A/N: rjdaae sent me the prompt that inspired this.

Three years, three months, three weeks, three days, three hours. Ten minutes. Fifteen seconds. She's learned it, memorised it. How could she not? It is there, every smaller, ticking away. Getting smaller, shorter and a time will come—a time will come when—

Sometimes she hopes it will be her. That she will never have to live in a world without him, will never have to see the numbers vanished from her wrist. And then she hates herself for it, for even considering putting that pain on him.

He has suffered enough.

Mostly she tries not to think of it, pushes the thoughts away when her wrist tingles, or when his cuff rides up enough to show the black numbers that have so definitively marked their time together.

But at night. At night it is not so easy to forget, not when he is lying beside her, breathing softly, his arm wrapped around her. And she thinks she can feel the numbers ticking down, pressed against her side.

It makes her feel light-headed.

She wonders how it will happen. An accident? A carriage careening into the sidewalk? A misfired gun? A stabbing in a robbery gone wrong? Fantastical possibilities, each of them, the stuff of operas, of penny-dreadfuls, not of reality. More than likely it will be something simple, something unpreventable.

He has read every medical book he can lay his hands on as if it might protect them, keep them safe, subvert the hands of Fate when it has not been enough to save any other couple just as condemned as they are.

She sighs and draws a breath to steady the pounding of her heart, and nuzzles closer into her sleeping husband, her mind wandering back through each of those years, months, weeks, and she knows she will never forget that very first moment, when the timer stood whole.

Her wrist tingled when the counter started, and that was how she knew. She was in her dressing room, and the Voice was singing softly from behind the wall, and there was a burning in her wrist, followed by a tingle, and she looked down to see the line of numbers unfurling across, as if they had been waiting just beneath the surface of her skin all of her life. Three. Three. Three. Three. Three. Ten. Fifteen. The Voice stopped in a gasp, such a soft sound that she could only stare into her mirror, her breath caught in her throat.

Angels do not gasp. Angels are never the only ones present when a person gets their timer. And in that moment she knew, she knew it all.

It did not seem so very terrible.

It was not that they decided to cram a lifetime into three years. They did not discuss it. It did not seem like something that needed discussion when they both knew, when she could see the downward curve of his lip at the sight of her wrist. It simply happened from the moment that the mirror slid open, and that was not the strangest thing that happened that day.

He stepped through, tall and elegant and masked, and without asking a question, before he could even speak a word, she slipped the mask off as his eyes widened, and she took in the face beneath, and knew that if it came to that, she would learn to love it.

She looks at it now in the darkness of the night, sleeping on the pillow beside her, the lines of worry smoothed away, and knows that she would not have it any other way.

He kissed her hand that night, every inch the proper gentleman, and two months later they were married in a private ceremony.

(She proposed to him. He was still struggling with his feelings, with what had happened between them. Still fighting, he confessed later, to believe that such a thing was possible.)

The years have faded away. The years, and the months, and two of the weeks. She performed for the last time when there was only one month on her wrist, no years or weeks or days. And if it is him, she is not certain she will ever have the strength to perform again.

(He tells her she will. That she is stronger than she thinks, that she will grace that stage again, and she knows that he thinks it will be him, and he is getting ready for it. Sometimes, sometimes when the night is dark and cold and he is restless too she thinks he will make sure it is him. He has often said that he has lived long enough.)

She has not told him her secret. If it becomes clear that it will be him, then she will confess it, just so he knows that something beautiful came of their time together, and not just pain. But if there is any chance that it will be her, any chance at all, she will not breathe a word. She will not be the one to snatch two lives from him.

(He always said it would be careless, for them to even take the risk of such a thing happening. But when she kissed him, and held him, any protest died on his lips.)

But tonight, tonight there is only them, just the two of them, tucked together. He has been so tired lately, fighting to stay awake, fighting for every moment. And she thinks, perhaps, she is not the only one keeping secrets.

There is no room left inside of her to be sad, to grieve. There is only numbness. Other people have spoken of it, of the way it feels towards the end, and she knows it inside out, in every way she can. The desperation, and the dread, and the yawning emptiness.

She should not think of such things tonight. Should think only of him, of how much she loves him, of the wonderful life they have had. Should try to get some sleep, while he is sleeping, but how can she sleep when that would waste so many moments? So much time?

Her eyes prickle, only for a moment, and the tears do not come but she tightens her fingers around his, raises his hand to her lips and kisses his knuckles gently.

"I love you," she murmurs, and wishes the words were enough to shield them.

But not even prayers can do that.