(Hoseok POV)

The scarf.

He saw the scarf in my suitcase.

"It all makes sense now." He stared at me, red eyes wide, trance gaze, as if he was alternating between reality and another realm. His lips quivered and he stared at the scarf in his hand, "it makes. . .sense."

He turned around and walked through the hall. I followed behind him, wanting to wrap my arms around him. But I too felt numb.

Yoongi entered the living room, looking around, as if he couldn't recognize where he was. His hands touched the walls, resting his forehead against it.

"It was you. They had said the pedestrian had life threatening injuries, injuries that couldn't be reversed." He closed his eyes. "Your hand tremors, pale skin, headaches, why the nurses wouldn't tell me why you were staying in the hospital. . ." he looked over at me, eyes brimming with tears, "why you take the same medication my mom used to."

I wanted to disappear. But I wanted to stay more.

"You have cancer."

"I do."

His eyes leaked at the corners and he slid down against the wall, pushing his hands against it, knees digging into it.

"And I made it worse, didn't I?"

I kept silent, watching his face break apart slowly, defeated face.

"Didn't I?!"

I flinched at his voice volume, nodding slowly. I walked over to him, sitting down beside him, trying to touch him and hold him. 

He flinched away.

He hugged his knees to his chest, face buying in them, rocking back and forth.

"You were the one I had hit with my car. You, you were — are — the victim of the car crash. . .I was — am — the culprit." He mumbled, voice fading. "Why d-did it have to be you?" His shoulder quivered and so did his voice and I found myself wrapping my arms around him, not an ounce of anger within me.

"Shh, it's okay. I'm doing fine."

"No. . .you're not. You're. . ." he lifted his face, eyes bloodshot red and wet, "dying."

His features broke.

"You're dying."

"But I'm dying loving you."

Yoongi shook his head, realizations seeming to hit him harder by the second because he flinched away from me again. He clawed his fingers in his hair, shaking his head, cheeks wet.

"You're dying and I'm the one who made it worse. I made it worse," he sobbed, racking his shoulders. "H-how much time do you have left?"

"I don't know."

"Stop lying!" Yoongi yelled, clawing at his own hair and skin.

"I'm not, Yoongi. I stopped counting my days."

Yoongi turned to me, grabbing my shoulders and shaking them, voice cracking with his pleas. "Tell me, Hoseok. How much time do you have left?"

"I don't know," I shook my head slowly, tears escaping my own eyes. I felt as if my layers were being picked apart again, helplessness only left.

"Why? Why did you stop counting them?" Yoongi's face lingered mere inches from mine, hovering between mine and his destruction.

I gulped, cupping his face gently with my hands.

"Because I fell in love with you." I remembered the day he had told me to stop counting them, to count stars, to count blessings, to count laughter. "Because you made me realize that seconds are worth so much more than months. . .t-that when you're here with me, numbers.mean.nothing."

Yoongi stared at me, swollen lips and defeated eyes, guilt escaping them. "Were you ever even planning on telling me about your tumour? And how I made it so much fucking worse?" He squeezed my hands, voice taking on notes of hysteria.

"No."

"Why?"

"Death doesn't mean anything when you've started to live." I tried to lean in and kiss him, to wipe away his tears and kiss his cheeks and lips, but he hung his head and stood up, staring at me as he loomed over me, but not meeting my eyes.

"How can you still love me? I'm the cause of your early approaching death, Hoseok! Wake up! This isn't love! It-it's madness!"

"It's love, Yoongi! It's love for me," I stood up, jabbing a finger at his chest. "If you can stand there and say that I'm not enough to make you stay, then I can fucking say as well that you're enough for me to!" 

His eyes widened.

"It doesn't fucking matter that you were the one that hit me with the car! It doesn't fucking matter that you gave me two months to live instead of eleven," I yelled, blood roaring and rushing, "it doesn't even fucking matter that you don't want me to love you." I heaved.

"All it matters is that you, Min Yoongi, taught me how to live in one month, rather than eleven."

He stared at me, eyes slowly down-turning and head lolling to one side slowly. His tears stopped rolling, his voice taking on an uncomfortable calm tone.

"Then maybe it's because you learned how to live — not how to love." Yoongi stated, stepping away from me and closer to the door. 

There it was; that switch. 

"That just like how you can't love away the fucked up parts of me, you can't learn to live your life without the destruction of mine." His eyes drifted. "It wasn't me you fell in love with; it was with my most broken piece. I was the example of how not to live, which only made you more determined to."

"You didn't fall in love with me, you fell in love with living. And that," he smiled, not the -on-the-edge-one, some other smile, much much sadder and heartbreaking, "is the best kind of love there is."

I was falling, and he wasn't catching me.

"But Yoongi," I choked, me taking a step closer, him taking a step away, "you made me fall in love with living."

He shook his head. "You only fall in love with someone because they provide the part of you that's missing, Hoseok. You were missing the way to live, and I was missing the will to live. We only gave our pieces to each other, not all of us. Love was the only label we could give it."

He couldn't be doing this, couldn't be taking my heart and shredding it and ripping to pieces I couldn't glue back together. Maybe this wasn't him speaking; it was just his disorder. Yes, his disorder was causing these sudden changes and thoughts. He hadn't been taking his pills lately and maybe. . .maybe. . .no.

This was Yoongi, the one who didn't have pills making him feel grey in his bloodstream or clouding his mind. This wasn't the disorder speaking or the pills — it was Yoongi himself.

I watched him and he watched me and I suddenly wanted to hang myself with my blue scarf.

I stopped that train of thought, my eyes burning again, his previous words ringing through silently in my head.

Yoongi was going away, taking his piece back again, his 'way to live' piece back.

He couldn't be right. 

"If love is trading our most broken piece, then I don't want it, Hoseok."

"But I do, Yoongi."

He looked at me, ocean eyes and rain plummeting into seas. Only he was drowning in his own ocean and I had thought it was breathtaking. 

"You're still my Sun, Hoseok. You always will be. It's just that I can't always be the Earth you can shine upon."

He smiled that different smile again, and I gave it a label, his -i'm-sorry- smile, his -i-can't-do-this-anymore- smile.

"The Sun needs to learn to rotate for itself, not for its Earth."

And he walked out the door.

Leaving me wondering when the Sun was going to explode and give its remaining warmth to me — the one which Yoongi took with himself.

___