Title: Fading

Author: MoyaoftheMist

Prompt: Death!Fic (for iraya)

Fandom: Hetalia

Pairings: PruCan, mentions of FrUK, Romerica, and GerIta

Warnings: Character death, nyotalia, human!AU, my muse suddenly deserting me (seriously, I might go back and add stuff in later—I don't know what happened).

Julchen slung an arm around Maddie's waist, pressing a quick kiss against her forehead. Maddie blushed, scanning the crowd for disapproving eyes, but no one was watching them. Smiling slyly, Maddie quickly stood up on tiptoes to peck Julchen's check—Julchen laughed.

"Mein Gott," she said "You're way too cute." She kissed Maddie's face in half a dozen places, still giggling.

"No kiss wars in public!" Maddie chided, but Julchen's laughter was infectious. Chuckling, Maddie tweaked Julchen's nose. "Oh, come on. What do you want to do first?"

Julchen looked around. They were ostensibly visiting Maddie's sister on the east coast of the US, but Amelia's girlfriend had dragged her out to a game store, leaving them to their own devices. They were on a boardwalk by the sea—game booths lined the side opposite the beach, and, in the distance, there were three water parks and three amusement parks on the piers.

"I'll buy you some ice cream," Julchen grinned, pointing to a soft-serve place down by the middle pier.

"That's frozen yogurt, you goof," Maddie said, smiling nonetheless. "You can buy it for me if you let me win you a stuffed animal at the balloon pop."

"You're on," Julchen replied. The balloon pop stand on their right had tiny balloons that didn't look fully inflated; behind each balloon was a tag. "How much for a round of darts?" Julchen asked, leaning against the counter. The owner of the stand grinned at her.

"Two dollars gets you one dart; five dollars gets you three; ten dollars gets you ten. Each tag's got a prize size on it—three smalls to a medium, three mediums to a large, etc."

"What a rip off," Julchen sighed, but Maddie pulled out a ten dollar bill and held it out to the owner.

"Five darts each, please," she said. As soon as she had the dart in hand, she noticed Julchen backing up. Good—she knew that Maddie was serious about this. "Nine smalls to a large?" she checked. The owner nodded. "Nine larges for choice of the house?" she said, and the owner nodded again, not quite smiling.

"You'd need to pop every balloon to win me that," Julchen said, frowning up at the enormous yellow bird. It was almost too big to carry home. "That's no fair."

Maddie motioned for the owner to step out of the way, then let out a long, slow breath, sizing up the first column of balloons. She loosed the dart in a careful arc—it burst the top balloon, then the five beneath it. The owner's jaw dropped, but Maddie just went for the next dart, unleashing it on the second column of balloons.

"Don't you want to play, Julchen?" Maddie asked. Julchen's smug grin flooded her with pride.

"Nope," she replied. "I just love to watch you work."

After all of the tags had been tallied, the owner finally handed over the stuffed chick; Maddie and Julchen had to work together to carry it.

"You are the best," Julchen crowed. "What kind of girlfriend gets you other chicks? Eh, eh?"

"Oh, shut up," Maddie groaned. "That was awful, Julchen. You owe me ice cream."

"Amelia told me that there's a real ice cream parlor way down by the convention center, past the third pier," Julchen mused. Without warning, the enormous chick started to fall—Maddie scrambled to grab it before it hit the boardwalk, peering around it to look at Julchen.

"What's the matter?" Maddie asked. Julchen coughed, but Maddie couldn't see around the stuffed animal; she couldn't see the blood on Julchen's hand. "Are you okay?"

"I think we should take chickadee on home," Julchen said, but her voice was shaky. "Our arms are going to fall off if we keep this up."

"Okay," Maddie said, brow furrowing. "Do you want to stop at Hooked On Books on the way home?"

"Sounds great," Julchen said, voice cheery. "I can show off my awesome girlfriend and the excellent present she won me!"

Three weeks later, Julchen was still coughing.

"It's just a summer cold," Julchen insisted. "Sorry that I'm keeping you up at night, Maddie."

"Please get it checked out," Maddie said. "If it were a cold, I'd have caught it by now."

"You're tough as a bear, Maddie," Julchen said, rolling her eyes. "Besides, you had a cold back in May, so you're probably immune by now." Maddie gave Julchen her best puppy eyes, and she threw her hands up in despair. "Okay, okay! I'll go to the doctor. Thank God that I have insurance."

Julchen left, and Maddie set out for work. She was a database administrator at a nonprofit organization that designed assessments for students. Maddie had often wanted to move back to Canada, where she'd been born, but she'd found work in Oregon, so it was in Oregon that they'd made their home. She and Julchen had been living together since their sophomore year of college—five or so years earlier. In Oregon, they couldn't get married. She'd already planned exactly how she would propose to Julchen; the rings and dresses were saved in a hidden folder on her laptop. But how could she ask when she was the one keeping them here?

When she came home that night, Julchen looked pensive. In the moments before she caught sight of Maddie, she pressed a hand against her own chest, but she removed it as soon as she noticed Maddie, immediately grinning.

"Hey!" she said, getting to her feet. Maddie noticed her falter, but smiled back as Julchen hugged her. "How was work?"

Maddie kissed Julchen on the nose.

"Deployment this weekend," she sighed. "How was the doctor? Any news?"

Julchen's face tightened.

"Do you want the bad news or the worse news first?" she asked.

Neither, Maddie wanted to say. For an instant, she wanted Julchen to lie to her. Instead, she swallowed to ease the lump in her throat. "Bad," she managed. Julchen sighed.

"It's lung cancer," she said. "And I only have a month to live."

Julchen settled her arms around Maddie, and Maddie rested her head against Julchen's chest, snuggling closer as the opening credits of the movie rolled. Once upon a time, they'd gone out to movie theaters and amusement parks, but a peaceful night on the couch was all that Julchen could still manage.

"Want to play a video game after?" Maddie murmured. Julchen's breathing wasn't as labored as it had been when they'd been making dinner—her heart pounded steadily, evenly. Was she still in pain, despite that? Maddie sometimes caught Julchen grimacing, face contorted with quiet agony, but never when Julchen knew she was looking; how much was she hiding?

"I'll watch," Julchen laughed. "Shh, it's starting."

Maddie curled up against Julchen. Was this really what she wanted to do with the last few weeks of her life? It wasn't fair—it wasn't right that Julchen was the first to go. Don't leave me here alone, Samwise Gamgee said on the screen. Don't go where I can't follow. Maddie squeezed Julchen's hand, and she ruffled Maddie's hair.

This wasn't the future they'd imagined—Julchen loved kids, and they'd planned to have at least four. They'd planned to explore the world. They'd planned to host big parties for their extended family for Christmas. But they only had August.

"Marry me," Maddie said.

"In a heartbeat," Julchen said. "Until my last breath."

Maddie's company gave her the rest of the month off, though she had to be on call to fix things from home at all hours of the day and night. No one called as she gathered their family from the four corners of the Earth—Ludwig and Feliciano in Venice, Frances and Arthur splitting their time on either side of the English Channel, Amelia and Lovina in New York. It was short notice, but they all came, flying into Washington, where same-sex marriage had recently been legalized.

"With this ring, I thee wed," Julchen said, sliding the ring onto Maddie's finger. "In sickness and in health, as long as we both shall live."

Not long, Maddie thought. Not nearly long enough.

Maddie had expected a month of marriage. They'd talked about what they'd do for Julchen's last week, after their brief honeymoon at the coast.

On the first day of their last week, Maddie rolled over to kiss Julchen and found her cool and unmoving—her chest didn't rise and fall with labored breaths, hacking coughs. Maddie reached out to touch her, shock shutting down all thought, but she couldn't. This wasn't Julchen. Julchen was always on the move: taking stairs two at a time, singing into the spatula in the kitchen, shimmying in place as she waited for Maddie to look up from a book, kicking in her sleep. This still, placid face was a stranger.

Julchen was already gone.