“I want you to be loved forever,” Roman whispers, clutching your hand tightly. He’s exhausted, but he’s always exhausted nowadays.

He’s dying, after all.

“Find someone else after me,” he continues. There’s dark circles under his eyes, his skin more gaunt. He doesn’t look like the man you married, he knows that. Roman has only ever wanted your happiness.

This doesn’t make you happy. He wants you to want more than a living corpse.

Doctors don’t know what’s wrong with him. He’s a “medical mystery” or whatever he was told. He doesn’t want to be that, he wants to be your husband. Just your husband. Just your Roman. He feels guilty being the reason you’ve spent so much time in some hospital. You have to hate it here because he does. The smells, the lights, everything.

“Mahal, sweetheart, baby, please.” These can’t be your last memories of him. Roman’s a shell of the man he once was. He wants to cover his face every time you look at him. “You’re still young, you have so much time left.”

A lot of people joke they’d never want their spouse to move on, and maybe at one point he did as well, but not anymore. He has nightmares about you stuck, unable to move on, completely miserable. How is he meant to rest when all he thinks about is you?