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He's seven when he gets adopted, not that he's aware that that's what it is when it happens. They don't tell him someone had adopted him or even that he'll be temporarily under someone's watch, they simply tell him a man will come to pick him up later. As easy as he takes everything else, Kaworu nods.
Kaji doesn't say anything when he gets in the car with a bag full of everything he owns — nothing much — and they don't talk on the way to his house. It's only when the man leads him to what he claims will be his bedroom that Kaworu is hit with the reality of what happened. He's been essentially adopted.
The realization settles in with something like acceptance, Kaworu tries to feel any type of way about it. He wants to smile, to celebrate and be elated that he won't have to go back to that shit hole where the old farts spend all the money that should go for the improvement of the kids' lives on their own selfish desires.
But part of him is guarded, fully ready to find his way back to the orphanage if it turns out that he's not wanted here. He's aware that he can be more trouble than he's worth and the man who took him in doesn't seem like the type to manage having any sort of responsibility in his life. He seems as awkward as Kaworu feels.
As much as the old men liked to give him grief and go on and on about how much of a nuisance he is, Kaworu has enough self awareness to understand he's actually quite low maintenance as far as children go. He understands what other kids his age can hardly wrap their heads around, he has never whined or thrown any tantrums.
He's as fluid as water running down a waterfall, follows the flow without a hint of resentment and at this point he's gotten used to being told what his life will be. He never asked for any details on his parents, not who they were or why they left him, not their current whereabouts or even their names.
Someone once told him his name was Nagisa Kaworu and he didn't protest, he found no reason to. He never asked if the surname comes from one of his birth parents or wondered who came up with his first name, if it was a decision from the woman who birthed him or from the people working at the orphanage.
Over the course of his life in that place he's watched child after child be taken to a family and it didn't even cross his mind to think much on it, he never tried to ask why they never chose him. It was something he only allowed himself to think about every now and then, late at night when sleep wouldn't come to him.
When they said a man would be taking him in, he didn't ask his name. He went willingly when Kaji came and now he has no rebuttal when the man puts his things in the room he has designated as his, he follows him with his eyes and says nothing. Kaji tells him he can talk to him if he needs anything and says he'll be ordering pizza for dinner.
When he shuts the door and Kaworu is left alone in the first room he's ever had to himself, he doesn't dare wonder how long it will take for this Kaji guy to grow sick of him and send him back.
Instead, he puts the few clothes he owns in the closet he assumes is meant to be his and glances curiously at the box full of toys in the corner of the room.
He can get used to this, assuming it will last.
***
(Admittedly it takes him a while but once he actually understands what's about to happen, all hell breaks loose. His uncle's wife whose name he didn't bother to commit to memory tries to hold him back when he struggles in her hold, throwing himself at his father's feet and clinging to his leg as if that will do anything but make him more likely to leave him behind.
His uncle is a few feet behind them and he's pinching the bridge of his nose and attempting to ignore the scene in front of him. Shinji's father is looking down at him like he's no different than a dead bug squished under the sole of his shoe. Shinji is five and he's always been a frail child but he fights tooth and nail when they try to pry him away from his father as though he's a dog biting someone's leg.
Down, boy, he thinks as he tunes out the words coming out of his mouth because he hates sounding like that and he hates that no matter how much he begs, there isn't a world in which his father would have even considered staying for him. It fills him with inconsolable grief and he kicks his legs frantically when his aunt grabs him and pulls him off of his father right as the man's scowl deepens.
Looking at him as though Shinji disgusts him just by existing and sharing DNA, a last name with him. He's his blood and there's no one left for him now that his mom won't ever be back. Shinji dreads the thought of losing everything and he thinks of his sister, thinks of his father returning to her but leaving him behind. He's not sure what possibility hurts the most, the one in which he leaves them both or the one where he leaves Shinji and raises Rei as if he never existed.
She was always his favorite. He knows that and it shouldn't hurt as much as it does but now that his mom isn't here to pepper his cheeks with kisses until he laughs, Shinji understands he won't be loved ever again. Rei will forget about him and his father will finally have an opportunity to rid himself of his biggest disappointment. Shinji recalls the dark shadow over the man's eyes whenever he saw Shinji on his mom's loving arms.
No loving arms for him ever again. That's over.
His father doesn't even spare him a glance back, he walks away as if he doesn't remember ever having a son. One day he'll see Shinji again and he might not even remember but Shinji will never be able to forget, he will always live in that moment until he takes his last breath. He will always be nothing but a scared little boy clinging to his daddy's leg, begging him not to leave him.
Even when his father is gone, he won't relent. He throws himself at the floor, he bangs his little fists on the ground until it hurts and he bawls his eyes out. He screams, he wails, he rages.
But his rage hasn't and never will make any difference, in the end.)
***
Unbeknownst to himself, Kaworu ends up becoming quite popular among his peers. It's the first time he's ever went to school and he's expecting it to be the same as any other occasion in which he's around others, he's ready to be scrutinized, judged and seen as odd. As normal as he can pretend to be, the act always fails when he asks something that should be common sense.
When people realize his weirdness isn't reduced to his unusual hair color and his blood red eyes, they tend to think of him differently. The other kids at the orphanage didn't exactly exclude him, that would imply he actually made an effort to join in on their playtime or their conversations.
As it was, he was content in watching them from a distance and they never cared enough to attempt to get him to come closer. Even now — at ten years old — Kaworu knows people find him unsettling. It doesn't faze him when he catches the teachers sending him mildly horrified glances when he stares at them.
It had unnerved Kaji too, before he got used to it. Now he sees it as more of a quirk Kaworu hasn't grown out of no matter how much it bothers the people he bores his unique eyes into. Maybe it's something he should avoid, if only for the benefit of coming off as less of a threat and subsequently making friends.
But Kaworu has never minded his own company and when he finds himself gaining popularity, it's almost entirely accidentally. People talk to him and he acts as he always has and likely always will. Things that made him stand out before apparently draw people to him as well, as he's come to discover.
Part of it is because of his looks and he knows it. Girls follow him with their confusingly adoring gazes whenever he goes, they giggle at his frankness and treat it as some sort of dry humor. He doesn't see the point in telling them he means everything he says, he doesn't get why it's so funny. It's just what he thinks.
It bothers him that his popularity is a direct result of his classmates somehow misinterpreting who he is as a person, choosing to believe he's something else entirely. But he doesn't have the heart to do anything to jeopardize these newfound friendships, not when Kaji looks so proud when he announces he's made friends when he gets home from school.
No one has ever cared so much if he has friends or not, Kaworu isn't sure what to do living with someone who cares for him so openly.
All he knows is that he doesn't want to lose that.
***
("How was school today, dear?" his uncle's wife asks over dinner.
In lieu of a response, Shinji glares down at his plate as if he can transmit to her a silent message to let it go. She's always asking stuff like that, as if it matters if he's adapting to school well — he's not —, if people are nice to him — they're not —, if he's made any friends yet — he hasn't. As if anything could even change if he was honest for a change instead of giving her the passive answer she wants.
Shinji is ten and other kids feel like shadows with blurred faces that swim around him in large groups, a swarm of children that feel like toddlers to him because he can't for the life of him figure out how they can be so damn cheerful and energetic all the time. Crossing his arms on top of each other at his desk, he rests his head and tries not to cringe when their yells assault his ears.
They're all too loud, too many, too naive, too happy, too carefree.
Every day, Shinji feels as though he's dragging his feet whenever he walks anywhere out of sheer obligation. He walks like his neck is being pulled down by an invisible anchor that makes it near impossible to move any faster. It doesn't help that the entire world looks like they're moving at a different speed than he is. As always, he's the odd one out.
Kids don't approach Shinji unless they want to make fun of him. They ask him why he's so down all the time, he frowns without an answer in mind and hopes to be left alone. Being bullied would be an improvement at this point, as it stands he doesn't think they even notice him enough to mess with him. Shinji is dead, a walking ghost amongst students. At the house, it isn't much different.
The house, his uncle's house, because it's not home. Home was his mom and her loving arms. It was Rei's rare smiles, the way her red eyes would soften when he would share his toys with her. Home left him behind at his uncle without a second glance but then again, his father was never home, was he? He was there, that much is true but he was only home for Rei and for Shinji's mom.
Never for him.
It's no wonder the kids at school don't care enough to look at him most of the time, he's unremarkable enough that his own father likely doesn't even remember he ever existed. He chews his food mechanically and tries not to think of Rei forgetting what he looks like, the way he fears he's starting to forget her most basic features. His uncle sends him an unreadable look, something that reminds him of the teachers at school.
He's young but he understands at least one fraction of that look is made of pity. And he despises it. He would rather be abandoned than pitied, he decides.
But even he knows that's not true, for being looked at with pity means at least someone is looking at him.)
***
Kaworu's favorite part of living with Kaji is the freedom that comes with it, the knowledge that his privacy won't be invaded and that he has space when he needs it. Kaji is easy to get along with, always has been. He doesn't pry, doesn't ask too many questions, doesn't demand any answers.
The one rule he has is that Kaworu has to come to him whether he wants to or not if he ever thinks he might be in serious trouble. It's another aspect of the man that reminds Kaworu of how much he cares despite his general nonchalant attitude. Anyone else would say he's a terrible guardian, as he treats Kaworu as though he's a roommate.
But that approach does wonders for their relationship, Kaworu can't imagine he would get along with someone who would act more like a responsible adult. Thankfully for him, Kaji doesn't like having authority over anything and anyone. He's never had to deal with curfews, incessant questioning and/or awkward conversations.
When he's fourteen, Kaji has the sudden realization that he's going through what he refers to as "the horrors of puberty" and his response to that is to come to his room, give him a magazine with a naked lady on the cover and tell him to just "do whatever feels right". Somehow this is both a great relief and a big challenge for Kaworu.
His favorite trait of Kaji's is how direct he is about everything, he's never one to sugarcoat or walk around eggshells when an issue arises. But his advice is still vague enough that he's unsure of how to proceed and utterly lost on what a magazine of a chick with her breasts out has to do with this so called puberty.
All he has learned at school about the aforementioned is that it leads to some uncomfortable biological functions, an affinity to sweating and smelling that he fears might catch up to him one day. As it is, Kaworu thankfully doesn't sweat much and has never had issues with his hygiene.
Intrigued, he flips through the magazine Kaji threw at him and tries to figure out on his own how it could possibly relate to puberty. He reads the entire thing as he pushes through his boredom and it never makes sense, nothing written in that has any possible connection with biology and the so-called horrors of adolescence.
Eventually he gives up on it and tells himself he'll understand it when he's older, hopefully. It upsets him to know most boys his age would likely get what Kaji was trying to say without have to conduct further investigation but he has never been like other boys his age. Or girls his age. Or anyone, for that matter.
The look Kaji gives him when he leaves the room does nothing but make his head spin even more but Kaworu tells himself it probably doesn't mean anything.
Every now and then, he takes out the magazine from his things and reads it again, as if he's expecting some hidden coded message to click into his brain by the tenth time he rereads it.
Some things just make no sense to him, he has to learn when to admit defeat.
***
(Living with a grown woman is quite the opposite of what Shinji imagined it would be like. Granted, he had never had much of an idea of how it would be to live with a strange woman because he never pictured himself in the living situation he's in now. But a friend of his father's "friend" — he hesitates to call her that due to the tension between them — has offered to take him in.
It only takes a couple of weeks for him to realize that Misato-san is different from what anyone would expect from a woman her age.
For one, she seems allergic to any sort of housework. She won't do the dishes and only when they're piling up on the sink does she cave in and asks Shinji to do them, as if she's incapable of handling that on her own. He knows she has work but all the time she spends at home is dedicated to downing beer after beer, it awakens a part of him he hadn't known existed before he came to live with her.
A friend of Misato-san who has a frankly obvious crush on her takes her laundry to the laundry room every time she asks, which would be great if she actually took her time to separate the clothes by texture and color. As it is, that's also Shinji's responsibility and while we're at it, add cooking to that list of responsabilidades entrusted to him. A fourteen year old boy.
If he had his way, he wouldn't do it but Shinji knows if he lets Misato-san do the cooking she might burn the apartment down. He also knows if he lets her take care of the dishes, it'll just pile up and look disgusting until she's forced to deal with it. Just like he knows never to enter the bathroom without knocking because Misato-san has a terrible habit of taking showers/baths with the door unlocked.
As it often happens with his life, it somehow manages to get marginally worse when Misato-san takes another teenager in. At this point, it's becoming a strange habit of hers. Every annoying little thing about Misato-san is ten times worse with Asuka. She's louder, lazier and generally more prone to random fits of rage that result in gratuitous verbal and sometimes physical abuse.
Before moving in with Misato-san, he had been concerned about the possibility of making a fool of himself by harboring an inconvenient crush on the woman he would be living with. As it is now, not even a teenage girl his age could ever inspire any sort of sexual interest in him whatsoever. Misato-san and Asuka may be attractive but he's entirely put-off by their attitude.
Still, he is a teenage boy and when he's met with Misato-san holding a magazine he had thought he hid well enough — with a frankly terrifyingly smug look on her face — Shinji is dreading what comes after.
Asuka glares at him throughout the entire hour-long lecture Misato-san gives them, unmerciful as she goes through every aspect of the sexual education they wish they didn't have to get from her.
Shinji desperately wants it to stop but at the same time, he absolutely does not. He knows as soon as Misato-san is done with them, Asuka will beat the shit out of him.)
***
Kaji is the closest thing he has to a father and Kaworu is mildly annoyed at himself for how long it took him to reach such an obvious conclusion. He tells Kaji everything and when they tell him he needs parental permission for anything at school, it's Kaji he goes to for that. It's strange how it hits him so abruptly that Kaji is his dad.
They're having breakfast and he finds himself spilling his heart out to the man while he listens, nods along and eats his cereal. A simple question — "What is it with what you said to Shinji yesterday? It really freaked him out. What's up with that?" — is enough to have him pacing around, vibrating with excitement that pours out of him faster than he can keep up with. It's impossible to mask it.
He tells Kaji that he's in love, that he's never felt as alive as he did when he had Shinji's warm hand on his own. It's difficult to put what he feels into words but that's what he attempts to do, he wants to paint the perfect picture of it so that Kaji will understand why this is such a big deal to him.
Why meeting Shinji Ikari feels like something monumental, as if his very soul had been lying dormant for years patiently waiting for the lovely boy's presence so it could manifest.
Meeting Shinji was a revelation and Kaworu feels reborn, feels as though he hasn't been truly alive before because he didn't have him in his life.
His vacant heart has been rebuilt in a shape made to accommodate the boy he calls Ikari Shinji-kun, as his soul sings whenever he thinks about him.
A melody meant to be played by four hands, skin brushing against each other gently as they awkwardly yet beautifully accomplish their purpose of finishing a duet that sounds like what Kaworu imagines love is meant to be.
"Damn, kid. You really are whipped," Kaji notes and doesn't add anything else.
Kaworu is too busy mulling over what words he should use to transmit this feeling when he gets to see Shinji again.
What can he say to make him understand the importance of apprehensive hands brushing against each other as they compose a song that reverberates through Kaworu's chest as though it belongs there, as natural as the constant thumping of his heart?
How can Shinji even comprehend the magnitude of that feeling?
When he gets to talk to him again, he will get him to understand.
He will find a way to attribute sense to the way his soul longs for the presence of someone he only met yesterday, for such a painfully brief time.
A time that, as brief as it was, caused irreparable damage to Kaworu's previous misconceptions about himself and how his emotions operate. A time that introduced him to the idea of being human and loving accordingly.
***
(Disregard Rei's lack of understanding of basic social norms and how that will often lead her to overlook very crucial details when interacting with anyone. Set aside Misato-san's abhorrent and frankly absurd comments, Asuka's brash sense of righteous fury and his own tendencies to be too stuck in his own head to make for a good companion for small talk or any type of conversation.
Put all that aside, including his father's callous behavior and utter indifference in the face of tremendous hurt caused by his inability to see anyone's pain but his own.
Even with all of that, Shinji doesn't think he has ever met anyone as insane as the boy who lives with Kaji.
"A cigarette is only a cigarette when it's burning, when it's not it's nothing but a rolled up piece of paper. The cigarette can only be a cigarette with the help of a match or a lighter to make it burn and that's what you did to my heart," the boy, Nagisa, explains as though it is the most simple thing in the word and not the most nonsensical word vomit Shinji has ever been privy to. "My heart was just rolled up paper but you're the fire that got it to become a cigarette, you set my soul aflame. You're the fire."
Absentmindedly, Shinji nods but keeps his thoughts to himself and tries not to be as judgemental as he usually is for the sake of Misato-san. She really likes Kaji.
"Do you get what I'm saying?" Nagisa asks when he feels that Shinji isn't close to following his incomprehensible logic. "I'm saying you're hot like fire. I want to burn so I can live, won't you set me on fire?"
How he can stand there and say those things as he looks at Shinji as though he's the odd one for not comprehending, that Shinji will never be able to wrap his head around.
With all that said, Shinji has but one response in mind to the utter nonsense that this strange boy just spewed at him unprompted.
"Why do you have to be so weird?" he asks, twisting his face in mild disgust.
But weird as he is, Nagisa just smiles and tells Shinji that's exactly what he thought he'd say. Tells Shinji he will make him understand one day, that their souls were destined to meet in a collision more impactful than the Big Bang that birthed this world. He holds Shinji's hand on his own like it's fragile, an antique vase that could shatter into a million pieces if one used even the slightest amount of force to handle it.
And he grins — in a way that has Shinji's heart skipping a beat — he finds himself flushing deep red, wondering why this strange guy has such effect on him.
Wondering why he thinks he might understand what he means when he says they were born to meet each other.)