2023-11-10: Who Can't Stay Human?
- Log: 2023-11-10- Who Can't Stay Human?
- Cast: Akane Shinjo, Kaworu Nagisa
- Where: Division Train
- OOC - IC Date: 0097-11-10
- Summary: Akane finally asks Kaworu some of the questions that have been on her mind.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Strange things have been swirling around NERV, and in particular, around its Evangelion Team; Akane's had a lot of time to dwell on those things. She doesn't exactly have a lot of people she can ask -- but she does have a unique opportunity to ask, in relative secret, while they're on this long voyage.
After some consideration, she's decided to ask the more familiar of the Evangelion branch's pilots, rather than risk someone new. Some of that is just comfort, but some of it is...
... that the longer she sits with it, the more mysteries swirl around Kaworu Nagisa in particular. There's something about the operation near Hakone that doesn't add up to Akane -- not quite, anyway -- unless Kaworu has some sort of special knowledge. There's a lot of things it could be, but Akane does trust him... which means the best solution is to just ask, right?
She shows up at his quarters, thus, knocking sharply on the door. "Kaworu," Akane says, addressing him yobisute. "Are you in? And is now a good time to talk for a bit...?"
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
Within his quarters, which are right next to Mari's, Kaworu sits on his cot. It's a small room; he doesn't need a lot of physical space, as evidenced by the postage stamp apartment he used to live in. Aside from the cot, there is an electric keyboard--not something he brought, but something that happened to be among the gear on the Division Train--and that's it.
As Akane approaches the door to his quarters, she may hear the keyboard melody of Ranka Lee's Azure Ether. The notes are soft yet precise, lush with the yearning that Kaworu felt when he originally wrote the song.
His thoughts, as always, are on Shinji, after all. But it's not just Shinji, though he is first; there's also Rei, and the circumstances she must be dealing with now; there's Guy and his grief at the end of ChuuRyuu, something Kaworu seemed not to react to much at the time but has mirrored his own silent sadness at Duma's fate. There's even Asuka, though that's a more mechanical acknowledgement of his own failure with regards to Unit-03.
And of course there's the current, immediate crises like the King of Ruin and Yapool, but this song is not for them.
Rap rap rap, goes the door; Akane calls out from behind it. Kaworu's playing stops. He opens the door and greets her with a subdued but sincere smile.
"Akane. It is," he replies. He takes a step to one side to let her in. Whether the door is shut behind her or not depends on Akane. For his part, Kaworu leans on the wall and cedes the bed-as-place-to-sit to her. "What did you want to talk about?"
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane takes a moment to appreciate the music; she's always thought Kaworu was a better player than Akane herself. She'd like to take the time to get better, but even as she's chewed through her homework and her intelligence work really fast... there just hasn't been enough time to do everything she wants to.
Taking a step in and shutting the door, Akane looks at Kaworu for a moment, straightening out her 3G duty half-jacket (with hood!) and composing herself a bit. "Something hasn't sat right with me ever since the operation near Tokyo-3. For a while there was just so much going on that I kinda couldn't, but..."
Akane breathes in, then out. "... I know Hebikura's deal. I know a lot more about Alexis's deal than I used to, too. And I noticed you seemed like you knew something everyone else didn't about the new Evangelion unit."
Leaning against the door, Akane says, directly: "I'm between you knowing the future, you being able to see a bunch of universes at once like that guy in the Tarabaman Zora stage show where R shows up, and you having had some kinda deal in the previous universe 3G went to. Maybe all of it! But your deal with Alexis doesn't add up if you aren't..." She wobbles a hand. "Age is weird for a kaiju. I get that. So I'm not gonna ask you if you're not a teenager? But I am gonna ask you if you've experienced more stuff than the time you've been alive."
It's a hedge, because Akane doesn't quite have enough information... but she does have a lot of information.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
Sometimes that's just how it is. It helps Kaworu, and doesn't help Akane, that the need to sleep and eat is a factor. So much time to do other things frees up when you don't need to do that.
Kaworu himself is in his plug suit; he's taken to wearing a white windbreaker that he picked up at some point for something to tuck his hands into, and also something to clip his (formerly Shinji's) SDAT to. The earbuds aren't in, naturally. He was just playing music for himself, and now he's talking to Akane. But it is there.
Whatever it is that he thought Akane might want to talk about, though, Kaworu didn't anticipate that she'd just come right out and say it. She really has come quite a long way since the days she was the 'God' of Tsutsujidai. Kaworu's smile fades as she goes into it, laying out her points of information, her theories on what that might mean, and then finally asks a direct question.
Well. More or less a direct question. Kaworu understands the spirit of it.
"...I have," he quietly confirms.
He doesn't offer more than that for the moment. But it's a start.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane nods to Kaworu. "Don't worry. I'm not gonna tell anyone," she says; despite herself, she's still someone who's scared of upsetting someone or putting them on the defensive. "I actually kinda figured... it'd get weird between us if I had figured that much out and didn't tell you?"
She remains leaning on the closed door. Part of her is nervous enough to want an escape in short order, and to be difficult to escape; she's not thinking of it consciously, but it informs her actions.
"Were you trying to die or have something horrible happen, or whatever, so Asuka and Rei wouldn't?" she asks, next; it's as reasonable a supposition as any from what she knows. A yes would tell her things, and a no would tell her things too.
The questions come without judgment. She just seems curious.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
"Thank you. I appreciate it," Kaworu replies--both of Akane's promise not to tell anyone, and her honesty in telling him she had figured this much out. It's not something that Kaworu is used to having people figure out, really. Given her connection to Alexis, and her position in GGG, perhaps he should have anticipated that she might put at least some of the pieces together... but he didn't.
He doesn't try to keep her in the room. She is free to lean on the door and free to let herself out as she wishes. Kaworu remains leaning on the wall, his hands tucked in his windbreaker pockets, out of arm's length even if they weren't.
"No," he replies. "And yes."
Very helpful! But both answers are true. Kaworu's intent hadn't been to die, or to have something horrible happen to him; but it had been to keep anything horrible from happening to Rei or Asuka (if more for Shinji's sake in Asuka's case). He could go more into it, but...
Going into his imaginary memories isn't easy--for him, or for others. He's simply too used to accepting that Lilim wouldn't understand, even if Akane is different from the usual Lilim.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane's open-mindedness and imagination play as her strengths, here. Once you're god of your own little slice of psychic space, a lot of stuff starts to seem less weird. When leaving that position leads you to take up with an organization that prevented people from the previous universe from stealing the present's dark matter...
... yeah, just about anything is on the table. If the whole world's weird, you gotta be weird too if you wanna make your dream come true~.
"Okay, so you think what happened to them wouldn't have happened to you?" Akane asks. If he didn't go into that intending for something horrible to happen for him, that suggests he thinks he could have averted the Angel attack...
... that leads her around to something. "Hey, Kaworu," Akane says, lips pursing slightly. It'd be nice to have a straw to worry at. "How do you feel about the stuff the main branch does? The whole... 'there's absolutely no way Angels and humans could ever coexist and if we see one we gotta hit it with infinity bombs' thing."
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
Especially when other people's 'weird' is your 'normal state of being.' Kaworu and Akane both understand that very well.
But the specific points of their respective weirdness aren't a completely overlapping Venn diagram. There are things Akane doesn't understand that Kaworu won't tell her. It's thus on her to have to present her theories and push them.
...Asking direct questions helps. Kaworu might not necessarily be forthright with the truth, but at the same time, he doesn't ever knowingly lie. He can barely manage to let a misleading yet technically true statement stand, and sometimes not even that.
Accordingly: "No," he replies. "Something else would have happened. But I would have managed, most likely."
...That's a reality he has yet to actually experience, so he can't know for sure, after all. But as an Angel, Kaworu knows well he could have dealt with another Angel. There's just the question of if he could have so without revealing himself to the world and NERV as also an Angel.
His expression softens with a melancholy smile when Akane brings up the main branch's hardline stance on Angels. "It's unfortunately true. Angels and Lilim cannot coexist in the long term," he replies, turning his gaze to the opposite wall. "Even Duma, who loved the Lilim, could not abide allowing them to be as they are. In their view, their only chance for coexistence was to remove something fundamental from them." His eyelashes sink along with his gaze. "...It's very sad."
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
There's a long pause as Kaworu gives his answers. She turns each over in her head. Something about how desperately he'd clung to the idea that he was 'kaiju' and not 'human,' in a way that Akane couldn't quite understand from a fellow 'part-kaiju' at the time...
... Hmmm.
"Mmhm," Akane says, worrying at her lower lip with her teeth for a few seconds.
"You're a pretty lonely person, aren't you, Kaworu?" Akane asks, glancing off. "Like Alexis. Like... Juggler." She's decided to dispense with that illusion, too, while it's just the two of them, here, in this space.
She could ask the direct question. The obvious one. Kaworu's always struggled to lie. ... but she gives him just a little space. Just a little.
It's a kindness he often gave her, after all.
"Do you think you can coexist with humans in the long term?" she asks, hot on the heels of her last question.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
You're a pretty lonely person, aren't you, Kaworu?
"...."
For a moment, Kaworu doesn't respond; his gaze remains lowered, his delicate lashes sunken. Like Alexis; like Juggler. (He registers no surprise there. Akane said she knew Hebikura's secret, and he believed her.) He waits for the obvious next question; it doesn't come. She asks something else instead. Something a little bit more subtle.
He raises his head to smile bittersweetly at her.
"It's my dearest wish," he replies.
It's 100% true. And it is not actually an answer to her question.
"As for being lonely... it's true that I am, sometimes," he continues. "But that's true of many people. Despite everything, I have met those with whose souls I was able to connect. Shinji-kun... Rei... Mary... and many, many more. For this, I am eternally grateful." His smile turns more sweet than bitter, even as he gazes off into the middle distance. "As long as they are here, I am never alone."
Shall I go, all alone, on an azure journey? ...so were the lyrics of the melody he'd been playing earlier on the keyboard.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Akane knows what kind of answer a non-answer like that hides. She's glad to have given him the room to move; at the same time, it all-but-confirms her intuitions. She starts putting more things in her fact pattern; these, she'll keep to herself, for now.
"... Okay," Akane affirms, softly. It's all the answer the situation needs. "I'm pretty happy to have had the chance to connect with you, too, Kaworu." She scoots forward, looking at Kaworu with a genuine, serious expression.
"... I hope you can go on treasuring those connections as long as you want. And... hey, if anyone can figure out something different..."
Her gaze turns back, impossibly far, across space, to a place once hers -- a place now as real as anything, and very much not hers.
... but it's better that way.
"... uh, let me try that again," Akane says, suddenly a little sheepish as she realizes her sentence wasn't quite going to add up. "Don't stop believing in the miracle of other people." It's similar to his sentiment -- and yet so different, too.
"... Is there anything you wanna ask me? It's weird if I don't give you the same kinda shot I just took at you," she offers, awkwardly.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
In turn, Kaworu appreciates Akane's circumspection. He knows, based on the context of their conversation so far, what she's really asking; he knows what he has essentially told her; he expects that she's intelligent enough to see the answer for what it is. As such, when Akane leaves it at that, and expresses how happy she is to have connected with him too...
He doesn't tear up. But there's something in his red eyes that shines as his smile deepens.
"Thank you. You've been a very good friend, Akane. I'm glad we had the chance to meet." Whether they have a chance to ever meet again or not.
The miracle of other people, though, hm... Perhaps, in this world that criss-crosses over so many times, that might be able to happen for him. He shuts his eyes, but his smile continues unabated.
"Miracles do happen, over and over," he recites--a refrain of the soul, as it were. "I'll continue to have faith in that."
He laughs a little, the faintest of chuckles, at Akake's counter-offer. "It isn't weird. I've already asked you many questions over the course of our friendship," he reassures her. "You're only just getting around to doing the same." He opens his eyes to gaze at her fondly. "Isn't that right?"
After that... there is a keyboard right there. There's nothing wrong with playing a little music together--perhaps Kaworu providing the piano for Akane's voice.
<Pose Tracker> Akane Shinjo has posed.
Her own eyes -- browner than they've been, but not without a crimson tinge, even still -- meet Kaworu's as they shine, and she favors him with a smile.
"Then I think we've discussed everything I was thinking about." She nods a little, and when he points out she's only now getting around to asking questions when he's been doing so the whole time...
"Hehehehe... if that's how this is going it's gonna be a long time before we're on even footing," she giggles out, before looking at the piano. "Mind if I stay for a few songs?"
She is inclined, eventually, to sing; she's been trying to do that more, ever since the pageant. SHe had a lot of fun with it... and it's definitely more fun together with someone than alone.
<Pose Tracker> Kaworu Nagisa has posed.
"Not at all. Please do, even," Kaworu encourages her, pushing himself lightly off the wall.
If you can do that one thing, you'll be a hero...