Notes: Wondering what illness Shinji had? Here’s your answer.

A Composition: For the Beauty of Death, For the Post- Apocalyptic

Nearly twenty years after Kaworu Nagisa's death, Shinji Ikari began to forget.
(It didn't happen overnight. It was not dramatic. Small things, like his keys. What day it was. What he had stopped into the kitchen for. The sound of cicadas, once so loud and lulling, silenced. That was ten years ago, and he figured one day he would simply stop hearing them.)

After all, after the Third Impact, the world was a wasteland.

(But then, it was the names of NERV employees. Shinji would wake up alone in his bed, and wonder why he wasn't back there, in his old quarters with Misato. He would half-expect her to charge in, tipsy and enthusiastic, but she was long dead. Shinji should have known that.)

It became increasingly hard to motivate himself to get out of bed.

(His limbs would never fully wake-up, but he grew accustomed to it. After all, he was fortunate. Others had died instantaneously the day the Angels finally returned. He was twenty-one, then, and too old to pilot. He could only stand watch from the shelters, stuck above ground in the chaos, as everything around him was systematically destroyed. And oddly, he hadn't cared then. He kept on wishing one would wrap its long, spindly fingers around him. Around his body. And---)

But, when he could will himself out of his room, he would spend his mornings making toast in his quiet kitchen. (The only sound now were the moans of the dying outside his window. He couldn't help them. The hospitals were filled to capacity, and he, too had grown used to it. It was relief from the deafening nature of the planet. It made him feel sick.)

Well, maybe I should assist---

Only that thought was never finished, because he would always "wake up" (as he came to call it) at his front door, wondering how he arrived there. (When he strained to remember, it only got worse. And then, it was the bread burning that would startle him from his thoughts. And by the time he had gotten there? He had forgotten what it was he was even thinking about.)

And for some reason, it didn't trouble him.
(He figured it was better than being conscious all the time. He didn't have to think of Rei. Of Asuka. Of Misato. Of Tobi. Of his father. Of Kaw---)

But, in the the third month, he did.
(He would sleep for days. And he wasn't sure why, but each time he returned to groggy consciousness, he could feel the weight of a hand on his shoulder. And the lingering notes to a song he could no longer remember. No longer place the name to, no matter how hard he tried.)

And soon after, he would always find himself somehow in the kitchen, making the same damn toast. (It was his staple. Since the attack, the world had been thrown off its axis. It rarely rained. It rarely did anything more than cloud, the sun choked by dust and the level of oxygen in some areas so low, it had eventually killed the inhabitants. The crops were dying, everywhere. He would be lucky to see forty, at this rate. He was thirty-two.)

By the fourth month, he lived in clips.
(He couldn't remember where he was, at all. But, somehow, he accepted it. He figured it was better than knowing, at all. He knew the world was emptying. He knew the seas were like ink and oil. Reports long ago had told humanity there was no food to be found there. Many coastal communities had starved. Shinji, occasionally, recalled the emaciated faces on the television sets that still functioned after the end.)

However, the sensations got worse.
(And he despised them. It was all so familiar and startlingly warm.)

They would start when he woke up, if he woke up (He had learned that term was relative. What was "wakefulness," anyway?), with that same weight of a phantom hand on his shoulder. He would feel fingers curl. Or sometimes tighten. And Shinji would find himself sobbing somewhere in the middle of it (even under his sheets and with his face hidden, he could still feel it), because he didn't understand and he was frustrated. (How did it know? He had missed human contact, even though he had lived alone for so many years. He couldn't talk to others without being mugged. Everyone knew it. It was dangerous in the cities and towns, what with such desperation and illness abound.)

And they would continue throughout what parts of the day he could put together.
(Glimpses of silver in the kitchen. Auditory hallucinations. He'd sometimes turn his head and hear breathing in his ear. Usually the left one. He'd hear his name being called, in a tone of some twisted amusement, and he would clench his fists and be tempted to shout at it, but he knew it was just his mind. He knew it was wearing down on him. But he didn't know from what.)

He had the distinct impression he never would, either, as he approached the fifth month.
(Days flowed into days, and it seemed like he was perpetually awake. Whenever he blinked, he would be somewhere else. And cicadas would be singing. But, when he tried to capture the sound and keep it within him, he would lose it. He would lose it among the pale, death-white faces and the gaunt expressions. Those with that illness, the ones that clung to your insides and made you rot. A living corpse. Occasionally, Shinji wished to have it.)

"Perhaps I'd die, quicker."

Into the sixth, toast was a rare commodity. He would still make it sometimes, in his dingy kitchen, humming some foreign notes. (The hallucinations were getting even worse, if possible. When he could think at all, he would sometimes spot someone sitting across from him at the kitchen table. Or walking beside him when he found himself wandering around Tokyo-3 again. But, in each instance, the name he wanted was never available to him. He could never speak it.)

They'd go, just as quietly as they'd come.

(And Shinji would curl up somewhere remotely welcoming --- A dilapidated townhouse. An old, convenience store --- Until he would rouse again, his fingers covered in dirt and sometimes blood, feeling like he was gagging on his own distorted emotions, at once flooding into him.)

By the end, Shinji's hours were like puzzle pieces. Misaligned.
(He would sometimes find himself where NERV should have been, mumbling something unintelligible to a figure he knew should have been there. Sometimes, he'd find himself in his bed, curled tightly into himself and nearly choking from lack of oxygen. Sometimes, he'd be eating toast and find that the cicadas were singing in tune to some bizarre musical score, which made his memories --- empty and gone --- arch up to the surface like sparrows falling in their familiar arcs just outside his complex. They always died, and Shinji was positive that they all chose to fly when they sensed their end coming. He had learned that. Animals used to be keen on disaster. But, it hadn't saved them, had it?)

And in the rare moments where Shinji could gather his thoughts, he knew too, that he was dying.
(But he hadn't the last leg of flight. But he did have Central Dogma. He did have---)

And he supposed he was rather well off, because: Nearly twenty years after Kaworu Nagisa's death, Shinji Ikari began to forget. (It didn't happen overnight. It was not dramatic. Small things, like his keys. What day it was...)

---
At the age of thirty-two, in the only standing hospital in all of Tokyo, Shinji Ikari was pronounced dead.

An autopsy later revealed a cancerous mass, afflicting his parietal lobe, likely developed in response to radiation.

It easily explained what he heard. What he saw.

And the doctors and nurses all took pity on him.
(But, what they had missed, was the boy who remained by his hospital bed. For only a moment. Before vanishing as though he had never been there.)
---

A/N:

Cancer that effects the parietal lobe effects the following:
"The parietal lobe receives and interprets sensations. These sensations include pain, temperature, touch, pressure, size, shape, and body-part awareness. Other activities of the parietal lobe are hearing, reasoning, and memory."