06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[necrolord]

Who: necrolord, Gideon, Harrow, Paul, Kaworu, "Shannon," Mako, Ford, Shiro, Ruby, Luna, Faith, Willow, Ezra, Zhongli, Perell.
What: An intentional family-and-friends roadtrip to a forbidden holy ruin. A less-intentional catacombs adventure.
When: 3/14.
Where: Sleepy Town and the Catacombs.

Content Warnings: Sleepy Town-typical themes of grief, loss, and surreal landscapes. Catacombs-typical horror per the March event. Also, note all the usual warnings of this character.

[ See this doc for info! ]

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03b . CATACOMBS ADVENTURES

[necrolord]

[ As for the missing half of the party: one moment they stand among the ruins of a dreamed-up town. In the next, they're being yanked underground.

Everyone lands on their ass in a room of heavy stone. This is the Moss King's central chamber: goat-head statue, flames for its eyes, its great gaping mouth a doorway. There are adventuring packs tucked into the cubbies along the walls, waiting to be claimed. Further in, the walls don't seem to be stone at all, but a tight latticework press of a thousand million skeletons.

To the Nine Houses folks, it honestly feels like home. ]

ARRIVAL

[necrolord]

CALLING FIRE

[necrolord]

for sayo

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon only knows the smell of smoke from the times Paul and Kaworu have tried to cook a meal, so when they're too far away to see the house, she offers up a very stupid: hm, wonder what's cooking?

Someone's home, it turns out, and the joke sinks like a rock in the pit of Gideon's stomach.

There are people in there. They don't look especially afraid, which is weird, but that doesn't matter. They're watching Gideon, as if expecting her to help, and Gideon is already quickening her pace.

Then the door flings open with a scream, and Gideon breaks out into a run.

If anyone in the group tells Gideon to stop, she won't listen. If they try to grab her, she'll try and shake them off. Gideon can smell the cooking flesh, is near enough to choke on hot, burning ash. It's a terrible, horrible way to die. But nobody is going to die, not on Gideon's watch. ]

Hang on! I'll get you out of there!

[forwantofahorse]

[It takes a moment for Sayo to process Gideon bolting toward the house, as her brain was occupied with formulating an appropriate deadpan quip to sling at the Necromancer about this being such an obvious trap.

And then Gideon sprints at full speed toward the shack, and Sayo stands there, dumbstruck, for half a second.

(She really was too much like Jessica.)

Then she grits her teeth and runs after her. She obviously wasn't going to listen to reason, being the only person with a remotely idealistic bone in their body in this entire party, which left one avenue:

Sweep the leg.

Working off pure adrenaline, Sayo comes up behind Gideon and drops, trying to sweep her leg and trip her up before leaping onto her. While she isn't particularly heavy, if Sayo can just lock up one of her limbs before she gets a chance to move-

As Sayo awkwardly attempts to maneuver Gideon's unfairly beefy limbs, she shouts,]

Gideon! Think for a second! Why in the blazes would a house with a family of two parents and 1.8 children be built underground in secret Pthumerian catacombs?!

[She says, totally unaware that this girl grew up on the Ninth.]

[lipochrome]

[ Gideon does not think for a second. She's not a thinker; anyone from the Ninth could tell Sayo that. Gideon is a sword, and what good is a sword who can't save a single family?

Cobra Kai has taught Sayo well, because Gideon does stumble in response to Sayo's trip move, forcing her to slow down considerably. Gideon's knees are probably decently banged up now, but she doesn't care. ]

Sayo, there's people that are dying! Also, where else are you going to raise a family, I mean come on!

[ With that, Gideon does her best to pick herself up and regain some of her speed, pushing Sayo out of the way if need be. Sorry, weird friend, it's nothing personal. ]

CHRONOLOGY OF SEASONS

[necrolord]

Paul | Sayo | Kaworu

[terriblepurpose]

[When the door slides shut behind them, Paul turns to assess who has ended up on which side. Kaworu, inevitably. Sayo-who-is-not-Shannon, unexpectedly. His flat blue eyes skim over their pallid skin and unrecognizable faces obscured by blooms of bone-white fungal hyphae, and he takes in a long, steady breath. He lets it out slowly, pulling down his half-mask of a black scarf as he does.

Paul came prepared for an expedition, even if this wasn't the precise planned course of events. He's kitted out appropriately: black hooded coat layered over durable clothing cut for movement, twin knives holstered at his hips, and a small pack of supplies on his back. He crouches as he unslings it from his shoulders and rifles through it with gloved hands, searching out a notebook.]

Don't touch anything until I've looked at it.

[A cool, quiet command. It would brook no argument, if Paul didn't expect to be argued with anyway. His voice is his own, more or less, inflections and resonances only singular, and it is patient and calm, and he is patient and calm with it.]

Especially not the door.

[forwantofahorse]

[Sayo pays no mind to Paul's words as she begins prowling around the room, eyes downright sparkling as opposed to the fear or panic that would be a sane person's reaction to being trapped in a mysterious chamber inside ancient catacombs. While she may feel a brief spike of anxiety, it's quickly overtaken by the realization that this is a puzzle room. Finally, some proper mental stimulation after so many rooms of boring dilemmas clearly meant to impart some asinine moral or another.]

Some kind of seasonal theme, maybe? [Sayo muses as she brushes her hand against one of the wall murals.] The tiles... is this supposed to be-

[And then the blood begins trickling in.]

Now that's classy. A lot more flair than your typical pulp novel drowning trap. I feel like I should be taking notes, kyahaha!

[peripheries]

[Kaworu, to his minimal credit, does stay next to Paul, though looking comically unprepared next to him. He's still in his school uniform and his sneakers, at best, he's added a dark hooded jacket over his short sleeves. He looks like a school kid, not someone who should be here.

His face darkens when the door closes and he realizes they're trapped, but aside from stiffer posture and the clenching of his fists, he keeps in control. The person who introduced herself as "Shannon" but is now a different name (or a different person entirely) however, unnerves him almost as much as this room.]

Those are the Pthumerians.

[He up at the tiles, up at his patron Nevermind, until his gaze is pulled as though by some unseen force towards the tile of Mariana. He doesn't seem to be able to look away.]

TIL DEATH DO WE PART

[necrolord]

[forwantofahorse]

So, [Sayo says, that single word holding a precipitous weight that will undoubtedly lead to an awkward, deeply stupid conversation. She showed up to the expeditionary party in an attire and attitude that only Gideon will recognize: sour and sardonic, dressed in a getup entirely unlike "Shannon's" typical frilly dresses, blouses, and skirts. She rapidly wheels between hunching over and scowling, and leaning back, showing her fangs and bantering with "The Necromancer" at the drop of a hat. It's disconcerting to see if you've known "Shannon" for any length of time.

And then, of course, there are the two ghosts currently shambling not far behind her, both bearing bullet wounds in the chest. Although considering that this stretch of the catacombs are haunted enough for everyone to get their own phantoms, that part isn't particularly noteworthy.]

Fuck, marry, kill. Again, I suppose. Your options are Battler, George, and... [She squints over in The Necromancer's direction, and jabs a thumb over at the pink-haired apparition following him around.] That downright smoking pink-haired woman following The Necromancer around.

cw: gory ghost

[necrolord]

[ The downright smoking pink-haired woman has been following them for a few minutes now. She would certainly be beautiful, were it not for the state of her corpse: her chest is an open red ruin, as though someone buried a grenade inside her ribcage and let it blow. The insides of her glisten wetly for all to see. Her pretty peach-colored hair is spattered with gore.

When she arrived, the Necrolord Prime said a few short words of dismissal— a Don't mind her, an I've seen this trick before— and let her drift behind them as though caught in their current. He did not expect to have her acknowledged with Fuck, marry, kill.

God turns to look at Shannon. Harrow will recognize his expression from the words Who was A.L? Paul will recognize it from, I hope there's someone who still loves God. He looks a bit like someone has slapped him, and he is too incredulous at the nerve to be properly offended.

Then he exhales a breath only distantly related to a laugh, and splays his hands like a man conceding defeat. ]

She'd kill me for answering that.

[ It's too soon on all counts, which is why he says it. Predictably, it hurts. ]

[lipochrome]

[ The minute Sayo lets fly with downright smoking, Gideon sits down, puts her head in her hands, and groans loudly, a melodramatic death-rattle for the ages. ]

Uggghhhgh, don't say that. She's not hot, she's some shitty lemongrab senior citizen who drinks white wine and says 'hiss' out loud. Pass!!

[ The only thing worse than the idea of 'hot Mercymorn' is God's stricken look, followed by the world's worst joke. Worse than Sayo's, even! ]

Hate to agree with our Kindly Scout Leader [ what a great name for God! ] on anything, but that is not the question. If you want someone hot, check out her.

[ Gideon releases her head and cocks a thumb back towards the woman following Paul. ]

kaworu

[peripheries]

(cw: Gaslighting, death seeking behavior, death of a teen)

[Kaworu notices the shambling form of a small dark-haired boy long before he acknowledges it.

Instead, he watches the others interact with their ghosts, seeing conversations with missed and lost parents and friends that may not be seen again. It makes him feel alien in a way that he doesn't find satisfying like he usually does. He has no defined relationships to reflect on, to understand why someone is there, and what he would want to say to them. And yet there is part of him that hopes that there's something meanful in the appearance of one, Shinji Ikari, beyond what he can comprehend.

And at least it's not the Old Man.

But eventually, the silent shadow starts to annoy him. Why is it so silent? Surely, there has to be more to it than this? Is there really nothing they can say. However, the silence persists, hanging heavier and heavier until Kaworu feels like he has to shift his back to relieve the weight or somehow cough out the thickness in his lungs. So, he whips around, smile on his face thin enough that one wrong word might shatter it like glass.]

So. We meet again, Shinji-kun. What do you think? We're seeing each other again. How does that make you feel? Do you miss me? Are you still alone?

[No response.

The smile collapses under the weight of trying to hold it. Kaworu approaches the spector and roughly grabs it by the the collar of their identical uniforms.]

Hey! [A furious desperate snap and then both his shoulders and his grip slacken. His grip on the other boy rearranges into a cling instead of a hold.] Hey... Do you even remember me? You promised you'd remember me. Did you really kill me and then just forget about it like that?

[terriblepurpose]

(cw: Hallucinations, fungi, delusions, corpses)

[There are so many restless dead in these tunnels and chambers. Some of their hearts beat. Some of their mouths move. But if not for that, they would all look the same, their bodies colonized by creeping strands and tumescent bulges of hungry decomposers, made strange and distant across a veil that Paul can't sweep aside no matter how much spore-tinged air he breathes or dark, distorting water he wades through.

Kaworu and 'Shinji' are color-shifted mirrors. Both slight, both uniformed, both trailing blooming strands from their eyes. When Paul reaches his hand for Kaworu's shoulder, there is a moment - despite his motion, the words pouring desperate and lonely from him, his pale hair - where he is not certain he will find it still warm.]

Kaworu.

[Let the echo of his name be the caves; let it be the still air; let it be another trick of Paul's own senses.]

It's not him. [He reaches out with two gloved fingers to Kaworu's jaw, coaxes him to turn his face.] Remember what Teacher said?

[peripheries]

[Thankfully, his small body is still warm, though it starts at Paul's touch. He leans in, at the sound of his name, yet it takes more energy than it should to turn his face away from Shinji's. If Paul hadn't reached out, Kaworu isn't sure he would have been able to.

Even still, his eyes remain fixed on the other boy, like a spell he can't break. Or a fear that his gaze is the only thing keeping Shinji here. And despite everything, Kaworu can't seem to be okay with letting him go. His mind is enamoured with the idea of second chances, of redos, that form into an intoxicating form of hope. The sort that's desperate and there because you need it, but because it's something truly felt in the heart.]

But...

What if it's the only him I ever see again.

AS ABOVE, SO BELOW

[necrolord]

cw: gory ghost

[necrolord]

She's been haunting them for hours now.

Drifting along behind the party is a woman, arguably hot and tenuously MILF-y. Her body is a ruin of gore. Something has blown out her chest, and that great open cavity weeps bits of organ and strings of red flesh. Her hair was a lovely peach before it became this wet-spattered ruin. Her eyes are flat and colorless in death.

Their ostensible leader did not react to her arrival except to say, "Don't mind her," and, "I've seen this trick before, it's not new or clever." The closest he came to flinching was when Sayo dared to make it funny.

He ignores her up until that terrible stone threshold. It has the feeling of a final test, a last stand: the dark yawns open before them. It is a building pressure, a slow-kindling fire of cringing, squirming shame. A few of the party startle, or shudder, or simply go very tense. God is among the last of these: his body becomes a taut wire. He is utterly still.

Then he pivots on his heel and walks towards the ghost.

He walks past Harrow, past Gideon, past Kaworu and Sayo and Paul. He pays no mind to any of them. Their own specters go ignored. He simply steps up to the thoroughly dead woman with the peach-colored hair, and he wraps her into an embrace.

It's not the gentle, paternal thing he sometimes tries to do. John clings to the corpse of Mercymorn, so tightly she seeps blood all down his shirtfront like a squeezed slab of meat. He tucks his chin to her shoulder like a vice grip. He murmurs something to her, too low to hear. It shows mostly as a tremble in his shoulders.

When he untangles himself from the body, his hands still hover at her wet dead arms. The ghost begins to wisp away from him like smoke and vapor; within moments, she is gone. For a beat, everything is quiet.

"There is no one left who loves God."

The King Undying turns to face his children. He looks at Harrow, and at Gideon. He looks at Paul, and there is a terrible weight to his black-hole eyes. His voice is very calm.

"I killed them all."

[terriblepurpose]

Before Paul left his first home, he gave little thought to theology. The matter of the Divine was a settled question, the correct understanding of the universe's ineffability interpreted and fixed in holy word ten thousand years before he was born. His first bloom of contemplation began on burning sands, was unearthed and transplanted to grow on stranger soil yet.

Here, he has walked through pale temples and lit incense to honor an alien pantheon. He dwells among a saint, an angel, a living God and his own blessed daughter. He has traveled death's dark waters and found the shores of resurrection.

Paul knows less about divinity than he ever did. Each question he asks only opens another incomprehension before him. There is no how to explain why this shattered ghost trails God's footsteps, no what to unravel the mystery of her existence. She is, inexorable, and Paul has tried to follow God's mild commandment not to mind her.

Then God does mind her. God gathers her up in his arms like desperation itself, breathes a secret into her that undoes her entirely, and Paul has never known less, as God tenders his confession.

But he thinks he's beginning to understand something, as he steps away from the shadows of his own apocalypses.

Three times Paul invited God's destruction. Three times God denied him. It wasn't mercy, or forgiveness, or absolution. Did not God tell him, himself, that he wasn't in the business of taking offense? Of judgment and sin?

Paul closes the space between them on soundless feet. He stills before God, once again split open by a world that isn't his, and this time not at Paul's hand. He meets the terrible weight of those eyes with his own, the last soft, pale blue light of dead stars. There's no forgiveness he could dare to offer, no mercy he can find in his own hollowed heart. There's no absolution for God, or for him.

"Teacher," Paul says, quietly, and folds a man into his arms like grace, unearned and undeserved.

[necrosaint]

It is not the second statement that wounds Harrow.

It does not upset her, or rattle her to her core; no confession of killing would ever do that to the death of two hundred of her own house. To a war-crime child whose home was both saved and destroyed by her conception. This does not shake Harrow at any level Trench hasn't already. It's a blip in her radar, so to speak.

Even the King Undying's action does not disturb Harrow, for she would not judge any to hold affection for (or to) someone, living or dead. But professing that there is no one left who loves God breaks her; her hands shake and it's unclear whether it is from fury or rejection, whether she is angry or heartbroken. Blood-tinged tears fall, messing up her makeup, though she isn't really crying -- there are no sobs, no snot, no rasps of breath. Other than those tears, she seems normal as she steps softly over to Paul and her Teacher.

"That is not true," she says, very firmly, and then -- now it's clear why her hands were shaking -- actually attempts to wrap one of her small noodle arms around each of them in turn. Which is the most horrifying thing she has ever done in her entire life.

[peripheries]

Kaworu watches Teacher, the man who saved him and the man he's been told to avoid, approach the specter with a funny churn in his barely working stomach. He wants to tell him not to go close to her, not to speak to her, and yet instead he stays silent and wondering why he had the urge to protect this man in the first place.

Dark red eyes watch him cling to the woman in a way, Kaworu realizes, he probably clung onto Shinji Ikari. It's not about affection, it's about longing and desire and bitterness all mixed together into an unpleasant muck. He feels embarrassed to watch it and his eyes glance downwards to his bloodstained shoes.

Then Teacher speaks and brings his gaze back to those black-hole eyes that never bothered him before but now seem to draw him closer even as he wants to stay away. He's an Angel, yes, but he's never thought much about God as he's always known his creators and those who have power over him.

Perhaps God exists, perhaps God created Adam and Lilith as messengers and the Angels are but messengers of even less importance but it's never mattered to him. when humans speak about God, they speak about undefined and metaphysical power they wish to obtain. That was SEELE's game and the goal of the Evangelion project entirely.

He steps forward.

"Teacher. What is "God" and why must God be loved?"

cw: ghost, asphyxiation, references to child abuse and parental death

[lipochrome]

It is easy for Gideon to not mind the ghost. She's been ignoring ghosts for years; she takes after her father like that. They look almost identical, at times: relaxed shoulders, easy smiles that don't reach ice-brittle eyes.

She is trailed by another twin. This woman wears Gideon's face, except older, twisted into a perpetual rock-hard scowl. The fire-red hair spilling onto the orange jumpsuit is exactly the color of Gideon's, and where Gideon has a longsword strapped to her back, this woman has a massive gun. She looks upon the entire group with contempt; would call every last person here scum had she not lost the ability to speak after choking to death.

The stone threshold has the finality of a tomb, and God does something worse than open a door.

He confesses. He claims that nobody loves him, and Gideon, who spent the better part of eighteen years unloved, knows that to admit to a life without love is to ask for it. The part of Gideon that her mother gave her wants to bristle, to lay out the cold and sharp truth of it's your fault. Of you don't deserve to ask for anything.

But Paul and Harrow wrap God into an embrace, and Gideon knows that if she pierced God with that dagger, she'd slice through Harrow and Paul in the process. Harrow says she loves him; God accepts her love.

Gideon is standing outside it all. Gideon is standing before a door. Gideon is five years old again, understanding that this kind of love is not for her. Who is she to intervene? Maybe there's nothing wrong with loving God. Maybe the problem is, as it always has been, with her.

Here, she stands in front of her mother and behind her father. It is like the door is asking her to make a choice. But this place does not understand, just like Harrowhark never understood: she is nobody's son or daughter.

So she does not speak up, nor does she intervene. Gideon stands at attention, taut, her throat working. She does not look at the ghost behind her. Gideon Nav has not said I love you to a ghost in eight years, but she still remembers what it was like. She remembers that they do not answer.

In the end, Gideon's choice is not her mother, and it is not her father. She chooses Harrow and Paul, a choice she will make over and over again, if she has to.

Commander Awake Remembrance Of These Valiant Dead does not say anything, either. And the next time Gideon turns around, she will be gone.

cw: corpses, ghosts, hallucinations

[terriblepurpose]

Paul knows the faces that emerge from the shadows by the absence of knowing, by inference, by inevitability. He knows them by their silhouettes, and the shadows that come to fall behind them when they find their way into the circle of pale light around this haunted expedition. He knows them by the shape of their hands entangled.

The dead don't answer to what's said to them. They also don't answer to what's signed, a flicker of fingers that begins at his side and rises to the level of his chest, the whole efficient subtlety of House Atreides battle language reduced to a single repetitive tracing of the air.

"I've seen this trick before, it's not new or clever," says their captain, and at least it's not only Paul. He's right. It's not new, or clever. Paul saw his parents in his first month here, conjured from memory into dreams. He'd said what he needed to then.

If he thinks about it, as he turns away, there's are lessons here. The mythopoetic logic of it, in this lonely world built of a little dead girl's dream of heroes. It's a reminder that there is no specificity to this cruelty. That this is no different than the pollen in the air, an atmospheric condition, an environmental hazard. These aren't his parents any more than sunlight reflected on sand is water.

So he pushes them to the fringes of his awareness, along with the rest of the yearning dead, and save for when his attention is called to them, they may as well not be there.

There's a calm that comes from resignation. Paul doesn't anticipate being able to leave unscathed, and so when the end comes - when God stills before that doorway, when there is no where left to go but through, and out - he walks away from them knowing that he'll walk back.

He has to walk past Gideon and her wounded eyes, first, and that - that is difficult. What he did wasn't new, or clever. He can't help but think of mist, and a distance that felt impossible to bridge. One he never did, never will. He brushes his hand against her elbow as he goes by, soft and conciliatory, and knows it doesn't make up for anything.

Paul stands in front of them. He straightens his coat with two hands, tugging at the hem. He whispers something to himself as he runs his fingers through his hair, his head bowed, and when he lifts his eyes to the ghosts, they are mild and warm.

"Hi, dad. Hi, mom," Paul says, quietly, "There are some people I'd like you to meet, before we talk."

Paul looks over his shoulder at them. His odd housemates, his fellow explorers of hell, the saddest, most lost band of fucked up he's ever seen.

"That's Gideon Nav. She already met you once, dad. You weren't like this, then. She liked you. You'd like her too. She's a swordmaster, and she's funny, and she puts up with me, even when I'm too much in my own head. And that's the Lady Harrowhark Nonagesimus, her necromancer, and one of the only people I've met smarter than I am." He goes between them in turn, as he gently names them. "Kaworu Nagisa, who asks more questions than I do, and tries harder than he pretends he does. Sayo, she's helping us, even if she thinks she's worse than she is."

When his eyes fall on the last of them, there's only the slightest of pauses: "And that's our captain, and our teacher. He's been helping me find my way."

The pause that follows is longer as Paul turns his attention back to his starting point. He straightens his coat, only to find it already straightened.

"I'm seventeen now. Two weeks ago. You'd know that." He amends. "If you were here. But it's the first one since..."

They'd know that, too. He's barely started, and he's losing focus. Paul flexes his hands at his sides and takes a step closer, angled towards the shape that isn't his father.

"I was eight when I told you I didn't mind if you weren't there for my birthday, if there was something more important. I said that we could have a party any day, but - did I say crises, or opportunities?" He pauses. "Both, I think. Those wouldn't wait for me to turn nine. And you said that if there was anything more important than your son turning nine, you'd pretend you hadn't heard about it."

"I thought I knew how much you loved me." Only a faint tremor under the reflective surface of his tone. "I did. I never took it for granted. How could I? You chose to. You chose me, and I always knew that, but I didn't - I couldn't know until you were gone, how much there was."

"I keep thinking of things I need to ask you. Or I'll learn something, and I'll want to tell you about it. I meet people and I think about how much you'd like them. And then-" He brings his hand up, closed, and unfolds it, open and empty. "You were like water, and I thought I knew what thirst was. But you can't, until you're in the desert."

"People keep telling me they're angry at the people who leave them, when they die. I wondered what it meant about me, that I wasn't angry at you." Paul reaches out his open hand to rest on one cold shoulder. "I think I know, now."

"Mom." Paul turns his head to face her. A spasm flickers across his otherwise placid face, so he pauses for a breath, like she taught him. The weight of the black void presses down, inexorable, unbearable, but he can stand it long enough for this breath, for the next. She taught him how to do that, too.

"I know this isn't real." She's not, she's not; his voice is level, and still, and precise. "And I know you'd tell me not to be sentimental. You'd tell me not to do most of the things I'm doing. Sometimes - mom, sometimes I think I do things because I think, if you knew about them, you'd -"

He breaks. It's as quiet as it is sudden, the duck of his head, the pressing of his fingertips to the corners of his eyes as his voice cracks into wordless nothing. He shudders at the precipice only a moment before he stumbles over it, pressing his face blindly to fallen shoulders.

"I'm not ready," Paul confesses, under the black dread of the only way out, the only exit left the one they cut through themselves, and he is so good with knives, "I'm not. Please. I don't want you to go."

They fall away under his hands, like everything does, and he's alone, where it always ends. His hand works through empty air in a call-sign that no one here knows, into a darkness that cannot see it.

Atreides, unanswered, and he lets his hand fall.

[peripheries]

For once, when Paul says his name, Kaworu doesn't look up. He neither takes the statement as teasing and squares himself to refute it nor does he take the opportunity to bask in it, ever hungry for the scraps of attention anyone will give him. Instead, he reaches up and pulls his hood over his light, messy hair and keeps his gaze firmly on the dusty ground ahead even though it's just a space of nothingness.

It's hard to look at the figures Paul speaks so gently. There's discomfort so powerful that he averted his gaze as soon as Paul addressed them. It's like there's a gate that stands between them. A clear message: This is not for you.

He's never had parents. He's had teachers and caretakers but not parents and he understands enough to know these things are fundamentally different. And the small steps he'd made here towards understanding what it means to have someone like that in your life only makes it more clear how far he and Paul stand apart here. How vast the difference in their experience is that trying to cross it seems like trying to bridge the ocean. Like an ant trying to perceive the experience of an eagle.

Then he thinks about Paul's hands on his shoulders and how the gentle touch tugs him out of the dark edges of his mind and back into the world. How it makes him at ease about his body or his experiences even if Paul could never understand what it means to be without just as Kaworu could never understand what it means to be with.

Kaworu forces his eyes up and walks through the gate, letting the hood fall back from his head and the small bits of light catch on his light hair in an almost ethereal glow. His approach towards Paul is slow, not casual, not careful, but soft, like an early riser trying to maintain peace in the house.

"You have her eyes. But... your forehead and your eyebrows are more like his. It's like you're both of them."

It may seem obvious but he's never considered parents in this light. Of course, he understands how human reproduction works on a scientific level but he's never seen a child and their parents together. Never seen how two come together to create another that's both of them and yet all their own at the same time. He knows those aren't the right words and maybe no words would have been better. But he's certain he had to try. Paul would have for him.