Even Angels have nightmares, mildly prophetic or no. ShinjiKaworu
It is the last moment before he dies, the last moment before the message from Shinji's hands reach through the misunderstood monster called Evangelion, that he allows himself the errant thought.
I wish I was…"Kaworu? …Kaworu? Are you listening?" Kaworu blinks, and finds himself in his heaven. Strangely, it is not at all the heaven from which he was birthed. Shinji is by his side, for one, in his gently rumpled school uniform that stands out in Kaworu's mind as 'achingly familiar.' He is also staring in that indirect way of his, which means he's concerned about something.
"I'm sorry, Shinji. What we speaking about?" He crushes the inexplicable urge to straighten Shinji's collar. He always wore that school uniform, as if he'd never gone shopping in his life. But these things were only a matter of consequence.
The boy's brow furrowed. "Nothing."
"No, truly. I was distracted." Kaworu decided the fact that they were possibly dead was less important than making Shinji smile at him.
"Distraact-t-t-eddd?" Shinji asked, his voice distorted. Kaworu's eyes widened, and he quickly looked behind him. He saw… Nothing. The Void. He turned back around, rising to his feet, ready to grab Shinji and run, when the ground began to rumble.
"Shinji! We must---" but the boy was gone. "Shinji!" he screamed, looking hard at where the small boy had sat just moments before. It was now occupied by his school uniform, neatly folded and empty of the warm body that should have been inhabiting it. "Shinji!" Above him, the sky, which had been endlessly blue and calming, blushed red.
He turns away from the sky. "Shinji!" Surely, the boy could have gotten up and decided to run around naked. This is heaven, afterall.
And then LCL fell like rain, slid across his skin in burning ways and Kaworu knew he would never see Shinji again. Not in this 'heaven.'
He falls to his knees and his knuckles brush against the LCL-dewed blades of grass. "I didn't want this," he tells the bloodied sky.
I wish I was…Inexplicably, he begins to sob, clutching Shinji's shirt to him like a talisman. The ground trembles again, and a fissure forms before him. A bright red figure pulls its way up. It is Unit 02, tearing into his heaven with Pandora's treasures as her messengers. "Why are you here?" he asks it, his hair wet with LCL and his eyes swollen with tears. Tears, he knows now, for the wish that can never come true.
"No," he says, in response to what Unit 02 tells him, something no one else can hear. "I don't want to. I want to stay with him. I don't want to be---"
He bows over, forcing his forehead to meet the ground, abdomen to form an imperfect curve. "Is there not another way? Can I not remain unchanged?" The answer must be negative on both accounts, because he laughs, sobs, and stands. "Then I will rise to meet it." Unit 02 reaches out her hand, and he clambers on, holding Shinji's unbuttoned shirt around him like a cloak. He looks down, and where he once stood, tiny marigolds bloom in earnest.
"I wish I wasn't Tabris," he says, even as the wind pushes him back and Unit 02's hand slowly closes on him. "I wish I could stay by Shinji's side for as long as he would have me." And, as he forced to lay on his side, he thinks he sees Shinji, bright as a star, in the midst of the LCL, unmarred. And Kaworu knows this is how he will always remember him. With seconds to spare, he pulls Shinji's shirt closer around him, and waits for death.
----
Kaworu blinks: once, twice. Shinji rolls over and looks at him. "Good morning."
Red eyes don't quite water, and Tabris can't quite understand why. "Good morning, Shinji-kun." Today, he thinks, even as Shinji smiles back at him. Today is the end.