Angels.Falling
By Midknight
MidKnightslair@juno.com
I do not own NGE. Spoilers for the end of the show.
Sometimes, if I wake up fast enough I can still feel the feathers of his wings on my skin. A trace here, a light brush there and then he’s gone by the time I open my eyes.
Tokyo 3 isn’t what it once was, the buildings were all leveled by the battles and there are hardly any people about. Its quiet now, the streets filled with debris and flooded with water. When police come, looking for survivors, I hide from them. I need to be here. Where it all started and ended.
The lake was high enough above the city that it wasn’t destroyed, and sometimes I go there, during sunset to watch and remember. I think of when I wasn’t a Pilot, when I had no meaning. My thoughts are happier when they turn to other things, like who I once met here, at the lake.
Kaworu may have been Tabris in the end, the last Angel, the best one, but I will always remember him as he first was. A boy just as lost as I was, finding serenity by the light of the sun sinking into a lake.
I hate him for what he made me do. He made a mistake, misjudging the identity of the captive in the lake and I’m not sure which one of us paid for it more.
Feathers brush my shoulder and I turn to see nothing. I smile wistfully and do something the old me would have never done. I speak to the empty air.
“I’ve missed you, Kaworu.” I say and the wind stills a little. Feathers brush my cheek again, trailing to the back of my neck and I wonder how he’s manipulating his wings to do that. If I’m not going insane, after all, imagining an angel to keep me company in a decimated city. Hands grip my face, the web of skin between the thumb and forefinger latching behind my ears and I realize Kaworu is behind me. He makes me face the setting sun, which is blood red.
//Look into the light, Shingi-kun. Tell me what you see//
A voice whispers and I may have well as gone insane. The hands fade away after a second, never really there at all; just a manipulation of the universe that makes the very air substantial as a touch.
“I see blood.” I say immediately. Sol-star has turned the very lake water the color of LCL and I choke on what that brings to mind.
//Tell me//
A hand touches my shoulder gently.
“I see the lake. The other one, below. It was a whole sea of blood.” The sun is just above touching the lake now, and the heat waves want to leap up and grasp the sun to the lake. The water fades from yellow to orange. In a second it will be another color, the color that flows through my veins. “I killed you.”
//Yes, Shingi-kun//
“I wish I hadn’t.” I confess.
//You had no choice. A moment longer and everything would have ended, including you//
I still remember his simple kindness, something no one else had offered. The way that I found him at the lake and how he followed me at the base, how he touched me then. It was nothing, but to me it meant everything. After so long being the outsider, the unloved, someone simply accepted me.
“I want you back.” I bitterly whisper. Fingers trail across my skin, making me look up from where I’m trying to scrub away tears.
//Look into the light, Shingi-kun. Even as the world ends there will be miracles//
His touch is gone and as I stare at the blood red sun I feel utterly alone. The light and the lake merge suddenly, the fluid of life spilling from one surface to another and at the heart of the light I see something glimmer. Strands of light arc out and in the shimmer I can almost see a form.
Its gone in a second, but as the sun sinks a patch of darkness grows inside of it, wavering and growing darker. More defined and by the time the sun is half down I can see Kaworu Nagisa striding purposefully across the surface of the lake. When he reaches me he lays his hands on my knees, and looks up at me, perched where I am on a jut of malformed rock.
The sun falls beneath the horizon and the stars are out by the time I can make myself think. Kaworu simply looks up at me with an enigmatic smile on his face.
“Is this my miracle?” I ask and his smile grows.
“If you want it, Shingi-kun.”
He’s asleep, curled beside me before I answer, in my bed back at the apartment. He shivers a little and I take the chance to pull him closer, tucking the sheets better around us. Kaworu smiles sleepily up at me and I run a hand over his silver hair and he leans into the touch.
“I want it with all my heart.” I answer and he smiles, his own hands going for my hair as he pulls us into a kiss.
