Creation began on 09-20-14
Creation ended on 09-23-14
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Death as an escape
A/N: Sometimes, in some situations that could've been avoided, people will choose not to do something that they're supposed to…and sometimes, some people simply can't be saved by those that won't lift a finger to help them.
Even if there was hope for him, even if there was a chance that he could allowed back out into the world, Shinji Ikari knew that there was no place anywhere for him. And it wasn't because he had murdered eight people. No, it wasn't because of that at all. He just…didn't belong, no matter how much he wanted to.
Whenever people saw him, they just saw an outcast, a freak of society's poor genes mixed with good ones. And when he turned five, the day he murdered his aunt and her husband and son for their disrespect towards him, two children that had insulted him several times for his lack of a proper family, an elderly woman that had also done the same, and two police officers that had gotten in his way once, he was viewed as a monster.
And for almost nine years, he has had to live in a mental institution for those declared unfit for society, with no visitors or letters from anyone. Some would view the abuse from the security staff there as a harsh penance from the lawfulness, but the isolation that lasted for years since he was admitted by his own father, that was a variation of Hell itself.
His fourteenth birthday was only yesterday, but it was already as meaningless as the one the year before it…and the one the year before that one. He was ready now. Everything had been in preparation for this goal that Shinji had decided upon. By the time anyone came to see him, he'd be gone.
They won't stop me, he thought, stepping out of the bathroom of his cell with a cup of water. They won't even try to stop me.
Setting the cup by his cot, he reached beneath his pillow and pulled out a small sack. He opened it to reveal a large handful of pills, the same sleeping and anti-psychotic pills he'd been prescribed two years ago after his last doctor's appointment that he knew never happened; the institution's board of directors had a tendency to whitewash or cover up anything they were supposed to do, but didn't do.
Three meals a day, they check up on me every four days, he thought, checking the timetable closely. They didn't check on me like they were supposed to, so the next time they're supposed to, it won't matter in the end.
He took a handful of the pills and shoved them into his mouth.
-x-
"…Does it always smell in this part of the facility?" Misato Katsuragi of NERV's Japan branch asked one of the security guards that was escorting her to the cell used to house Shinji Ikari.
"No," he answered her. "It's never supposed to stink like this, like someone…"
They stopped in front of the door to Shinji's cell and the guard slid the viewing slot to peek at the sole occupant, finding him sprawled on his cot asleep. But the foul odor was emanating from within his cell.
"Shinji Ikari," the guard uttered. "You have a visitor."
But Shinji didn't get up, so the guard opened the door and stepped it.
"Oh!" Misato gasped, covering her nose. "Someone needs a bath! Bad!"
Of course Shinji was dressed in grayish-white clothes like a prisoner within a mental facility, and they weren't clean, but there was some doubt that the stench was coming from his clothes.
"Ikari," the guard went again. "Get up."
The guard then turned him over onto his back, exposing his face and chest, and then jumped back.
"My God!" He gasped, seeing the handle of the small shank sticking out of his chest, surrounded by a small gash of dried blood.
Misato looked at the pillow and sheets and noticed several pills laying around.
-x-
"…Cause of death was overdosing of sleeping and anti-psychotic pills," the institution's medical examiner revealed to Misato after the autopsy of Shinji's body was done. "The self-infliction caused by the shiv was postmortem, probably done to make sure that he didn't survive."
"Meaning he committed suicide," she expressed.
-x-
"…What is this?" Gendo Ikari asked Misato, who returned to the base a day later to inform the commander that his son was dead, looking down at the tiny piece of paper she had put in front of him.
"Your son's last testament," she explained, "found under his cot when the security came and moved him out of the cell after finding him dead."
Kozo Fuyutsuki, who stood behind Gendo, wondered what was written in the testament, just as the younger man picked it up.
"Fourteen years of life, and no joy was ever experienced. How can one live when people around him constantly hate. This was done even before I committed my crimes of murder. As my fate draws nearer and nearer, I can't help but fantasize of a time where life was more joyful instead of joyless. My only regret…was never being able to be accepted by people as a person, to really be accepted. In the end, death is the only escape I have at ending this unnecessary heartache." The testament read, which left Gendo infuriated; infuriated because he needed his son to pilot Unit-01 against the Angels, not because he had died.
Fuyutsuki wondered how this would affect Ikari's scenario…and Yui would be affected by this new loss of her surviving son out of the twins she had.
Yui had confided in him the accidental death of the elder twin by Gendo's first attempt at holding him, leaving Shinji, the younger twin, an only child.
After Shinji had committed eight counts of murder, Gendo, who refused to take the boy back, instead had him incarcerated within the mental institution until he decided he needed him for NERV. Unfortunately, he never took into consideration that the personnel there were very effective at their job of watching the patients admitted.
-x-
"…We didn't expect him to hoard away his medication," one of the board members of the institute told Gendo, who demanded an explanation behind the suicide of his son.
"Or fabricate a shiv out of a toothbrush," went another member of the board to him.
"You call what happened to him, and several other patients, now that this lapse in security has come to light, vigilant behavior?" Gendo questioned them. "All your staff had to do was play zookeeper for a few years! Keep your monkey house locked up tight until the monkey straightened out or I had a need for him!"
"It's not really our fault if the lapse in security gave the boy an opportunity to commit," a female member of the board told Gendo. "These outcasts of society are going to do stuff like this one way or another, regardless of whether or not they're being watched."
"So, that's it, then?" Gendo questioned them. "You're just going…to wash your hands of this?"
The two men and the woman didn't say anything to him, but their silence was an answer, in and of itself, meaning that, while these suicides were viewed as unavoidable circumstances, the institute was going to overlook this loss.
"I thought as much," he told them, walking out of the room they were in. "People of sanity are filled with insanity to trust in the would-be tameness of a demon."
-x-
Wandering a misty, red-colored desert, Shinji gazed up at the night sky, seeing a red moon and a black moon.
Where am I? He wondered. Is this Hell?
"Not even close!" He heard someone say to him, as though they had read his mind. "This is where all parts of a soul in pain come to after great cruelty can't be relieved."
Turning toward a large large, he saw…himself, dressed in red pants and a shirt-like shawl.
"Who are you?" He asked him.
"I am you," the look-alike answered.
A/N: And there you have it. In this universe, Shinji's body count is only eight lives ended, and he commits suicide by overdosing on pills and making sure the job was finished with a shank, and Gendo can't control him. But what does seeing another version of himself mean? It means something will occur later in the unwritten future.