I felt tragic today. Sorry.

And the tears come streaming down your face
When you lose something you can't replace
When you love someone but it goes to waste
Could it be worse?

Sometimes Andrew thought Allison had too much life in her to live. She was too much for the world, too much strangeness and charm – like an old watch with one arm broken and the other spinning too fast. Surely, she was meant for something else. Some other type of life, one where she was revered: statues in her honour, medals for her service, a tree planted in a barren wasteland. She'd like that last one, he thinks. The tree would never grow, but she'd like knowing it was there.

Andrew is so wrapped up in his thoughts that he nearly jumps when Brian's arm brushes up against his. The four of them are lined up, like soldiers. Winston Churchill once said that war was hell. Andrew thinks Winston can shut the fuck up, he clearly didn't know what he was talking about. Hell isn't warzones and bullets. Hell is feeling that last piece of him that was worth something shatter like glass and watching it get sealed up into a coffin. Hell is burying the only person in the world that he would have died for.

(But cancer doesn't take deals. Doesn't make trades, his life for hers. And it doesn't matter that he would have crawled on broken glass for hours to spare her a seconds worth of pain.)

"We're ready." Claire says from beside him, her small hand resting on his elbow. He looks over at her, watching the black bruises around her eyes – evidence of tears.

(He wishes he could cry. It might be easier, to drop her away with a couple of tears and then dry her away with a tissue. But he's too damn strong – too much of his father in him – to do anything like that.)

Andrew pushes back on the strands of hair that have fallen out of place. "I'm ready."

"Liar." Bender says. Claire hits him, snapping at him to shut up. "You're not ready. You'll never be ready, man."

"Shut up, John!" Claire's eyes are wet. "Jesus, we haven't even buried her and you're picking a fight!"

"I'm not picking a fight, Princess." John bites back. "He needs to realize that he's not going to be OK, that this whole thing fucking sucks and it's going to be the hardest fucking thing he'll ever do to shove her into a box."

"She liked boxes." Brian mumbles. Andrew feels the ghost of a smile beneath his lips, but he cannot bring his muscles to obey. She loved boxes and ice cream sundaes and the way that the window in their bedroom creaked when it opened.

Andrew's voice is raspy. "I know, asshole. I know it's going to be hard. But acting like you would if Claire died isn't going to bring Allison back."

John's arm tightens on Claire, like his fingers curled around her shoulder were the only things keeping her here. Andrew pities him. He realizes, now, that everyone is born with a little death in them and John's going to learn that someday. He's going to learn that he can't stop Claire's cells from decaying, he can't stop her body from becoming a bioweapons factory that's about to implode.

And one day, John is going to have to let her go.

"Let's just bury her." Claire suggests. John steps away from Claire's side. He and Brian lower it, gently, into the ground. Six feet deep and four feet wide, in the shape of a perfect rectangle.

("It should have been a circle or something." Claire laughed through her sobs. "She'd have liked that.")

Brian wipes his hands on his black slacks. There's something painful about touching the wood of Allison's coffin. Like the very weight of it is going to suffocate him. John puts a hand on Brian's shoulder. Some things just can't be wiped away.

"Goodbye, Allison." Claire murmurs as she drops a white carnation to rest atop the wood. "I hope, where ever you are, there's an easel for you."

John scoffs quietly. Heaven and Hell are just pathetic illusions for people who want to think their lives mattered. Besides, Allison grew up. Everyone knows when you grow up, your heart dies. She's just been waiting for her body to follow. He ignores the clench of his heart. There's nothing he can do. Crying won't bring her back.

(All he can hear is Claire crying and the way his shoes sound over the broken plates he's thrown. He wonders how Allison's last breath sounded, if it was harsh and hurting or easy. He hopes it was easy. Allison's life was hard enough; her final moments should have been easy. Bites back his tears like he would a bullet, and goes upstairs; Claire needs him.)

"You were my favourite basket-case." He says simply as Claire wraps her hand around his. Drops a piece of paper on top of the flower; on it, Andrew reads, is an old dictionary page with the word crazy crossed out and the word interesting,scrawled in Bender's handwriting, above it.

Allison would've laughed. And that thought makes Andrew's heart ache.

"I should've cured cancer." Brian says quietly. What good were all his good grades if he couldn't save her? What good was his PhD? His practice? What good was it if all it did was tell him the inevitability of her death? That he couldn't save her?

He wipes away at his tears and tosses a small, moleskin notebook on top her coffin. "Life sucks."

"I bet death isn't a party either." Andrew says bitterly, but he puts his hand on Brian's other shoulder. The four of them stand together, sloped shoulders and broken hearts tied together like string, in front of Allison's grave.

Claire's voice shakes. "Aren't you going to say goodbye, Andy?"

"I've spent ten months saying goodbye." Andrew murmurs. He said it when they began chemo. He said it when they went to bed each night. He said it the last time they made love, whispered it against her skin, and she'd cried the whole time.

(She had to drag it out of him the first time.

"Say it!"

"No! You're not going to die, Ally!"

"Yes, I am!" She screamed. "Damn it, Andrew, I'm going to die and I don't want the last thing you say to me to be 'you'll be fine!'"

"You will be fine!" He yelled back. She wasn't going to die. She wasn't going to die. Shewasn'tgoingtodie.

"You're a coward, Andrew! You're running away from the fact that I'm going to die and I can't stand it! Just say it!"

"And you're a quitter! You've given up before we've even begun fighting!"

"I am going to fight! But I need you to tell me goodbye, in case I lose."

He'd said it. Eventually. Held her close and whispered it until his voice hurt. And they both knew what he was saying was goodbye, but what he meant was i love you.)

The sun was setting long before any of them moved. Eventually John and Claire left, curled around each other until Andrew couldn't tell where one ended and the other began. Brian left a little while after that, he had a job to get to – a cure to find.

Andrew stayed until the groundskeeper told him he had to go. Just watching as they piled dirt on top of her and wondering how long a heart could beat when half of it was missing.

And the hardest part
Was letting go

Thank you for reading.