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The world pulses red below them, and they watch under the blackness of the eternal sky the roiling of the sea. The physical shape they assumed is falling to pieces. The end is not to come, nor the beginning. It is done.
"It is done," says the being who shapes himself as a boy with grey hair and red eyes.
"The choice is given. We are no more," says the being who shapes herself as a girl with blue hair and red eyes.
"We have never been," he says, smiling. "Never us. Never you. Never I. Never were."
"And yet there is I, and there is you," she says, impassive. "We are not returned to what once were."
"There is I and there is you." He closes his eyes. The remains of the world turns below him, red and empty. "The heart chooses its own shape. So goes the gift that was given us."
"The heart is a wish." She looks up. The remains of the moon spins above her, bloody and lost. "The shape is formed from the heart of others. So goes the name they have given me."
His smile grows wistful, like he is saying the last words of someone who never was, and never will be again. "He called me Kaworu. Nagisa Kaworu."
She looks at him impassively, like a mirror of someone she wished to be and never could become. "They called me Ayanami Rei. It is a wish. A wish for me to be Ayanami Rei."
"A wish for you to be you."
They both look away to the eternal sleepless stars, nameless and dreamless. The passage of countless aeons churn beneath their feet, but the stars know not the names that they are given. They are fortunate. They are desolate. They are innocent. They are lost.
Somewhere under these stars is a boy named Ikari Shinji, who chooses to wake on this world of pitilessness without end.
They only have for him a wish, though they were never made for any wish but one.
"You wished to return to nothingness. I saw it," says the being that was once Nagisa Kaworu, not unkindly.
"You wished to return to nothingness. I know it," says the being that was once Ayanami Rei, not without understanding.
There is not much else to say. Words are not born for them, only the peace of eternal nothingness that seeps from the bottom of their existence, the nothingness that they once were and will become again.
It is a dream that they are here. It is a dream that they once had a heart. It is a dream that their hearts had a shape, that their forms once drew breath, and wished, and hoped.
"A dream no more than an instant," says the being that was once Ayanami Rei, impassive, as the children of her true self remembers her.
"A dream that lasts forever," says the being that was once Nagisa Kaworu, smiling, as a child of hers remembers him.
"We are meant to live forever," says the being that was called Lilith.
"Forever is nothingness," says the being that was called Adam.
"Nothingness is death," says the being that was Lilith.
"And death is only a form that life takes," says the being that was Adam.
The sea of life rushes to the shore, the silence of the stars lies still. Somewhere in the world below, life will begin to find its own shape again.
It is their wish. Their single wish.
"We will cease to exist," says the being that a boy once dreamed as hope. "But our wishes will remain."
"And wishes will become knowledge that passes to the earth," says the being that a boy once dreamed as love. "And perhaps one day, it will reach him. Someday, as this world turns again."
"A selfish wish."
"It is the self that gives us form."
Ayanami Rei looks back at him, and as she fades into nothingness, she thinks : I wish for a world where you are not alone, Ikari-kun.
She stands on the red sea and watches birds take flight in the summer heat. She is the words first spoken from mother to child, she is the hope in the human heart, she smiles for him in the light of the moon and the monstrousity of sadness, and then she is no more.
Nagisa Kaworu watches as she is gone, watches as the oblivion he longed for called him home. He is nowhere and nothing, no more than the beginning and the end, and in the music of the sunset he thinks : If there is such a thing as what comes after, I wish I could be born to live for you, Ikari Shinji-kun.
And then he is gone.