"Maybe there's a God above,
but all I've ever learned of love,
is how to shoot somebody who outdrew you."
~Leonard Cohen, Hallelujah
chapter eleven
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The Dominion made no attempt to hide itself, though it was apparent that the angel wasn't looking for Kaworu, might not have even known he was there. The pale-haired man could sense its true target as he got closer to it, following the thread of a strange new presence even as it did, assuming familiarity in order to make it so, that he might divine a few strands of pure essence from the woven threads of man and machine...
//Shinji.//
Kaworu made his way through the city slowly, moving with the future instead of the present, following the course of the battle to come with senses half-closed to the world directly around him, everything focused forward, out into the fight, and he was aware with almost painful clarity of every move and counter... and each time that Shinji stumbled, wavered, and failed to block or dodge...
//He will be fine. He defeated all of us, he was stronger than all of the Angels... he can handle Hashmal.//
The thought did nothing to slow his step, given the unlimited differences between then and now. The Evas may have been unnatural, even vile, but they had been stronger, more protective than the suit that held Shinji now - Kaworu knew it - and it left him just as strong as his opponent, but no more. The pale-haired man did not doubt his love's abilities, but this was not Shinji's fight, he shouldn't have ever had to...
//... and what will you do, if you interfere now, and Shinji sees you?//
Better that, better than facing what might come from such a shock, than from any possibility that Shinji could get hurt. Kaworu's confidence was by no means impervious to the whims of pure accident, to the possibility of just one unexpected, but fatal error.
//Life and death are the same to me...//
The words, spoken so surely once upon a time, mocked him now. Kaworu would /not/ let anything happen to Shinji, not now, that the choice really was his to make.
The pale-haired man had to move on foot, and even though he knew where to go, he still arrived at the bridge moments too late to witness anything but the aftermath. He had seen the battle in his mind's eye, already knew the screams of sirens would be, for the most part, too late to do much more than assess the damage, and tend to those on shore.
The bridge had been two-thirds destroyed, cables hanging limply, draped across broken cement and into the darkness of a gaping hole... that he was on the wrong side of. He could see the battle beyond, a near-invisible flicker of movement against the darkness on the other side of the shore.
Kaworu didn't think twice before acting, found what he hoped would be a somewhat secluded place, lifted himself off the ground and moved quickly across the water, easily, just as when he had breached Terminal Dogma. The limits of a human body were just sometimes more than he had the time or the patience to work around.
As soon as he hit the other side, Kaworu dropped back to his feet, hoping he hadn't been seen, relying on the chaos, the darkness as his cloak, as he knew Shinji wouldn't appreciate seeing him flying across the six o' clock news...
//Shinji...//
/... tabris./
The Angel turned sharply at the whisper - not audible, but deeper - the darkness of the night no barrier to sensing the form that lay within, the latent power simmering just beneath the surface of another human body... He did not need to see, to know...
/... what are you doing, tabris?/
//You know, Zadkiel. You already know everything.//
In the darkness, he could feel her smile.
/... not everything./
Kaworu nodded slightly. //... and neither do I, but I will do what I want to do, this time. I've been allowed... this is my choice.//
Silence. The wind might have shifted something, a ripple in the darkness...
/you were always so sure, so aware... driven, to a fault. i liked you best, always... tabris, are you that certain...?/
The pale-haired man nodded again.
//I won't allow this.//
One dark arm extended slowly from the shadows, pointing toward the sky.
/... tell that to them, then./
Kaworu turned, eyes instantly locking on the gleaming shape, two bodies entwined, falling from the sky like a dying star - Shinji, and the Dominion - and he could sense, instantly, even through all the distortion, the absolute focus of the man inside the suit. Shinji was at his strongest, he /would/ win this fight, and the pale-haired man could even see exactly what he would -
//Wait... who is that?//
Kaworu's eyes locked onto the duller gleam, barely a flicker in the sky behind the falling combatants, almost unnoticeable... but he looked more closely, with a sight sharper, more complex than any human's could ever be, looked inside - the pilot, the co-pilot, the man with his camera pointed toward Shinji's fall, a familiar insignia on his sleeve...
//SEELE? ... those men, so they are the ones...//
The ones who had created this new suit, another prison for his beloved's heart and soul... the ones who had almost certainly /forced/ him to fight this time.
//SEELE... so, they do live after all.//
Kaworu stepped off into the night, never looking back, knowing Zadkiel was already less than a memory, that Shinji was only moments away from victory... that tonight would not give way to that particular battle - this all had but barely begun.
------------------------------
Virgil was snoring softly, draped over Kaworu's feet as the pale-haired man typed - a task he had started mere moments after leaving the scene of the fight, knowing that, for the moment, Shinji was unharmed...
He paused a moment, noticing how the approaching dawn had suddenly filled the room with soft but growing light... it was impressive, beautiful, the simple artistry of the sun.
It also meant he had worked all night... and his eyes, back, hands, everything ached. The body needed to rest, despite all the work he still had to do.
//Shinji's sleeping... I can feel it...//
He wanted little more than to join the other man in that land of dreams and shadows - of course, he dreamed of Shinji, when he dreamed - but there was still much to research, so much he wanted to know, and SEELE was off guard now, still recovering from the battle with the first Dominion - this was his best chance.
It hadn't been difficult to find a computer of his own, decked out with all the equipment he had needed to connect swiftly back to what remained of SEELE's archives - the money for such a toy, ironically, provided by the very people he was now working to dismantle.
//No, they are not exactly the same. The SEELE I knew was much stronger than this, and expected anything... Adam, Lilith, the Angels... me.//
Kaworu had been able to access his old account without trouble only because the old systems had been badly damaged, and were so ancient that no one had been watching, no one had ever expected anyone would return to use them...
//If anyone should have been watching, it would have been these new SEELE members, and there's so little security... they're not expecting anyone to touch their systems, old or otherwise.//
Kaworu still wondered what exactly had happened, how SEELE's destruction, and NERV's as well, had come out of that startling but vague sense of loss and despair he had felt from Shinji so many years ago...
//Shinji.//
The pale-haired man brought his mind back to the task at hand, though it was getting more difficult to do so by the second.
The Dominions, he had been prepared to fight, but this new branch of SEELE, even if they didn't hold the power of their former namesake, was still potentially dangerous... and no doubt, they knew at least something of him, and wouldn't appreciate an Angel on such familiar terms with their... weapon.
//A weapon... my heart of glass, he is nothing but a weapon to them again.//
Screens opened at his fingertips, and almost immediately, one of his foremost questions was met with a quick and thorough answer, the schematics of what almost looked to be a plugsuit scrolling down, filling the screen.
//Tiphereth... so...//
Kaworu leaned back, eyes narrowing in deep interest as the history of the battle suit unfolded before him. It was no less than a scientific marvel. The primary designer, one Tobias Kent, had nearly none of the unnatural options, the madness-stained science open to the original Eva design team, and yet she had found ways to work around all of her problems, adapting the suit to whatever she had to work with...
//Amazing... and...// Pale red eyes caught and held on a detail, a minor point in the woman's profile, really -
//So, I see...//
... but who had been the impetus, then, the driving force of this new SEELE, to create such a machine?
Cate. The name appeared again and again, lining nearly every document, every memo of even the slightest importance... and Kaworu found a picture, attached to an old file, studied it briefly - it wasn't difficult to determine that the man was working hard to present an image of himself - ruthless, determined...
//Cruel. Shinji, I'm sorry... I should have come sooner...//
Kaworu didn't recognize this Cate, but wasn't surprised by it, wasn't surprised at all that the new base of operations would be in the United States. The US branch of SEELE had never been taken that seriously, especially with the disaster of Eva-04... used as more of a testing ground for fringe concepts, a potentially interesting but unnecessary outpost. Ironic, that it was all that survived.
//So, Cate... you are the next would-be king?//
Nothing, this man, before SEELE and NERV had fallen. He had been the bastard son of a bastard son, heir to a throne that would never stand empty, least of all for him.
//It was a miracle for you, then, when the rest of SEELE was washed away.//
A miracle he would, no doubt, do anything to hold on to.
//Yes.//
He looked deeper... and there it was, spread out among a series of files - the true purpose of Tiphereth, the true goal of the battles against the Dominions.
Kaworu had felt Hashmal die at Shinji's hands - but also that the thread of its presence had not completely vanished, reverted to formless energy, without intent... and now it made perfect sense.
//Once again, they will play at God.//
Except this time, the last Angel's only goal was to ensure Shinji would not have to stand at center stage, when the world came crashing down.
---------------------------
After fifteen hours of examining the systems, still not learning all he wanted to know, Kaworu finally slept, going over all that he had learned in his mind - making hypothesis both reasonable and nearly improbable - as he let his body relax and restore itself.
The stress of so much work, so little sleep had been too taxing on his human form - and in the midst of his analysis, the Angel finally noticed that the more human part of his psyche was actually having nightmares - though since he could stand inside of them and watch, he couldn't exactly call them unpleasant...
//Interesting, though...//
Amazing, the vividness of the scene, the memory... the inside of Terminal Dogma, one of the last moments of his life, save that this time /he/ was inside the Eva, and Shinji was in his hand. The dark-haired boy did not have the calm resignation Kaworu had died with in life, but was screaming, begging the other man not to kill him, pleading desperately for his life...
It changed nothing, and though the pale-haired man knew it was a dream, knew it meant and affected nothing, he still flinched at the sound of bones breaking, Shinji's scream twisted away into a cut whimper, then nothing... and he had to turn away as the head fell, though he could not block the sound, as it splashed into the LCL pool... and he knew if he stayed, if he let his mind continue - it would wash up at his feet.
//I do not like this dream.//
Kaworu forced himself awake, found he was bathed in sweat, human body trembling all over with the strain of such emotion... So strong, Lillim children were so /strong/, to believe in such dreams, see them as real for even the briefest of moments, and to ever be able to sleep again.
The pale-haired man took an icy shower, his eyes still sore from too-little sleep, and examined the restless feeling that had taken hold in his chest with detached interest - it was new, very different, as many things were this time, when his intent, his goals were completely his own...
The droplets of water beat down on him in time with the unsettled rush of his thoughts... and the strand of code he had let run free over and over again in his mind.
Tobias Kent didn't know, /couldn't/ know that she had failed. She thought she had perfected Tiphereth, but could never know how many systems she had overlooked - information lost that could never be recovered from NERV's missing files - that she would never, ever be able to create a machine to rival the Eva.
Important systems were missing from Tiphereth. Gendo Ikari may have not cared much for his son, for any of the Eva pilots, but the machines had been flawlessly designed - even without the souls inside - with the pilot's safety as a high priority... and the new suit, even with the best of intentions, just had not been so completely thought through.
... and this Cate, just like Ikari before him, seemed to have some idea of the power within his grasp, the power the Dominions could bring to bear, but unlike Gendo he had great desires, a long-reaching goal, with no idea how to reach it safely...
... and he would not be the one to suffer, when he failed.
//I want to see Shinji. Now. //
Rationally, Kaworu knew the dark-haired man was still sleeping, that he /hadn't/ been unduly injured from the short exposure to the core of the Dominion's power, and Tiphereth had merely strained his physical reserves, had done nothing a long rest would not cure...
//I don't want to be rational. I want to hold him, my so-precious heart of glass... I don't /want/ to wait any longer.//
He was dressed and out of the apartment before Virgil could yip a goodbye.
-------------------------------
"... all right, Ikar... Ikari. Shinji Ikari?" The cop skimmed the man's profile, the description of the crime, and grimaced. "Oh yeah, I bet you're /real/ happy you came to America..."
The officer shuffled his papers with a sigh, knocked on the door in front of him, and soon realized his random act of kindness - delivering a few papers on his way home - seemed to be a bust.
One last rap at the door brought nothing, and the cop shrugged, turned away...
A man was walking toward him in the narrow hallway, tall, hands at his sides, the sun glancing in a momentary halo around him - and the cop swallowed hard, rocking back on his heels as he pushed past a moment of incredible, unreasonable fear, all the more alarming as his instincts had never failed him before, not with such an urgency as this - and he tried not to look up at the obviously unarmed man, embarrassed to be wrestling with such and inexplicable terror...
//What on /Earth/!?//
He finally shoved the fear out of the way with a weak rationalization - something about the closeness of the hallway and jittery nerves - as the man was still walking at a casual pace, and as of yet, hadn't taken note of him.
//He looks a little strange, but -// The policeman's thoughts jarred abruptly as the man finally looked up, warm ruby-colored eyes steadily meeting his gaze. //Wow... maybe he's one of those... albinos?//
Distracted by pondering the possibility, though the man's skin didn't seem quite /that/ pale, the cop suddenly found that he had automatically stepped out of the man's way, even lowering his gaze as he passed... and caught himself a second later, pride forcing his words.
"You wouldn't happen to know the guy who lives there?" He gestured toward the closed door, watched the man slowly trace the empty nameplate with a fingertip.
"Intimately."
The cop flushed crimson at the offhand remark, fought to keep his voice steady and at least somewhat authoritative.
"Well, tell him when you see him that we still haven't found the man who attacked him." He lifted the sheaf of papers slightly. "I've got some documentation, if he wants it."
"Attacked?"
"Yeah, about a week and a half ago..." The cop looked down, flipping through the information. "Stabbed six times in the abdomen, cut a few other places as he fell... looks like a hate crime."
Still staring down, the cop heard the other man take a few more steps to the door, closing the distance his fingertips had already traveled.
"Hey, I already tried the door. It's locked."
Silence. The cop sighed, raising his eyes.
"Hey buddy... I said the door's -"
The words trailed off. The hallway was empty.
----------------------------
//... stabbed, he was stabbed? /My/ Shinji... was...?//
Kaworu didn't really care if the man saw him move through the door or not, angelic grace grappling with very human shock, and worry, until he wasn't quite sure what he should feel.
The pale-haired man had known that to return, there had to be a window, a way to reach out for a soul to guide him back, had /known/ the soul was Shinji's... but as soon as he had returned, it hadn't seemed that important, and Kaworu knew he had been guilty of overlooking such details before. He knew full well that Shinji had been hurt in his Eva before, but this... this was different...
//I didn't think...// Kaworu knew it was all right, Shinji was all right, but he was still tired, of believing that anything that wasn't a fatal wound wouldn't leave a mark, he was /tired/ of knowing the dark-haired man had suffered.
Kaworu turned at the end of the short hallway, saw the bouquet he had left, fanned out in a vase on a table... carefully, his gift had been accepted... and even before he turned the other way, the pale-haired man knew what he would see.
//Shinji.//
He looked just as Kaworu had expected, just as he had remembered, lithe and lean, his dark hair slightly longer than it had been...
Kaworu flinched as if he had been struck, gazing down for the first time in a decade at the other man's sleeping, pale face, the past thrown right back at him with violent force. It was the face of someone who hadn't smiled in so long, they'd forgotten they ever had, a man who had forgotten that there was anything in life to be happy about.
Regret... oh yes, he was growing quite accustomed to the heavy, barren feeling that swiftly dropped into his bones. Kaworu raked a hand carelessly through his hair, took a long look around the tiny apartment as he slowly moved closer.
It was a bachelor's apartment, with no sign that anyone had ever even considered moving in with the man, not even that a close friend had ever left something behind, that he /had/ any close friends...
//I wanted him to live, I wanted him to be happy... and instead, instead I took all the beauty away, I took the light from his life.//
He paused, eyes narrowing as he stared at the picture on the other side of the room, a field of flowers painted in wide swirls and loops, vaguely Van Gogh... with a familiar name gleaming in green from one corner.
The computer had quickly revealed that SEELE had created not one suit, but two... the second as yet without a pilot...
//Blackmail, if Shinji wouldn't pilot for them out of duty. I know where this Asuka is, and now, I know how she fills her hours...//
His nose wrinkled slightly - the colors, in his opinion, were just slightly off - kitsch, not art.
The room was simple, rather bare, the exception being Shinji's cello - of course - the large instrument resting almost proudly in the corner, gleaming softly, obviously taken care of... a shelf of mostly classical CDs adorned the opposite wall, and it was easy to see, as Kaworu scanned quickly through them, that there was one composer conspicuously missing...
//All this time... I didn't fade for him. Shinji... I never thought you would hold on so tightly.//
He could not apologize for this, there were no flowers, no vows, /nothing/ he could do to make up for what he had done... but that didn't stop Kaworu from moving to the couch, carefully lifting the other man, sliding himself onto the cushions, until he could sit comfortably, Shinji's head resting in his lap. The man didn't show any sign of waking, didn't stir from his sprawl. Kaworu could sense the drain even before he had touched his love... Tiphereth had completely used him up.
//... she's fantastically smart, that scientist, but even she can't make them safe, make the outcome worth the cost. Evas, any incarnation, they just aren't /meant/ to be used, not by Lillim, not by anyone...//
Long-fingered hands gently wove their way through the feathery strands of dark hair, the movements casual, the feelings they evoked anything but... Oh, what it meant, to touch him again...
"I have to redeem myself, before I can be worthy of this." He murmured, tracing Shinji's blank features with the tips of his fingers. "... but Shinji, it's /maddening/ to be without you."
The other man was pale and still, unresponsive to Kaworu's touch against his brow, from the gentle hands that slowly unbuttoned his shirt, tracing lightly over the still-healing wounds beneath his navel - he /had/ been stabbed, the evidence still brutal against his so pale skin - How could Shinji /not/ push back his hopes, cushion his fragile heart from the world, when the world was like this? Glass didn't tarnish, it bore the weight, or it broke, shattered...
//You didn't break, Shinji... and you won't break. I've returned for you.//
"I need you to trust me, Shinji... I don't want to hurt you, not ever, even from the very first time we will meet again..."
Fingers ghosted over the bruises that spread across the man's chest... it was amazing he had no sign of broken bones - and the hand stopped, hovered, taking in a sudden flash of body-memory, the searing taste of blinding pain, the bite of electricity... Kaworu felt that phantom pain, knew for certain now that this SEELE was no different than its predecessor.
"Cate doesn't care whether you die or not, and you know it, you know your cooperation might not save Asuka..."
So brave. So futile. So beautifully /human/, all of the fire and desire and sorrow and joy inside the man before him. He could sit for a lifetime here, every fibre of his being - human and Angel both - dizzy with the feel of Shinji, drowning in his scent, the softness and warmth of his body... it was the purest bliss, all he had come back for, all that he had cared for.
... but that shock, the bone-grinding, vicious agony Cate had sent down upon him for his transgression...
"If I stay here, SEELE will find out about me, and if they panic, and if /you/ panic, if you run from me, and they find you..."
Too fragile, these Lillim, for all their strength and fury... the bottle of pain medication on the table spoke of that clear enough.
"... and so I came here, uncertain of /what/ to do..." The ever-present smile deepened. "... and now I don't know if I can leave."
//Stay.// A command, from every cell of that human body, and a great deal of his own will, not to leave, come what may...
Shinji turned then, the first movement he had made, and Kaworu looked down at a soft thump, the remote knocked from its place on the table as the dark-haired man shifted, hand falling down toward the floor... The angel watched a solitary tear well up, trail its way along the man's pale face.
The play button must have been pressed, volume muted... Curious, Kaworu watched the past unfold, knew his arms tightened around Shinji as he finally received the necessary answers... just how NERV had fallen, how SEELE had been taken to its knees.
//... and they don't know... for Gendo Ikari to destroy SEELE... there was no single place - no one target... it must have taken him /years/ to construct such a revenge, he must have known... he must have known the outcome from the beginning.//
Kaworu allowed a spare moment to reflect on the man, on that genius, the drive, and the insanity of it... before sliding a thumb along Shinji's cheek, less to wipe away the remaining wetness of the tear than to ensure the man was real, not some ghost from the past but alive and safe in his arms.
"I'm still in their files, Shinji. If I show myself now... I don't /want/ to turn your life into that fight, I don't want it to be like it was. I want it to be perfect for you, and if I stay now... it won't be."
It wasn't fair. It wasn't right.
It couldn't be helped.
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A curious, tuneless humming accompanied the swirl of a brush in the water, the painter watching the small action much too closely, the way the clear space slowly bled, into a pale red... much in the way her memories, her past would return, poisoning the present... but only if she thought too hard about it, remembered too long. It had been years since she had made her last attempt, a mixture of quiet contentment and unnamed fear keeping her mind balanced, a careful blank.
The house's small radio had been propped up next to her water jug, though she hardly ever turned it on, couldn't bear the sound of music, let alone that of people, needed the peace of windy silence in her head... needed to keep forgetting...
The brush hovered over a pallet already sloppy with cadmium red, the canvas in front of her bleeding like an open wound, reflecting nothing of the beauty around her... she still wasn't sure /exactly/ where they were, this land of wide stone valleys, emerald green, so much green everywhere, for her eyes to get lost in, even more than the deep blue waters, flecked with foam at the edges, but calm, endless only a few feet from the shore...
A boy's face flickered in her mind, his eyes like those waters, the image not as painful as some of the others - not until it was twisted by other memories, waiting to pounce on any errant thought that dared to surface, sending it crippled, down into the nightmare at the center of her soul... The painter fought, every moment, every day, to throw that violence outward onto the canvas, dashes of green, wide purple blossoms like bruises...
The day was brilliant, perfect, but the landscape inside Asuka's mind had been shattered, broken for the last ten years.
Abstract Goya, primitive Dali... Asuka didn't listen to the critics comments or interpretations, couldn't hardly hear anyone anymore, save for the dark-haired woman who had always looked after her. Misato, the single bright light in the darkness of her history, as well as the woman responsible for the glass of lemonade now beading sweat onto her tubes of paint.
The red-haired woman slowly lifted the glass, sipped... gasped again, physical sensation shocking the same way memory had.
A biting tartness beneath the edge of sweetness, the sudden cold - the experience was almost violently powerful, shooting needles deep into her mind, the dangerous sensation of any sensation at all.
One hand fumbled for her brush, dragging long diagonals of white across the canvas with increasing speed, a pattern of wide x's, over and over, as if she could destroy what she had seen in that moment of clarity, through the shock of the flavor and chill. The damage had been done long ago, the recovery still threatened to break her world.
The effort of holding back, focusing the torrent of emotion into the brush left her trembling, panting for air as she carefully let go of the glass, brought almost to collapse by something no one else on Earth would even take notice of. Asuka bowed forward, letting her hair cover her face, as if the wavy red sheet could protect her from everything beyond. The brush tumbled from numb fingers, coming to rest against the side of her wheelchair.
Blue eyes gazed steadily at a canvas reflection of herself beneath the skin, a self-portrait that would make many others turn away, disturbed without even knowing, without wanting to know why.
The painting screamed, purple and red blotches pushing through the white like distended limbs, crippled arms and twisted legs, mangled flesh begging for a salvation that would never come, the shadows of the mind writhing in agony as they were condemned to a living death, an oblivion they would be denied.
Misato had invited a man to the house once, this time the right kind of man, the kind that had looked away from Asuka's paintings too, but that had then looked back... and then at her, in growing awe...
Misato said the paintings sold for thousands of dollars, hundreds of thousands of dollars, all around the world, though the red-haired woman never asked to whom, or why, never thought much beyond her brushes, her paints... and the silence, the necessary silence.
Asuka paused, fingertips barely brushing a tube of Prussian blue, listening to the sound of light footsteps along the gravel path of her secluded overlook - not Misato, the woman had only just brought the lemonade, although the painter remembered her saying something, couldn't quite gather up those words from memory, of even that most recent event.
The red-haired woman turned slowly, shading her eyes against the sun, but ended up looking past the unknown figure anyway, over his shoulder to where Misato stood, wide eyed and frozen, even as the lunch tray tumbled from her hands.
----------------------------
Kaworu heard the crash, but did not turn, keeping his eyes on the woman who slowly wheeled forward to face him, dreamy blue eyes suddenly sharpening to a hard focus, almost glinting... and fading again, the effort of holding on to that concentration just too difficult for her to manage.
//Arael... so this is the one you have broken.//
"Misato-san? What's wrong?" The question was direct - she was ignoring him for the moment - but faint, as if the red-haired woman were speaking from far away, and could just barely make the effort to reach out.
"... Misato-san?"
"I'm fine."
The woman's voice was dry, strangled, broken cups and plates no doubt completely forgotten. It had probably been a mistake, to seek out the former Eva pilot first, to alarm the other woman in such a manner... but Kaworu had, of course, been curious, wanted to see the woman who had done her part, intentional or not, to hurt Shinji...
//... couldn't you love? All Lillim hearts are capable, and you /wanted/ it, just as badly as anyone could. If you wanted to love him, why didn't you try?//
If love meant abandoning everything - and this had seemed to be the case for Asuka, her one great fear... Well, what was so worth holding on to, that leaving it behind wouldn't be worth what was gained? If protection meant shutting the heart up so tightly that it died... what pain could be worse?
Kaworu had often thought that the only thing truly separating him from the rest of humanity was that he really enjoyed being happy, sought out happiness, wasn't afraid of it. The woman before him had run from her own chances at happiness until they had literally pulled her apart.
"I know you. Who are you?"
The hazy eyes gazed at him with that strange half-intensity for another moment... the woman realizing there was some puzzle in him she could not figure out, some secret she did not know. Kaworu could hear Misato's breathing, harsh in the air behind him, though the woman had yet to move, or say a word.
"It's not important that you know me."
At one time, Asuka would have yelled, insulted him, perhaps even tackled him to the ground for the answer - he could see it in her eyes, but that impulse faded as soon as it had been called up, and without another word she turned back to her paints and canvas, never looking back. He was no longer important in her world.
----------------------------
Kaworu knew what he would find, as he turned, knelt and began gathering the broken plates and glasses from the ground, lifting the tray into the air and meeting Misato's shocked, blindingly furious gaze with a pleasant smile. He knew she would follow him, as he calmly made his way back toward the house - if for no reason than to avoid further disturbing the red-haired woman, not willing to pull away the blanket of peace and silence that had been so carefully wrapped around her.
The angel knew she would shut the door behind her, when he entered the kitchen first, setting down the tray... and of course, when he heard the soft click of the gun, and felt the pressure of the muzzle against the base of his skull, it wasn't much of a surprise either.