Creation began on 06-30-19
Creation ended on 04-03-20
Neon Genesis Evangelion
Scared to Death
A/N: Suppose that what we fear can have serious consequences that others don't truly understand until it's too late to do anything about it.
"…Aaaaaahh!" Shinji Ikari, barely four years old, screamed again in the dead of night as he awoke from yet another nightmare, his ebony hair starting to turn white at the roots as he was shaking from what he saw again.
"…Some of us have to work tomorrow, you know," he heard his aunt complain about his nightmares, not exactly sympathetic to him.
-x-
"Why is it that you're able to scream so loud at night when we're all trying to sleep, and you don't even do anything?" Shinji's cousin asked him. "Do you even know?"
"I swear to God, if he doesn't stop with the nightmares, I'm sending him to an institution somewhere," Shinji heard his aunt say to his uncle. "His father never mentioned anything about nightmares. This is probably why he dumped his kid on us three months ago."
-x-
Nobody saw it coming. Nobody wanted to see it coming. All they ever heard…was that the boy suffered from nightmares that he couldn't recall after waking up…and that his hair was turning white as a consequence…and nobody really did anything.
"I take it you've heard what happened?" Kozo Fuyutsuki asked Gendo Ikari as he entered his office. "Not even a year has passed since you left him with them…and he ends up dead."
"How long until the exact cause of death is determined?" Gendo questioned.
"The doctors already know what killed him. Your son died from fear."
"Fear?"
"He was scared to death by something or someone, couldn't get over it, and it slowly killed him. We both know what scared him to death, Ikari."
But Gendo couldn't admit it, even when he knew it was the truth. He couldn't admit that the failed experiment with the unfinished Evangelion and his wife had traumatized their son. His in-laws should have seen this and gotten Shinji therapy, even if it was less than effective due to his own inability to recall or explain what he saw.
"Fear, loneliness, they killed your son," Fuyutsuki told him; the fear of the Eva…and the loneliness he must've felt during the time he was made to live with people he didn't know…had to be what caused Shinji to slowly die. "You should have told him what happened that day. Even if he didn't understand what was going on at the time, even if he had to be told more than once, you should have told him."
-x-
"…How could a child die from being scared?" Naoko Akagi wondered as she showed her daughter, Ritsuko around the Geo-Front.
"Something with a strong, emotional reaction can trigger the release of adrenaline in the body. But the problem with being scared to death is that too much adrenaline is released, putting a strain on the person. If left unchecked, the dangerous amount of adrenaline released from the reaction can be fatal."
"So, the boy in question may have saw something that caused such a reaction in him that it literally killed him within a few days?"
"If he had nobody to talk to about it or was unable to talk about it, yes, it caused him to die."
Naoko found it crazy that everyone that was present at the failed experiment involving the Eva knew what frightened the boy…but weren't exactly talking about it.
"What did he see that scared him?" Ritsuko asked her.
"I'm afraid that's classified," Naoko told her.
"If it's classified, then that's likely what killed him. Why show a child something that would kill him later?"
"It was the mother's decision to bring him to work that day."
"Then that was a bad decision."
You have no idea how right you are about that.
-x-
Ten Years Later
Tokyo-2, Japan's capital new capital by what remained of a coastal area, had seen better days without the decaying ruins of the buildings half-sunken into the water. And with being occupied by a series of tanks on the streets and no people present, the city looked more like a ghost town.
Suddenly…something emerged from the ocean and began to approach the city. It was massive, humanoid, exhibited some sea-dwelling qualities, such as gills and a slimy exterior, and had a red sphere in its center.
-x-
"…Fifteen years since the Second Impact," Fuyutsuki said, looking at the creature on the screen as it began being attacked by the military.
"Indeed," responded Gendo, "the Angels have returned."
In the last decade since the unexpected death of his son, Gendo had been trying to rework his agenda to compensate for what couldn't be used to face the Angels. When the activation test for Unit-00 failed and injured the First Child, Rei Ayanami, nearly a year ago, he had to resort to requesting the Second Child, Asuka Langley Soryu, and Unit-02 from Germany. When asked by the Committee why didn't he search the Marduk Institute for a Third and Fourth Child for Unit-01, Gendo had to explain that the exploitation of such an Eva should be as an absolute last resort; this was mainly because he couldn't switch the core of that particular Eva and put it into service under the control of another pilot.
"Are we ready to send out the Second Child should she become necessary?" Gendo asked Ritsuko on the bridge in Central Dogma.
"All we need is the command to go," the faux-blond responded.
But as the Angel retaliated against the military that fired upon it, Gendo could only doubt that their operation to contend with the Angels would fare their way because his son was dead.
"How'd he died from something that terrified him, anyway?!" Yui's sister had asked him one time when he had the gall to question why her family didn't do anything to help him. "You should know that it's not easy to help someone when they're too scared to bring up what frightened him to begin with! He wakes up, night after night, screaming, and he can't recall what his nightmare was about. What did you and Yui do that might've scared him?! What, did you kill her in an experiment gone wrong and he saw it happened?!"
Only the people that were there when Yui was killed knew what happened, but the fact that the boy's cause of death was listed as simply "adrenaline-induced panic attack", nobody could forget or understand the cause or who was likely behind it.
BOOM! The Angel was caught in the explosion caused by the JSSDF's N² mine.
"Heh-heh!" One of the military generals laughed. "You see that?! That's the power of our new N² mines! Looks like we won't be needing your help, Ikari!"
Unfortunately, the JSSDF was surprised to see the Angel had survived the explosion with just minimal damage.
Fin
A/N: So what if the Eva killed Shinji at an early age? What if he was terrified to the point that his body and mind couldn't handle the strain the fear of what happened had on him? And nobody does anything to help him. This is another possibility that runs in the realm of possibilities, enabling us to create new paths to take.