A/N: Youse need to know, this is a dumb 'epilogue' (lol idek) of bluebones' story, 'Anchor'. That fic is probably actually my favourite phanfic out there, i just can't get over it – such beautiful angst, and incredible, and phenomenal, and everything about it is just perfect, and im like fhdhhdbshshbfhrheh (ﾉ◕ヮ◕)ﾉ*:･ﾟ✧✧ﾟ･: *ヽ(◕ヮ◕ヽ) ...so i wrote fanfiction of fanfiction. u can probs read this as an alone piece, THOUGH WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO?! IF U AINT READING ANCHOR, WHAT WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING WITH YOUR LIFE?! ...sorry. just here, have this:

100 themes challenge: ~ 43. dying

"I haven't left this bed in five days." Phil's voice was raw, refusing to meet the lens of the camera. He glided this hands over the grey and white hues of the sheets, so gently and with delicate fingers as if not to disturb a thing that made this room what it was. He knew it wasn't significant, when it all mattered in the end – the sheets that weren't Phil's that Dan used to sleep in, the laptop on the desk he practically lived on before things changed, and the camera staring at Phil right now that he used to capture his life on. In reality, they were just things – objects.

And yet, the room tore at his breathing, filled his lungs with cement, tightened a mere string around his heart that threatened to break it into infinite, unfixable glass pieces – because that's how close it came to the verge of shattering, if it hadn't already.

Dan was everywhere, but so far away from anywhere at all. And Phil was somewhere, utterly isolated – completely astray like an untethered vessel lacking an anchor – without the feeling of his best friend against his shoulder, intertwined with his hand, glazed against his lips.

He was lost, and Dan wasn't going to find him.

Phil needed to be so physically close to someone, but this was as far as he could possibly get – surronded by the things he once owned, where he once was – but it wasn't enough. Because Dan's life was a 'was', not an 'is', nor a 'will be' or a 'will ever be' – forever only a 'was'.

Phil loved Dan. Loved. Past tense.

"I don't know what the time is right now, but it's Wednesday." Time flowed loosely through his fingers even since he couldn't run them through auburn Dan's hair. Somehow he remembered that Friday, one week ago. It was stupid, Phil decided, how the best day of the week, the one that harboured excitement, and existed so people could forget their shitty week and leave it behind, was the one that ruined his universe.

Then he remembered it was never really that day of the week that took away Dan's life.

Dan would have (and did) died – end of story. The unavoidable, inexplicable final cause would've proven how fucking mortal they all were, and in the end, Dan was undone from the start.

Phil thought about that, and wept.

"I'm sorry. God, I'm so sorry that you clicked on this thinking it was something else, and I'm sorry I turned on the camera in the first place, and I'm sorry that I'm saying these words I was never meant to say."

His eyes were red and puffy, cheeks pink and wet , and the camera was just a blur in front of him, but it may as well be the whole world.

"Dan died."

Saying didn't make it anymore real than it already had been since the flatline echoed through his ears. For Christ's sake, this had been real since day one. And it fucking hurt, because never would it be anything but real. The entire world they had made together was real; their undying love – that wasn't so infinite – was real; and unstoppable cancer that stole his eyes, bleed his brain, and stopped his heart was real, as well.

"Tuesday night, I told him he wouldn't ever forget me, and I stayed next to him the whole night as he slept. But Wednesday morning, he didn't wake up and three days later I turned off the switch that was keeping him breathing."

Things weren't made for 'forever'. People break like the corrosion of titanium, or the shattering on one million shards of glass. If infinite life of the human being was achieved, was it still human? Phil thought about those things, lying in the bed that smelled of him, and he realises he didn't care. Dan was Dan, and nothing else mattered.

The word 'was' echoed through the room.

But that wasn't important, or at least Phil didn't want it to be. Dan dying was not what he wanted to talk about. He shouldn't have to tell the world his world was gone.

He wanted everyone to know something else. Something that should matter, something that should be remembered, because they created the most beautifully imperfect moment in a state of absolutely tragedy, and that was worth the world's attention, not the man he loved's lost battle with the demon people called cancer.

"We were married." Phil said and everything seemed to solidify. He said the words with clarity, with such purpose that the tears streaming down this face were unbalanced by his voice's intensity. "I married Dan." He continued again, saying the name that flowed from his mouth so devotedly, making the one syllable word have a complete impact to himself and anybody and everybody who cared to listen. It hurt that it did so vibrantly in Phil's heart, but it was wrong if he didn't feel the pain from such significance... So Phil repeated Dan's name and their love like a mantra. "Dan was my husband for five weeks; and he was my husband for the rest of his life."

"The hospital gardens weren't beautiful. They hid the rest of the place behind neatly trimmed grass, the smell of autumn and white and red roses. It was like the small section of nature was supposed to euphemise something so drastically ugly - but that was so us, that was our reality, so we didn't care. We exchanged rings. He couldn't stand up, God, he was so sick, and he had a blanket around himself, but he was freezing." Suddenly, Phil choked on the misery, and looked up to find someone that wasn't there. "And I couldn't keep him warm, I couldn't save him." Because to the (falsely hoped) 'undeniable' popular belief, Phil Lester wasn't a candle, he wasn't the light in the dark, and he wasn't Dan's sun in the world surrounded by void blackness.

"I want him back." Phil pleaded, but he didn't know to who anymore. He lost the reason why he was recording, or talking, or begging when they one person who he needed wasn't ever going to see this. "Please."

The world just keeping moving around, it didn't stop spinning. It was almost an insult, mocking him.

A/N: credit to fricken amazing writer, bluebones because it's their story! i, dumbly, just wrote this :3

- CyanGalaxy