I didn't want to return...” Kaworu begins but he isn't sure what, exactly, he's asking for. He shakes his head and slides his hands into his pockets. Maybe it's best not to start his true life running from the unpleasant. “ Lets go, for now. If it's awful, we can just leave again.”
Shinji smiles as the defensiveness in his body drains away. “Yeah... Lets go with that.”
The other camp is large and unwieldy and unfamiliar, and eyes follow their shapes through the uneven paths where ever they go, but as long as Shinji's hand is in his, Kaworu doesn't mind.
Tabris was the angel of Free Will.
Kaworu is the one that uses it.