Archive of Our Own

“Shinji, you have to listen to me…”

“no!” he burst into tears when he grabbed me by hand and pushed me towards the door of his bedroom.

One after another, the strings in my heart cut, crying out in pain, as his fingers gripped my shirt.

“You... you!..” He was shaking, hitting my chest with his fists. “You’re making me angry! You're pissing me off!”

Tears were falling down his swollen face. I was crying along with him, my vision blurry, I could only see his brown hair and watery eyes.

It could not, could not go on like this!

“please, just listen to me!” I cupped his face in my palms and wiped away the tears from his cheeks with my thumbs. I was holding his trembling, thin face in my fingers, and I thought that at any moment he would come crashing down on me like porcelain.

Sniffing, he immediately shook his head and grabbed my wrists.

“You don't know anything!” he yelled and hit my chest again. Pushed me away yet once again... “you don't understand, do you? If you knew what was going on, you wouldn't be behaving like this!”

The sound of my heart cracking echoed through each wall of my mind palace. The internal cramping felt like needles inside my ribs.

“Why do you think I don't know?!” I exclaimed with all the strength I had left. “Do you think I haven't been in your place?! Do you think I’ve never wanted to finish everything with one stroke of hand?! Do you think I don't want exactly the same thing as you do at this stage of my life that I'm stuck in?!”

“If so, then why are you still alive?! Why haven't you finished everything yet?!”

The calm before the storm, my breath melting on my lungs..

“Because I love you!” I burst out and gripped his shoulders to jerk him a bit, maybe that way he would be brought back to his senses. “don’t you understand? I love you, okay?! I have no idea how to leave the world where you are. Can you make out my words now?!

I stared into his eyes, at his swollen lips, wet eyelashes and non-stop twitching fingers, always fluttering like butterfly wings.

“Then... if…” he blurted out. “Then, there’s nothing more left for you here, is there?” he looked up at me and looked into my soul with pure surprise. “Or what do I even have for you to love... thus, If I do, then why don't you die with me? there’s no point in living, is there? We live for nothing in the end…”

I felt weak in my knees. I felt tingling in my bones, as if at any moment I would fall into the grave that was being dug right under my feet.

had he seriously nothing left?!.. had he lost all hope?! Was he really so dry from the desire to live?!

Did I never mean anything to him that would cost him his life? As he did - to me.

Was it so easy for him to...

“You are not saying that,” I said in a low voice. “You don't mean that...”

“what were you even expecting from me?” He clenched his fists tightly and looked at the floor, gritting his teeth, as if he couldn’t dare to look at me anymore. “What had you been thinking all this time? Did you think I was kidding? That I would ever choose to pursue life? That... I wanted to stay here?” He looked up at me, like an Eva - soullessly... carnivorously, inhumanly...

“I... I...” My voice dropped, a bitter ball stuck in my throat. “How can you say that...”

“oh, why are you so surprised?” he looked inside my pupils, as in a traitors, wrapping his hands around his arms. “did you think I was dumb? Making a fool out of me… thought that I was really going to stay here?”

My body started shaking. Burning tears came down straming on my face.

Did you really think I would ever have wanted to have a hope of happiness in life with you?

My selfish heart broke like glass. Every past attempt to turn him around, back, towards living flashed before my eyes. Every night, spent in crying... every evening wrapped up in a blanket, full of hugs and back rubs... every morning, filled with the hums of lullabies, to get a scared child back to sleep...

My tongue slipped into my stomach.

after everything we've been through together...

The purple fire in my heart vaporized.

I lost my ears. I could no longer hear his whisper, the howl of his tears... I could only hear the sound of the wind. A gust of breeze at the cemetery that carried the bits of silver ashes in the air. Lullaby of Death...Song of Infernal War. A shiver went through my body. I was cold in a second. I put my hand on my mouth to stop myself from screaming.

I could never have thought... I could never have imagined what it would be like to feel fear towards death. I never thought it would have ever come so close to me.

Never in my life could I have imagined that I would be so shaken with terror everyday, not knowing what to expect in the morning of the next.

My sinful, selfish soul...didn't Shinji ever stop to think that it would be impossible for me to continue living after he left me?!

God...

I removed my hand from my mouth and snarled at him after regaining consciousness.

“Give me the knife, Shinji” I barely swallowed, but I pronounced the words clearly. All this time, all this time... enough already!

The boy turned pale. He couldn't say anything.

“Did I stutter?” I straightened up and wiped my tears so that I could look at him better. Look at that gray face... on which even once to see a smile was like putting the warmth of heavens down to my knees. I had to see him smile in life... I couldn't just let go of his hand... I wouldn't let him go, even if he hated me for it to the depths of his soul’s core. “Tell me where it is.” I repeated. “now.”

Shinji pouted, then opened his mouth as if to say something, but closed it again. He stood facing me for a while, pleading, his eyes filling with tears again, silence bloodying my ears with his unsaid words.

“Don't do this to me... Don't you dare, Kaworu. I know that you won't. You will not do this to me!”

“I'm sorry...” I whispered and shook my head.

Oh, did I recall... each one of his loving caresses, which stood not for life, but for death. Each longing of his, towards death, not for life. Every wish, made with his cheek resting on the lap of death... every time, forever and always. His back turned on life.

always.

Back turned on hope...

and me, too...

“I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Shinji,” the ball stuck in my throat was suffocating.

You are selfish, selfish, selfish, selfish!..

“But you know, I have to do this.“ I tried saying it loudly, but I couldn’t.

Shinji's tears fell on the floor. He started backing away like a cornered animal - as if I was going to hurt him.

My heart got torn open once again.

"No," he whispered and shook his head.

“Shinji...”

“No! You will not do this to me!” he hit the bedroom wall with his back. “You won't do that...”

“I'm sorry, Shinji..”

“No!” He waved his index finger at my face. “Enough! You are unbearable already! Leave me alone!”

My soul couldn't take any more second of it. I gritted my teeth. unbearable...

"Now, Shinji," I repeated mercilessly and the demon clawed another piece of my soul as I saw the anguish on his face. Suffering he was tired of fighting but he didn’t let me be the bearer of arms he would rest in.

“No...”

“Shinji...”

“I will not tell you...”

“You know damn well that you should!..”

“I said, no!”

“FOR FUCK’S SAKE, YOU KNOW THERE’S NO OTHER WAY, DON’T YOU?!”

“NO! NO, NO! I WILL NOT DO IT, I CAN...”

And before he could resist again, I grabbed him by his shirt, pulled him into me with all my strength and kissed him on the lips. Teary lips, like I had done before, but only once.

Shinji's muscles were tense. It was as if something was holding him back... forbidding him to live. He did not allow himself to run towards happiness. Burning tears gathered in my eyes again. I’m begging you, begging you to stay with me... I’m begging you, God, save him for me for I don’t have enough strength to do it by myself! Save him for me!. I’m begging you, I’m begging you, I’m begging you not to leave me! to keep breathing! God, I would’ve done whatever, given whatever, hunted down whatever to you if it meant you keeping Shinji with me in this world. You may hate me, oh, so very much, but please, shinji, keep living!

Cought off guard, Shinji stared at my eyelashes, but after a few warm seconds, he came down like a marionette with strings loose and closed his eyes with a sigh...

still not free...

still stuck...

Free for just a few seconds...

If it meant turning those seconds into minutes, hours, days, months, years, centuries, eons… oh, how much I would’ve given away! But I was worth nothing… he would hate me. loathe me.

And the moment he kissed me back was the one I took for myself to slide my free hand inside his left trousers pocket.

Despised, I clenched my fist around the warm handle of a folding knife. Having taken the hold of it, to my knuckles breaking, I put and end to the kiss. before he could realize what I was going to do, with his cheeks flushed, I mercilessly threw it out of the tinted window.

At last! At last!..

There was shock in his pupils. That trembling gaze of his again, and the silver of his eyes. A surprised look... a confused soul... a tired child.

He looked at the window for a few seconds, and then turned his head silently towards me...

“I trusted you!” he growled from the depths of his broken heart, and in a second his face was wrinkled as a fury of an animals cought at me with my throat. “I trusted you, you cursed, cursed, cursed!!!”

"I know," I said quietly and let him slap me hard.

“I trusted you!” he grabbed my shirt so strong the buttons came loose. he put me down and sat on top of me. “I hate you, I hate you, I hate you!”

He hit my chest with his loose fists until he ran out of strength to do so, and rested his hed on it, exhausted, and finally he allowed himself to sob.

“My only hope... I had nothing else.” My shoulder being burnt by his tears... My heart, too.

I barely had the strength to put my arms around his weakened body.

No idea… he had not even an inkling of how much it cost me to listen to his words.

What had they done to him... WHAT HAD THEY DONE!

God, please, save my Shinji… I’m begging you, save him for me!

"I had to do it, Shinji," I whispered, heartbroken. “You know this yourself...”

“If only you had allowed me…” He waved his fist in the air and hid his nose in my shoulder, sniffing. “If you hadn’t interfered at all...”

“oh, Shinji, you still don’t get it…” I cupped his face in my trembling fingers and tearfully looked at his face, dried up of every color, not even the slightest drop of joy nor hope on it... My soul finally sank. And I whispered to him with the last bit of strength left in my body. “I love you...” and slowly, very slowly, I kissed him once more, only once.

I knew he wouldn't believe me until he came to realize everything himself... I was dying to admit it, but I knew to the point of pain, he would always, always think of me as a traitor... But my heart still had hope for something in its smallest corner.

As we fell asleep in the corner of the floor, drowning in each other's tears, my heart at least hoped that it would not meet the next day with a cold body in its arms.