God, I'm sorry for this. I actually felt a bit ill writing this, ugh. That being said, I really love writing creepy afterlife fics, so I still had fun with this. Bitter, depressed fun, but fun nonetheless. I wanted to try and write this without any dialogue, which I don't normally do, so I hope that played off well here.

Lyrics are "Hold My Hand As I'm Lowered" by Noah and the Whale.

.higher ground

/

your cold hands are clutching at cloth

i leave nothing on earth that won't rot

/

The train is going either nowhere or everywhere. Beyond the frosted glass of the windows, all is blurry and dazed, flitting by in white stop-motion. The air crackles with cold. Time is frozen.

A ghost of an angel sits opposite of Shinji, naked and iridescent, draped only in a white sheet that pools around delicate ankles on the icy floor. With every lurch of the train, the slender body contained within the sheet remains inexplicably still, firmly rooted in place, whereas Shinji has to struggle to remain upright by grasping onto the torn upholstery of the seat until his knuckles whiten. The cracks in the train's roof and the broken windows let in the snow and ice, speckling Shinji's hair and the black of his coat. His hands have long gone numb, and the chill has settled deep into his bones so that every movement of his body aches, his limbs comparative to matchsticks that could snap in two at any given moment.

Kaworu remains too pale to tell if the snow is even touching him. Nothing seems to touch him in these moments; not even Shinji, try as he might. Something repels him every time he's tried to reach out to him. His hand trembles; his nerves sting and ache if he gets too close. His heart is touched hollow with every inch that they're apart, but threatens to overflow and burst with every inch he moves toward him. He can't win.

All the while, Kaworu remains sitting perfectly still, head bowed, eyes closed, slender fingers clutching at the thin cloth wrapped around his body. He's shivering; it's the only sign of movement he's made this entire time, and Shinji hates it, hates that he left him in this cold to wither away into fractured white, hates that he was the cause of this, hates that Kaworu has been reduced to this splintered wreck because of him.

The train lurches again. Caught off guard, Shinji is thrown from his seat and onto the slippery floor, all slush and snow seeping through his clothes and chilling his skin. His arms are shaking when he reaches up to grab onto the seat in an attempt to sit upright, but his body has become weak, and his muscles are too stiff and cold to support himself any longer.

It takes him a moment to realize that Kaworu is touching him. His palm is on his cheek, frigid and smooth, and Shinji's nerves cry out from the sting of it, yet welcome its agony all the same. He lifts his head to look at him, and his eyes fall on the very same nightmare that plays out every time they sink into this quiet world.

Kaworu's stitches are unraveling. The delicate braid of thread around his throat is fraying, the careful knots that Shinji worked so hard on coming loose and untying one by one. His throat is smeared black with blood, bruised and marred from wounds both old and new. Silver strands of his hair cling to his slashed skin and are touched black as if dipped in ink. Snow clings to his eyelashes, and his lips are blue and cracked, parted in a soundless plea of Shinji's name. But those bright eyes don't flash, not anymore, not since that lucid scarlet has waxed over into a misty white that can't look upon the world any longer, can't glint with mischief or glow with that backwards sort of affection that Shinji always pretended to hate but so desperately wanted. Seeing him like this, Shinji has never wanted to be screamed at by him so badly in his life, has never wanted so much to be blamed and hated and loved and held all at the same time.

But this hollow shell, this broken doll that Shinji has devoted nightmare after nightmare to in hopes of sewing and stitching back together, is being destroyed by him all over again.

The train screeches to a stop. Kaworu's head tilts precariously to the side, stitches snapping one by one and giving way to more seeping, dripping black. The hand on Shinji's face falls away and dangles limply over the edge of the seat; the motion of his arm sends the sheet slipping off the white peak of his shoulder, and he's shivering again, mouth opening and closing as he tries to speak. Shinji's head is spinning when he forces himself upright and hushes him, fingers threading shakily through his snow-damp hair to keep him steady, to fix everything, to make this right again.

And when Shinji sews him back together with wire and thread, Kaworu almost smiles, but not enough. The seam of his throat is almost closed up, but not enough. Shinji grasps at Kaworu's hand, and their fingers almost intertwine, but not enough. None of this will ever be enough, but it's all they have left.

The train groans and rattles back to life. Beyond the glass, everything blurs to white.