Chapter Text
In one year they sent a million fighters forth
South and North,
And they built their gods a brazen pillar high
As the sky
Yet reserved a thousand chariots in full force—
Gold, of course.
O heart! oh blood that freezes, blood that burns!
Earth's returns
For whole centuries of folly, noise and sin!
Shut them in,
With their triumphs and their glories and the rest!
Love is best.
-Robert Browning, “Love Among the Ruins”
***
Watermelons need a lot of space to grow.
This is the first thing that Katsuragi tells him about watermelon farming when Kaworu is on his way to her house.
“This used to be a coal mining town,” she says as the green countryside rushes by them in the wide window. “Now there’s a museum. We can take you there if you want. Are you interested in history?”
“Am I interested in history?” Kaworu echoes. He shrugs and smiles up at her. “I don’t really know, Miss Katsuragi.”
She laughs at this and leans on her hand, looking down at Kaworu. “Call me Misato.”
Kaworu shrugs apologetically.
“Watermelons need a lot of space to grow,” she says absentmindedly after watching the scenery through the window of the train car. “Over in Akiyoshidai they burned the forests for fields of pampas grass but here we already had some land with good soil. Good drainage too. My partner has been studying the soil composition.”
Katsuragi looks back to him and cocks her head to the side, studying him as if she’s seeing him for the first time. In a way, Kaworu supposes she is.
“Do you have any experience farming?” she asks. “I know you put it as a point of interest on your application.”
Kaworu shakes his head. “No experience, Miss Katsuragi. But I’ve always wanted to learn.”
***
Katsuragi takes him to nearest convenience store a week after he arrives to pick up a few things and tells Kaworu that he can wait outside if he wants. He smiles and says that he’ll come in.
“Most teenage boys would love to get away from their parents,” she teases.
Kaworu almost laughs at this, his mouth quirking further as Katsuragi walks through the automatic doors. A small chime sounds above them. The boy behind the counter doesn’t look up from his magazine.
“Why don’t you go look around while I grab some medicine,” Katsuragi says. It feels like she’s trying to give him space for whatever reason despite the fact that the store is small. Kaworu doesn’t really understand but he nods anyway and walks over to the magazine rack. It’s full of farmer’s almanacs and digests along with a few more popular magazines on music and fashion.
“I heard they needed a boy to work the farm.” Kaworu hears a man say. The man is behind him in the next aisle, but Kaworu can hear him clearly and knows that the man intends for him to overhear.
“Well he doesn’t look like he’ll be strong,” A woman responds. “He’s small and pasty and those red eyes.” She clicks her tongue against her teeth disapprovingly. “They should send him back to the orphanage.”
“You can’t just say that,” the man says with false reproach. “It’s a genetic thing.”
“I’ve heard he’s already fifteen,” Another man’s voice chimes in. “Don’t know why they’d grab one so old. Must be desperate.”
They fall silent as Katsuragi storms past them, dragging Kaworu behind her.
Katsuragi grips his hand so tightly it hurts and strides down the nearest aisle on the way to the checkout counter. She slams the medicine down, startling the boy from his magazine. Kaworu wants to pull away but doesn’t. He watches the pale skin of his hand bruise under Katsuragi’s fingers as she taps her nails impatiently against the counter with her other hand.
Intimidated, the boy fumbles as he places the medicine in a plastic bag and hands it to Katsuragi.
“Don’t you ever think that we didn’t want you or just needed you to work,” she says once they’re outside the pharmacy and out of earshot. “It’s not true.”
Kaworu nods.
***
Kaworu wakes up every day at five.
He showers, dresses, washes his face, brushes his teeth, and slowly opens the door so he doesn’t wake Kaji and Katsuragi. Kaji will be the next one awake, and then Katsuragi, who jokes about being lazy but is just as hard-working as any of them.
Kaworu has been waking up at five every day for years now. He doesn’t remember anything about his life before the orphanage and he wasn’t at the orphanage that long before Katsuragi and Kaji adopted him. He remembers one of the staff members telling Katsuragi when she came to pick him up that he was always the most well-behaved of the group.
A loud cry from a flock of crows interrupts his thoughts and he runs after them, chasing the birds away from the watermelon plants.
It’s nearly spring. Kaworu and Kaji have spent the past few weeks planting the seedlings they carefully raised inside the house through the winter.
“You have to handle them carefully,” Kaji tells him every year as they begin transplanting in the spring. Despite having heard it for the past six years, Kaworu enjoys listening to Kaji as he plants the first seedling.
“Their roots are more fragile than other plants,” Kaji says. “So make sure you handle the soil gently when taking them out of their pots.”
Kaworu removes a seedling from its black, plastic pot, ensuring that the soil is packed around the roots before placing it into the ground. Watermelons need a lot of space to grow — at least 76 centimetres between each plant — but eventually the entire field will be covered in green, with proper mesh row covers until they begin to flower.
“You’ll do well,” Kaworu says to the seedling, patting the mound of soil softly with his gloved hand.
Somehow he knows this as truth.
***
At night Kaworu dreams he’s a god. He calls himself an angel. Sometimes he has a number. Other times he’s called Tabris.
In a ruined building next to a solitary tree, there’s a boy standing awkwardly in front of a piano. The building is larger than anything Kaworu has ever seen and yet he knows it intimately. It used to be an underground nerve centre: exposed and out in the open, drying out like an empty husk. The sea is bright red and the sun always seems like it’s setting, never overhead and never rising but always sinking slowly below the horizon, painting the crumbling walls in pinks and oranges and reds.
They always play the piano together and the boy’s face opens beautifully — his smile wide and his eyes sparkling. Kaworu thinks that the boy is the most beautiful thing he’s ever seen in his life.
The boy never says his name, yet Kaworu knows that this is Shinji Ikari. He also knows that he’s in love with Shinji Ikari and would do anything to protect him.
“Our names are listed in the Book of Life,” he tells Shinji. “We’ll keep meeting each other.”
He apologizes for misunderstanding Shinji’s happiness.
In another dream, he’s talking to Kaji. He calls him Ryoji and Kaji calls him Commander Nagisa. Kaji tells him that he wanted Shinji to make him happy.
Something in Kaworu fights this idea. He wanted Shinji to make him happy but he also genuinely wanted Shinji to be happy. Kaworu opens his mouth to tell Kaji this — that the two aren’t mutually exclusive and it’s all messier than he would have liked because he likes neat and precise things not messy things — but he says something about death instead.
Everything in this dream is already decided. He cannot say anything different than what he’s already said in the past.
“That’s why I repeatedly have to play a role in this predestined circular narrative for all eternity,” Kaworu says.
A boy — Shinji, Kaworu’s mind screams, Shinji — reaches out his hand.
Kaji tells him that his job is done as they look out over the Seto Inland Sea. The sea is no longer red but blue.
Kaworu wakes up every day at five with tears in his eyes.