AN1: Thank you everyone for choosing to read this story. I know I haven't updated in a little bit but I've been trying to work on a schedule so I update my fics at least once a week. Today is my birthday and it's been so much fun writing again 😊 I really hope you enjoy it.

Chapter Thirty Five - Flatline

"We need emergency care for the patient now!"

This wasn't supposed to be happening. This was supposed to be a normal round of therapy. This wasn't supposed to sound like the machines were going haywire on her or that her husband had entered a seizure. This wasn't supposed to be the heart monitor scaring her or doctors trying to sedate the man.

Kyoko wrapped her arms around herself as she stared helplessly at her husband in the bed.

Tears were in her eyes as she feared for the worst. She didn't want to see him this way. She didn't want to think that he wasn't strong enough to protect himself. If only she hadn't gone with her mother and lost all that time away from him. Her eyes widened. Had they done this to him?

She looked around nervously as the doctors tried to keep her away from Kuon so they could treat him.

It was at this point that she felt everything going black around her and she heard the worried words of a doctor who was standing beside Kuon.

"Someone's tampered with the medicine" she said and Kyoko's eyes quickly went to her. She knew that the gang that her family member was associated with had threatened something like this before but she had gone with them. She had done everything that they had asked of her. They wouldn't have gone through with it anyway, right?

As Kyoko's brain tried to scramble and form an explanation, she saw Kuon's body go completely limp and there was a loud flatlining buzz on the heart monitor. Kyoko wrapped her arms around herself and took a step backwards as if she was plummeting off of a large cliff. Her eyes were filled with tears and she kept shaking her head as if trying to wake herself from this nightmare.

"Kuon…" she whispered as she felt her heart sink in her chest. "KUON!" she yelled. She just wanted the noise to stop and Kuon to sit up and tell her that he was okay and that he was going to get better. She wanted to close her eyes and find that she was at home the previous day holding Aurora whilst Kuon ironed the laundry. She wanted to remember her husband's smiling face and how he could always captivate her with his emerald eyes which sometimes were a burnt sienna in the right light.

All she could hear was the flatline and the doctor's voice announcing time of death.

No.

Her body felt so cold and empty, she tried to grip onto something but there was nothing there. She could hear a beeping sound, the sound of some electronic item and she just wanted to run. She wanted to avoid all of this! She was falling! She was falling down so fast and

…..

Kyoko's eyes opened and she found herself trembling in her bed. She blinked hard and nervously reached out, grabbing onto Kuon's arm as he lay beside her. Once she could see him there, her heart seemed to rest and she wiped the tears away from her eyes. So, it was just a nightmare.

Kuon looked at her and Kyoko paused as she saw that he was wearing an oxygen mask over his face. Was this one of his machines? He reached to take it off as he saw that Kyoko was still trembling, her body with sweat coating it.

"Hey," he said as he fumbled with the mask but eventually took it off. He coughed harshly, his chest hurting. "Is something wrong?" he asked as he attempted to sit up, coughing again. He placed a hand around his chest. His eyes stung as Kyoko turned the light on.

"Kuon," Kyoko said as she rushed to him and put the mask back on. She systematically put her hands on each part of his body from the top of his head to his feet as she tried to make sure that he was still there beside her. She panted again and tried her hardest to hold back the tears. "You're here. You're here, thank god," she whispered as she tried to hold back her pain.

"Did you think –" Kuon coughed harshly as he moved the mask from his face again, "that I wouldn't be."

Kyoko immediately put the mask back onto his face, "Don't take that off again, please? If it's helping you then I want you to continue to wear it." Kyoko looked down and tried to brush the tears away from her face. She didn't want to ever bring up that dream or how her worst nightmare was losing him. "I'm sorry that I woke you," she apologized before giving him a stern look that told him not to remove the mask.

Kuon sighed and reached out to lightly touch her shoulder in hopes of comforting her.

Kyoko looked down as she tried to control her breaths to calm herself down. However, as she looked up at him, she started to think about why he was wearing the breathing device. She looked at him, he was paler than usual. Even for being sick, he usually had a bit more color to his body. She felt his hands, he was cold to her touch. She reached up and touched his forehead where he was running a high fever. This didn't look good.

"Kuon, I think we should go to the hospital," she said with her eyes wide. What if this was part of him getting worse and what if it did lead to her dream? She wouldn't be able to take it if he wasn't there. She needed him. He was her rock, her safe place, her home. She couldn't bear even the idea of losing him.

Kuon looked around before grabbing a notebook and a pen and wrote on it: I don't think it's urgent. I just have a cold.

Kyoko read it over three times before looking up at her husband and shaking her head, "Are you sure that you're alright? Even if you do have a cold and that's all it is, wouldn't it be better to have it checked?"

She saw Kuon tilt his head to the side before writing again: It's a cold. If it gets worse, we can go to the hospital, okay?

Kyoko blinked at the paper and saw Kuon give her a thumbs up. Sometimes he was so foolish especially when it came to himself. On one hand, the note was comforting because it showed that Kuon was going back to normal, he was getting back to the humorous, witty, charismatic guy that she knew. However, if she only had more guarantee that he was really okay then she would feel better. It was as if he didn't take his own health that seriously sometimes.

"Okay, but you don't get to decide how much worse it gets. If I feel that you need to go and see a doctor then I am taking you there even if I have to tie you down and take you there with help," she said and Kuon nodded. Kyoko sighed before turning off the light and slipping down in the bed as Kuon did the same. Kyoko wrapped her arms around her husband. "I love you," she told him as he nodded and she pushed her face into his chest.

…

…

Kyoko watched her husband as they sat in the doctor's office. She knew that he didn't want to be here, but his condition had gotten worse and she was worried. That was still part of her duties as a wife, wasn't it? To take care of her husband and keep him safe and well. That didn't just disappear because she had left him on his own.

"Kuon, are you seriously sulking about being here?" Kyoko asked him concerned. She looked down. Maybe she shouldn't have force him here, maybe she should have listened to him that it was just a cold. Taking him here and learning that she overreacted was as bad as someone just telling her in a straightforward manner that she couldn't trust her husband's own judgement.

Kuon sighed, "I'm fine," he said as he felt his chest hurt but he didn't want to tell her about it. Kyoko had been through enough and he didn't want to make her feel as if she had done anything wrong. "The doctor will come in and say that –" Kuon said before being cut off by the doctor entering the room.

"Mr. Hizuri," the doctor said as he turned to Kuon, "I have some rather unpleasant news for you," he said before looking quickly at Kyoko. "Do I have your permission to say this in front of Ms. Hizuri."

"Mrs," Kyoko corrected him as she reached across for Kuon's hand.

"Of course," Kuon replied not wanting to admit to the anxiety he felt with what the doctor was saying. "I don't want to keep secrets from my wife anymore."

"Alright then," the doctor nodded. "The cancer has spread and it's returning to your stomach as well. I do apologize about my earlier assessment, I thought that the cancer was moving out of your body but rather it was moving into other territories."

Kuon's eyes widened and the horrified expression on his face couldn't be matched by anything that he had ever given any director. He looked at Kyoko who had the same terrified look. "I…where?" he asked awkwardly and the doctor sighed.

"It's inconclusive right now as to where it's moved, but generally it's to the organs around it," the doctor said. "We need to do a full body check up to be positive, but we're thinking the biggest area is your left lung."

Kyoko looked down. Weren't Americans always dying of lung cancer? Okay, maybe that was her being discriminatory and she definitely didn't want to use Kuon's nationality against him. Still, lung cancer scared her. She closed her eyes and remembered how some people had to have machines put in their throat that made them sound like robots. Nobody wanted to watch an actor who sounded like that.

Kyoko shook her head and looked at the doctor intensely, "Check it again. I doubt that my husband has anything wrong with his lungs. I'm sure you just read the test wrong," she told him and the doctor was about to argue but nobody could argue with Kyoko in the state that she was currently in.

"Yes, there could have been an error," the doctor said nervously as he eyed Kyoko and stood up.

Kyoko held to Kuon's hand. She felt lost and afraid and she didn't believe in miracles in the way she once used to, but she didn't want to lose him. She didn't want to see him get sicker. She didn't want there to be any problems between the two of them. She just wanted to pretend that they were both happy and healthy and okay and that they would live a beautifully long and romantic life together.

"It's okay," she tried to tell Kuon who was looking in front of him as if there was some deformed creature on the floor crying for help.

"How?" he asked her in a sad voice, "How could this have happened?"

Kyoko sighed again before reaching out to touch him, "Kuon, do you want me to tell you about the Yakuza?" she offered. She knew he was interested in what had happened to her and she needed a way of distracting him from his own illness. She took a deep breath in, closed her eyes, and opened her mouth.

She began her story.

End of Chapter Thirty Five

Thank you for Reading

AN2: Special shoutout to the reviewers of Chapter Thirty Four: Erza, Guest, paulagato. Thank you sooo much.