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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[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?"

[necrolord]

When he has untangled himself from the others, God looks up at this. He is briefly, openly startled; then it falls to something like chagrin.

"Right out the gate with that one, eh?" This he murmurs, half to himself. He reaches up to rub his forehead, the crease of tension between his eyes. He exhales another great sigh. Then he refocuses on Kaworu, and he says, with the detached air of a quote:

"God is light." There is a funny little twitch at the corner of his mouth. "God is love. God is life."

He scrubs a hand back through his short plain hair, and seems to steady himself. More calmly, he says:

"God is authority. He holds dominion over life and death. To love Him is generally considered good form, given that He created the world and everyone in it." There are the barest dregs of humor left in the slant of his smile. "Also, in present context, God is a guy who has had a very difficult year and does sometimes appreciate a hug."

[peripheries]

"I don't understand. What does it mean for this world? For our worlds? When humans spoke of God, it was just a word they used to mean the power to the bend reality to their will. Is that... what you do? Why is that not worthy of love?"

Kaworu's eyes are wide and, despite pointed questions, they're innocent and filled with a childlike curiosity that seems unfitting in his unnatural red eyes. He steps closer, as if proximity will make it easier to understand what Teacher means. If Teacher has that power then... so much is possible.

[necrolord]

Kaworu says Why is that not worthy of love?, and God exhales a tiny breath like he's been punched in the gut. He goes hah. He drops his head in a little nod.

"Power alone is worthy of fear." He scrubs a hand over his mouth again, considering. He looks very tired. "It's love that's worthy of love. I so loved the world..." It sounds like half a statement, but he doesn't complete it. "I lit the stars. I shaped the clay. Mind, I'm a bit more limited here: this isn't my home field."

He steps forward, to Kaworu. Very gently, he says:

"I am not God of this place. But I am God of my people... and I will always love them."

Even the scrawny, miserable girl behind him who opened the wrong door. Even the wound-tense swordswoman at her side who was invented to be his ruin. Even the ghost of a woman he trusted for ten thousand years, and before that, in the world that came before; he does not have to believe in forgiveness to believe in love.

[peripheries]

"That's right. When humans say they want to be a God what they want is power to change their fates. When the circumstances of their fate can't be explained, they blame or love God."

He takes another step forward. What does an Angel mean to God? One that was created to carry out the message of a god but shaped and designed by human minds and hands. What does it mean for a creature that stands between two worlds, unfit for either?

"What about the people here? Do you love us even though we aren't yours?"

[necrolord]

Kaworu asks his question, and the look in God's eyes is a million miles away. The answer is: I don't know. Sometimes he thinks it's too much work, to love anything new. He's too old for it. He's forgotten how.

Sometimes he thinks they will be able to remind him.

"God's a convenient guy to blame," he says. "And sometimes a hard guy to love. I get it. I really do."

It has the air of stalling. This next pause hangs heavy as the stone beneath their feet, dark as the hole at their backs. It seems to swallow all sound. God breathes out a long, slow breath.

He looks at Kaworu: skinny shoulders and messy pale cowlicks of hair, big wide eyes that want to understand. He looks at the vast and inhuman thing that moves the body. She'd been like this, once. Never this young, never this hopeful; it had all been a skin over the great weight of her anger. But he still likes to think of her that way. He likes to remember the moments where she let him pretend.

The people here are only like his in ways that read like targeted cruelty. The name Earth has been left to molder, not laid to rest. The world has been poisoned for the sake of magic, synonymous with madness. The gods are petty bastards who haven't earned their crowns. Sleepers mill about, loud and clumsy in the stale light of their resurrection, and they die again and again and again for no reason that matters. The whole system is a slap to the face.

Most days he wants to raze the whole fucking planet. Most days he wants to collapse alone— alone, here— on the beach, with nothing but the blood on his hands.

Some days Harrow scrunches her nose at tea, or Paul looks at him with hopeful eyes and holds a baking sheet, and he almost remembers how to care.

"Yet to all who did receive him..." he murmurs, and it has the cadence of a story or a prayer. He says: "You can still be my children. You can still be mine, and I will love you."

It might even be true.

[peripheries]

Think in the back of your mind about the men who raised you the letter from the Old Man had warned about a black-eyed man. And Kaworu sees that man standing before him. He sees him every day at the home he has opened up for Kaworu, making tea, helping Paul bake, just living a life. And Kaworu, who has experienced much but lived very little, cannot reconcile that man with the Committee that raised him.

When he was small, he used to wave to them from behind glass panes when they observed him, only to be ignored. He'd chase after the scientists and try to cling to their legs for attention, only to be rebuked with glancing looks exchanged. He tried to perform well on his tests to receive words of praise. Eventually, he came to understand the truth: he was not a child, he was a monster, and they were all afraid of him. He was allowed to exist to serve a single purpose and little more.

And so there was a hole in his chest that could not be filled. It was always too deep and nothing was ever enough. He used to look at pictures of the Katsuragi Expedition wonder which human gave the DNA to create him and what if they could love him. If they hadn't all died in his subsequent birth, of course. He tried to make Shinji Ikari fill that hole and only got the smallest amount of kindness in the moments before he died.

He looks at Teacher and thinks perhaps he can understand why God wants to be loved. He thinks of standing in the kitchen next to Paul, watching a pot boil, or watching a movie with Gideon that is "full of certified babes", and how in those moments, the hole seems to close entirely. The Committee never cared to try to fill the holes that exist in hearts and instead sought to eliminate them entirely.

"Teacher." Kaworu mutters and steps forward, arms slightly open, allowing him to enter an embrace if he chooses. If God could love a creature called an Angel that is more monstrous than he is anything divine.

[necrolord]

Kaworu steps forward for the embrace, and there was never any question of what John would do. He knows how to love a monster. He knows it better than how to love a human being, most days.

He shifts forward to meet him, and draws the boy into his arms. Kaworu is small and wiry, and there's a living warmth to him now that he's not clammily feverish and spitting up saltwater. There is a world of difference between bundling a sick child into his arms and being offered a hug by one with open eyes.

At least, he likes to tell himself there is. It's a nice thought.