[Well, that's the question, isn't it.

What separates a "person" from a living being? What separates human beings from the rest of what might be called "human?"

Is it free will? The ability to make choices? Or to choose one's own fate?

Or is it the ability to be someone. To possess identity, individuality, and have others recognise that self in you? ]

Mmmm.

[He glances aside. It's not often a topic is unpleasant or uncomfortable for Kaworu. But this one...]

...it's more than free will. Even animals have their own will.

[Even he has that. It's deeply precious to him--the one thing that truly belongs to him.

The power--even the right--to express his absolute freedom of will, to die of his own choice and meet the inevitability of his death as he wishes. If he has nothing else--and he does not--he will claim this one power as his own.

In doing so, he may give his life a meaning of his own choosing.

But he does not operate under the illusion that it makes him a person.]

To be a person, you must possess a self, and the ability to choose what that self may become.