"How long?"

Viktor swallows. His chest is painfully constricted and there's a throbbing ache behind his temples.

He can't look at the older man sitting across from him, clad in white scrubs that fit a little tight around his middle. Can't meet his eyes, knowing exactly what he will find once he does.

Pity.

Sympathy.

Instead he stares at his own hands lying folded in his lap like they're suddenly the most captivating thing he's ever seen. They look strange. Foreign. Like they don't belong to him at all.

"Five months," the man says, and at that Viktor does look up.

"F-Five …"

"Maybe a little less. I'm sincerely sorry, Mr. Nikiforov, but …"

Viktor gets up so quickly, his chair almost topples over. "It's fine," he chokes out. "Thank you. I will see myself out."

"Mr. Nikiforov, we should discuss possible …"

"No." Viktor shakes his head. "No, thank you very much. I'm good."

I'm good ...

After leaving the medical practice, he's walking the streets of Hasetsu, his body moving on autopilot. He knows the town like the back of his hand by now; has been living here for the last five years, after all. People on the street keep passing him with little nods of silent acknowledgement. He knows most of them by sight, has spoken to some. His Japanese is still a little shaky, particularly when he's around strangers. It's not really like him to be shy like that, but maybe Yuuri has rubbed off on him a bit.

The thought of Yuuri pains him.

Five months, he recalls the doctor's words. Maybe even less.

He feels a strange numbness spreading through his body and he wonders if this is it, already. If this sensation is death permeating every cell, and it's only going to get worse until …

A laugh bubbles up in his throat, but what comes out sounds more like a strangled gasp. Tears are welling up in his eyes and he makes an abrupt turn to the left, through the entrance of a park. He doesn't want to be seen. Doesn't want the questions that will inevitably follow. For the same reason he can't go home. Not yet.

If he has to face Yuuri right now, he will see right through him. And Viktor can't do that. Neither to Yuuri nor to himself.

What he needs is a plan. Something he can hold on to. Something to keep his mind from eating itself.

Five months.

Five months.

Five.

Months.

He sits down on a bench. It's the exact same bench Yuuri and he would often sit on after endurance training.

Yuuri.

He buries his face in his hands. This wasn't how things were supposed to go be. They were meant to have at least thirty more happy years together - not that Viktor has never seriously given a possible end of their time on Earth together even a fleeting thought. People die. They do it all the time. But somehow Viktor never really thought it could happen to Yuuri or him.

Now, forced to face his own mortality, he realizes how stupid he was. There is no such thing as safety in this world; in this life. Everything you're granted can just as easily be taken away from you again.

I'm glad, it's going to be me ...

The thought hits him with the force of a freight train. It's true. If one of them has to go, it'd better be him. Because he can't lose Yuuri. He just can't. And if that makes him selfish, he doesn't care. He's still human, after all. There's only so much he can take before breaking.

He sits there for awhile, surrounded by the sounds of nature; the rustling of the leaves, the cries of the seagulls. Every sound brings up new memories, good and bad, but mostly good. Very good. His life has been very good ever since he made the decision to pack his bags and fly to Japan.

Yuuri has changed everything for him; has made him a better man. Because Viktor is no fool. He knows that he isn't perfect, and was even less perfect before he met the love of his life. People used to put him on a pedestal, and he tried hard, so very hard, to be the cheerful, extroverted and outgoing person they expected him to be. But deep down he wasn't like that.

He was arrogant, slightly neglectful, bitter and cynical, and tried to hide it behind this big, toothy smile he never failed to conjure for the audience, the press.

He doesn't need all that for Yuuri, though. Viktor had been more than a bit worried about Yuuri kicking him out the moment he caught a glimpse behind that pretty facade. By now he knows that this isn't like Yuuri at all. He is kind and understanding, and even back then, when Viktor failed to meet his expectations; when he found out his hero wasn't a hero after all, he never left his side.

They are two sides of the same coin. Viktor can't even imagine a life without Yuuri anymore.

And he doesn't have to, either.

The bitter taste of bile fills his mouth.

He will never have to worry about anything, soon. Because there will be no him to worry in the first place. He will be gone. Nonexistent. And there will be no one to take care of Yuuri the way he does.

Sure, he has his parents and Mari-chan. But it isn't the same. It just isn't the same.

He hears his cell chime with an incoming text message but doesn't move to retrieve the phone from his pocket; the mere thought of even moving so much as a muscle is more than he can stomach. But then Yuuri's worried face appears in front of his inner eye. He knows that Viktor had a doctor's appointment today, and most likely expects him to be home by now.

The message isn't from Yuuri.

Suddenly the knot his stomach has coiled into snaps open and for the first time in what feels like an eternity he can breathe freely.

He knows what to do now. It won't be easy.

But what in life ever is?