deercountry | 06 . the sleepy town expedition.

[Kaworu finally turns from Shinji to look, wide-eyed, up at Paul.

It’s such a curious thing to be understood. Kaworu had never expected to feel such a thing and yet Paul seems to understand when he least expects it.

He has to swallow a few times before he answers Paul.]

That’s all I wanted. If he killed me with his bare hands… then he’d remember me.

[There are times when the way he hates this place winds through his chest like the fungal cords flourishing in the skeletons, bursting in fetid fecundity as they rise up his throat and twist at the base of his skull. There are times he hates this place like a disease, feverish and contaminating.

His gaze is nothing but gentle as he looks into Kaworu's torn-wide eyes, rubs his thumb across the slim line of his collarbone.]

The real one does. I know it.

[What else can he say? What kind of comfort can he offer to that? What can he kill with his bare hands to make this go away?

(All Kaworu wanted was to be remembered. Not to live, but to haunt. Paul doesn't understand why everyone he cares about only wants to-)]

Do you want to tell him about that? How you felt?

I asked him if he'd remember me like all the other people he's lost. He said yes. I hoped doing it himself would ensure that to be the truth. But... I suppose I'll never know unless I can talk to him, the real Shinji-kun, once more. An uncertainty created by distances between hearts and people.

[There's more to it though. But he doesn't have the words or the ability to take the feeling out of himself and examine it. There's something unsatisfactory about it all. There's longing, certainly, that's a feeling that Kaworu has come to understand but there's that twisting weight he feels when he thinks about the Leviathan and the Old Man. The idea that he'd caused pain unjustly. But how could it be so? Shinji Ikari would have to kill the angel to save mankind. There's no other choice.

His heart is still too young to understand why regret is starting to seep into those memories like a stain.

There's a soft sigh, one of those ones that Kaworu does when he's contemplating something that he can't pin down, before he reaches over and pulls Paul into an embrace, arms around his neck and face resting against his shoulder. It's not a clinging hold, trying to seek comfort in another, but instead to affirm their presence. He's glad Paul is here with him, and that they can talk, touch, and feel together, even if he may never find answers in the other boy who was on the receiving end of his affection.]

[Paul bends slightly to meet Kaworu's reaching arms, gingerly folding his arms around Kaworu's back. He can give this much, even if he can't provide safety, or closure, or a balm for open injury. He can be present. He can be silent about hoping that the glass-eyed ghost at Kaworu's back stays distant and uncertain.]

I don't think anyone would ever forget knowing you.

[It's impossible to imagine. Kaworu doesn't slip past people's guards - he breaks them, sweeps aside their defenses, and claims territory, for better or for worse. He asks questions no one else would ask, and says things no one else would say.

Gideon, Kaworu, even Sayo. All these people so sure they aren't worth remembering, that their existence is a passing traceless shadow on the world.]

I wouldn't. [No- not quite-] I won't.

[That makes him smile. Paul is just like that, making promises that are easy to believe. Probably because Paul does so much to make those promises come true. Kaworu stands on his tiptoes to bump his forehead against Paul’s.]

Well, you and I get along better than he and I did. But… I hope so. And I’d never hoped before that.

[He drops his hand to rub Paul’s arm reassuringly. More to reassure himself than anything else. There’s so much he wants to say to Shinji but he doesn’t have the words. And he’s not going to try to find them for a false one.

Still, it’s hard to pull away. It feels like when he does, he’ll rip off parts of himself. So for a moment he just stands there, gripping Paul, trying to steal himself to turn and move on for now.]

[Paul is aware of the presence of the others, their positions and relative conditions. It's impossible to be fully unobserved, but besides Sayo, none of this is new to anyone sharing these hellish caverns with them. So Paul isn't self-conscious of pressing his forehead back against Kaworu's for that half-moment.

Reassurance tends to go both ways between them, call and response, so Paul puts his thumbs to the crooks of Kaworu's elbows and taps a one-two pulse, the same rhythm he used to signal all's well in the puzzle room.

Someone else might make a joke about being glad to be more personable than Kaworu's killer; someone else might say something about the impossible sadness of it.]

I hope so too. [He smiles softly.] Take as long as you need. It's all right.

[Kaworu slides his hands from Paul's neck to rest on skinny shoulders. Shoulders that are carrying far more than they should (maybe more than they can). The response is quick, timely, with no indication of melancholy behind it.

Then he rocks back onto his heels and then his toes, considering Paul's words, trying to decide what he needs. There was a time where he'd have waited there, chased after Shinji for a response, and there's a part of him that desperately wants to, a part of him that's not satisfied.

That black hole that's always at his center.

But for now, it's dormant. It doesn't threaten to consume him until he'll do anything to save himself from that growing emptiness. There's no desperation to claw and fight to be seen. It's quiet. Just an ever-present force within him.]

I'm not satisfied. [He says slowly, thoughtfully, clearly examining his own feelings.] But I'm not melancholy either. It's both and yet neither at the same time. Maybe it's... longing?

[Kaworu asked Paul to measure his growth not so long ago. He meant his height, a subject that Paul found endearingly human of him, although he'd never dare to say that to Kaworu's face - but sometimes Paul wonders by what measure he'd set the more intangible changes in Kaworu against.

It might be moments like this, where Kaworu pauses before he speaks, looks inward instead of outward. When he turns away from the mirror of the world and defines himself by himself, not a long lost boy or the strictures of angels.]

Do you know what you're longing for?

[Paul encourages these instants whenever they come, even here. (It's not as though any of them have a right to judge.) His question is meant to be open-ended, no answer right or wrong, as long as it's a considered one.]

Him.

[He glances over at Shinji, or something in the shape of Shinji. There's nothing to be had there and yet...]

The real one. A chance to talk to him. And get answers to my questions. So perhaps what I really long for is a chance to do things differently. Or a chance for closure. To feel whole again. But I don't know if I want those things in that order, or what order they must be in, and if they're all even truly different things at all.

[He chews at his lip and gives a little shrug. Everything about him is trying very hard to be nonchalant instead of wobbly. It's easier with Paul here but... this is difficult. And it hurts. There's a certain strength in accepting there's nothing to be done here but there's also pain.

It feels unfair. Maybe he thought it would feel more rewarding right away to start to let go.]

[If Kaworu were to wobble, Paul is there to steady him, his hands still light and certain on his arms. He tamps down the urge to brush at the proliferation of tendrils on Kaworu's cheeks, shivering and twisting as they grow.]

That's farther than most people get.

[He can't tell if he fixes a small smile at one corner of his mouth, or if the effort is a misspent twitch. Kaworu might as well have reached out to tap, feather-light, on a faultline of Paul's own; all of this does, and he sings like glass.]

They're shades of a spectrum, but all of one color. Do you remember when we talked about catharsis?

Mm.

[Either way, Kaworu takes it as a smile and returns it, one of those soft smiles that makes it clear how many of his other smiles are cobbled together to hide other feelings. Feelings of being out of place and uncertain that he didn't even know existed under the surface as he claimed he didn't feel like humans.]

To be able to experience emotions that you can't feel in everyday life and explore them.

[Well. Paul didn't say "explore", Kaworu just assumes.]

That's right.

[Paul nods, a slight bob that gives way to a bird-like tilt as he looks to Shinji once more. He lets the ripple of protective distaste roll through and past him. He considers the slight, youthful fragility of the boy, the thinness of his wrists, the contextualizing details of an outfit that has revealed itself as a uniform.

Whatever he sees in this boy-who-isn't is projection. Paul knows that. But he also knows what this place is about, now.]

What if we see this as that? A play. It's not real, so you can say anything you want, and so if he comes here, you'll have already practiced. You don't have to get it right this time.

[Red eyes glance past Paul's and over at Shinji. Just standing there, looking hopeless as he always does and Kaworu remembers wanting to give him hope. Thinking he could be hope.

He opens his mouth to form words but he can't. Not because he has none but because there's so many and they all threaten to spill out like cacophonous vomit. "See, I don't need you anymore." "Look, I'm different from how I was back then." "Why didn't you just listen when I tried to be your friend? We could have stopped all of this?" "Maybe I asked too much of you."

There's a small shake of his head.]

I can't. It's... Maybe that's something for humans. And not me.

[His tone tinged with bitterness but also quiet undertones of self-reproach, the sort used when preparing to be the subject of disappointment.]

[We're not human, Kaworu said to Sayo, we're monsters</>, and Paul should have stopped him then, before he broke the rest of his chest open in a faint pop of thin bone.]

Why should we get to lay claim to that? What makes us so deserving, and you not?

[He brings his hands up to Kaworu's shoulders, fingers skimming his arms (the way he's still afraid to let go, to lose track) as they rise. He puts weight into them, the drag of gravity that Kaworu so easily defies, that Paul's bound by.]

It's all right if you can't. You don't have to. But you should know that I don't know what to say to mine, either. So what does that mean about me, if it's for humans?

[There is no circle I'd draw without you in it, he should have said. To Kaworu, to Gideon, to Harrow.]

There's a difference between being a human, and being a person. You might not be one. That doesn't mean you aren't the other.

It it about deserving...?

[He mumbles, more to himself than to Paul. There's a difference between human and being a person. Midoriya had said something similar to him, thanking Kaworu for seeing him as himself when beasthood threatened to take hold. Paul had apologized for being human when Kaworu had cried and yet human boy's eyes had remained dry.

He'd always seen himself as on the edge of humanity, like them, but not enough like them to live in their world. Too different, too strange, too dangerous. But perhaps humanity was the circle he thought it was, with clear and defined boundaries.

The weight of Paul's hands is grounding, they pull him down into a little place where he fits perfectly for once (or like every time Paul does). He almost doesn't want to answer, savoring the small moment where they're in a little circle together with dividing lines of labels and categories.]

I suppose. Just a person then. Like me. Maybe nothing else fits at all.

Nothing else has to.

[This isn't a puzzle that needs to be solved in one day. It might not be a puzzle to solve at all. Kaworu isn't the only one whose mind is changing about what it means to be, whose growth is measured in pearls of realization formed around cutting grit.]

And there's nothing we do that you can't, if you want to. There's nothing wrong with not wanting to. There's nothing wrong with you.

[Not the way that Kaworu thinks there is, but Paul still isn't here to pull him apart. Kaworu is his charge, his sworn responsibility. He's Paul's friend, fickle and vexing as he can be. This place doesn't get to make him feel otherwise, while Paul's here to remind him.]

[Kaworu gives Paul a rueful smile. Just a soft upturn at the left side of his mouth before his lips fall back into a drawn line. A rather perfect mirror of what counts as a smile for Paul these days.

Perhaps there's nothing wrong in this instance of not wanting catharsis but there's certainly much wrong with him. He's entire existence is wrong. A combination of two opposing forces. Nothing fits together entirely right. Like he's held together by tape and little pieces of string.

But that's neither here nor there. He's learned enough by now that it's not the time to have this conversation. Or maybe ever. It's not like it's a secret from anyone who knows him.

So instead there's just a nod.]

06 . the sleepy town expedition.

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