This story contains mondo huge spoilers for the entire Evangelion animé. Don't read it if you haven't seen the whole series. You'll kick yourself for ruining a fabulous exercise in existentialism if you do. And don't read it just yet if you don't like reading works in progress. I'm trying to get it written as fast as I can, but I've got twenty-six chapters, this prologue and an epilogue planned, and only the prologue and most of the first chapter are written.
I thought it was obvious from the summary line, but here's the info again: this is a male/male relationship story (also known as slash or yaoi), so don't read it if you missed the entire point of the last few episodes of the series.
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Eleison
By Aithine
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The mind is its own place, and in itself
Can make a Heaven of Hell, a Hell of Heaven.
John Milton, Paradise Lost
Book I, lines 254-255
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Prologue: Death & Rebirth
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Once upon a time, there lived a boy named Shinji and a boy named Kaworu.
They loved each other very much.
Shinji was an Evangelion pilot (no one really knew what Evangelions were or what they could really do but humans used the bio-robots anyway), and his job was to help NERV defeat the angels that were attacking Tokyo-3. (NERV was his father's organization, created specifically to fight the angels.)
No one knew what the angels were, either. (No one knew much of anything, really.) All the scientists could discover was that the angels were biological beings of some kind; it couldn't even be determined if they were from Earth. They were bizarre, incommunicative, non-humanoid beings that continuously attacked NERV headquarters as they tried to reach Adam, the first of their kind humans had ever seen, who was stored deep within the planet.
The seemingly-human Kaworu was the last of seventeen angels.
But before Shinji found this out, they met and became friends. For the first time in his short life (for he was only fourteen years old), Shinji had someone in his life who cared about him as himself and didn't see him as just Shinji-the-Eva-pilot or that-hot-chick-Misato's-roommate or Yui-and-Gendo's-criminally-neglected-son.
However, their friendship was doomed because Kaworu was forced to make a choice between two really bad endings to their brief time together: he could continue to exist and all humans (including his beloved Shinji) would die, or he could die and humans could continue to exist.
Kaworu chose to die so that Shinji could live; unfortunately for Shinji, this meant that he had to perform his role as an Eva pilot and kill Kaworu, as Kaworu was demolishing NERV headquarters at the time.
Shinji didn't handle it well.
He went into shock and had a strange dream that told him he had to learn to judge for himself what was good and what was evil, that he alone was responsible for how his world appeared and he alone could decide who he was going to grow up to be. He saw many parallel worlds in the dream, where the same people surrounded him, all in different roles, save Kaworu.
Shinji wanted nothing so much as to believe his dream was true; he wanted to believe that he had the power to change what the world would be like when he woke up in the morning. He didn't want to have to pilot an Eva, he didn't want to be desperately seeking his father's approval and he didn't want anyone to hurt anymore.
But most of all Shinji wanted the one person who loved him unconditionally to come back and be a part of his life forever.
He wanted the chance to meet Kaworu in another time and place where they were free to live and love as they chose.
Far, far away from the burden of saving or destroying the world.
originally posted 3.17.02
revised 8.29.02
Please feel free to leave both comments and constructive critiques--I adore both! :)
Yes, this is sort of an alternate universe story, building upon a premise given in the last two episodes. No, I'm not going to tell you were it's heading just yet, except to say that yes, it's a Shinji/Kaworu story. *eg*
Eleison: the Latin transliteration of the Greek word for "mercy"; it comes from the short liturgical prayer "Kyrie eleison, Christe eleison, Kyrie eleison." ("Lord, have mercy. Christ, have mercy. Lord, have mercy.") I chose to use just "mercy" for the title because, while Eva bastardizes a lot of religious symbolism, the nitty gritty of a specific religion isn't what the story's necessarily all about; so I'm taking the specific actual higher being references out of the title. (In case anybody cares and wondered why I didn't call the story Kyrie Eleison. *g*)
Authorial Abasement: Muchas gratitude to Clare and Mer, who are always willing to deliver a swift boot to the head when I desperately (or even not so desperately) need it. *vbg* Many, many thanks also go to tmelange, a thoughtful, provocative, thought-provoking editor and friend who likes to make me stretch my brain, even when I'm too tired and swamped with work to debate religious dogma and who demands nothing but the best. Thanks, dollface. *g*
Here's hoping you three don't get completely exasperated and give up on me as I try my best to finish this within a reasonable amount of time. *vbg*