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Flesh. That's all Shinji could see out of his Eva’s display, ripping, red and bloody flesh, intestines and chunks bigger than houses. A disgusting half-human half-metal face staring back at him. Asuka. He screamed.
The wind was howling as his Eva rose up and up through the clouds, as though the Earth was protesting something so otherworldly and unnatural. Shinji hadn't noticed. The rushing in his ears was loud enough and the blood-smelling sickly sweet LCL was drowning him. A pure-white figure rose through the clouds, something resembling- no, a mocking, desecrated visage of Rei Ayanami. It stared at him with empty eyes, threatening to swallow him whole.
There was nowhere to turn, nothing to do, no one to save him. Asuka is dead, Rei is gone, Misato, Kaji, Ritsuko, his father, all dead. All rotting corpses, some joining the enticing forever-symphony of instrumentality. Regardless, he was still here, still piloting the Eva, where did all the suffering get him now?
Shinji sobbed, refusing to look anymore. Shaking, he clutched Misato’s parting gift to him tightly, letting it fall between his hands like his last thread to humanity, slipping further and further. Somewhere in his overwhelmed, tired mind he could hear himself talking, whisper-shouted pleas of safety to Rei. He had nothing left to give.
“Is this better?” A familiar, warm voice pushed through his mental fog, wiping all thoughts as he looked up to Kaworu’s face, bathed in divine light, gazing right back at him.
“Have you been right there, this entire time?” Shinji was almost surprised to hear his own clear voice talking back, but he was more focused on the soft, unimaginably soft, expression Kaworu was giving him. He looked holy, he was a god that Shinji would never let down again, he was the light and the life and everything in between.
Kaworu lifted his heavenly arms up to cradle the Eva in his arms, and Shinji felt himself slipping into something that resembled tranquillity. Kaworu was here, so everything has to be alright now. He would beg at the Angel's feet for his forgiveness, he would give everything up for another smile, another soft look, another stolen slide of skin to skin in the short moments of privacy they were granted during their time together.
Kaworu was sewing him together and ripping him apart all at the same time. Shinji couldn’t hear the wind anymore, or taste the blood in the LCL. He closed his eyes, wrapping his arms around himself and trusting Kaworu with his soul. He can’t make any more decisions, his brain is too tired and he can feel himself slipping away further and further. Kaworu’s gentle, divine voice in his ears whispering sweet nothings and words spun from silk.
Shinji refuses to pick up on anything else, like the slightly off-tone in the Angel’s voice, or that his hands look more cold than invitingly warm, or that he feels like if he looked close enough, he could see Ayanami’s corpse behind the holy light. He simply closes his eyes and leaves Kaworu in charge.
The last thing he can remember is the image of Kaworu’s gentle face, and a warm, piercing feeling running through his stomach and blood.