There had been a time once, really not that long ago, when Nick never woke up to a quiet house. No matter the hour, he’d either left the radio on or one of the dogs was whining to be let out; the cell phone was singing merrily to itself on his end table, or whatever had followed him home from Tampa’s club scene the night before was twisting in the sheets, tangling her smooth limbs back around his. Sometimes it was thunder rolling in from across the bay, or Aaron’s laughter filtering up from downstairs, or even a string of obscenities as A.J. got his ass kicked on the Playstation. As varied and unpredictable as they were, the sounds were the melody of his life; everything precious, wrapping him in as much peace and security as the blankets cuddling against his skin.

So when he awakened that afternoon to Florida sunlight draping the walls of his bedroom in a peaceful, warm glow, he noticed the silence immediately.

And, as always, he noticed the pain.

There were no illusions that he could harbor about his illness, and never for a moment upon waking did he think that maybe it was all just a dream, some awful nightmare brought on by German sausages or Howie’s cooking and that everything was really just fine. It would have been nice, but awake or asleep the pain rolled deep in the pit of his stomach, gnawing and peeling ragged holes that nothing seemed to heal.

Along with the assortment of medicines he took on a regular basis now, he had to remember to swallow down the nickel-sized pills that took the edge off his pain, because if he didn’t, God, the agony was enough to make him scream. He’d choked down the medicine earlier and could feel it working within him; where pain’s claws had once burrowed into his flesh, now they only pressed against his skin lightly and that was about all he could hope for anymore.

Wearily, Nick rolled from his side onto his back and looked towards the window, letting the restful silence soak into his exhausted frame. Although the cancer and its hellish treatments had weakened him considerably, an even crueler effect had come to light in recent months - his inability to stay awake for more than a few hours at a time. Where once his reserves of energy and enthusiasm had been endless; where once he could sing all day and dance all night, now he fell asleep at the kitchen table or while soaking in the tub, and more than once he’d had to fight off the urge to doze while on the toilet. No matter how many hours he spent in dreamless sleep, he was always, always tired, and he hated it bitterly, even more than the sores in his mouth or the dry parchment that now passed for his skin. True, his life was painful and bleak, but it was his life, dammit. He shouldn’t have to sleep away so much of what he still had left, but the cancer was unmoved by his bitter tears.

His eyes closed again, the lids suddenly weighted with fatigue. That morning had been the perfect example. He’d made sure to get a deep, uninterrupted sleep the night before, hoping that he would be able to stay awake and strong for what he had to do.

He hadn’t had any idea how the guys would react to his heartbreaking news – wasn’t sure, really, how he himself would hold up because deep down, he still didn’t want to believe it himself. But in the end, exhaustion had come to blur his thoughts and bleary his eyes while they had still been staring, faces slack and wiped pale with shock, and as much as he yearned to stay and somehow soothe away the worry and anger and vibrant fear that spilled over into their expressions, all he’d been able to do was stagger back to bed, sleep consuming him a heartbeat after he had fallen in amongst the sheets. And now, the whole house stood quiet, as though the very walls themselves were still reeling with shock, his little I’m dying whisper resonating in the air like a scream.

After a moment, Nick could pick out the quiet, even ticks of the grandfather clock down the hall, measuring out the passing seconds and draining time away, and he kicked off the blanket and sat up, moving gingerly as he stretched the tight muscles in his back. He looked over at the clock and saw that it was already half past two. His thirty-minute naps were turning into four and five hour rests now, apparently. Christ, if he kept this up, one of these days he was going to fall asleep and never wake up at all.

“Nice thought, asshole,” he muttered to himself, then reached up to tug his fingers through his sloppy hair, a gesture that had been second nature for years. He stopped himself just in time, however, and bit his lip instead. A few weeks earlier, he had forgotten to stop himself and had wound up sitting in bed for half an hour crying like a baby with fistfuls of hair clutched to his chest.

Standing, Nick moved to the window, his footfalls silent on the thick carpet.

He had been seeking distraction, but what he found was much more; clearly, he had been sleeping through an intensely beautiful day. The view was warmth and sunlight and joy; a sweet sky crossed with clouds that tattered on the edges, adding texture to the breeze and depth to the dark ocean that stretched beyond the horizon. He gazed over it with a smile, looking over the water, and suddenly the question that had been turning over in the back of his mind ever since Dr. Anderson had looked at him with tears in her eyes and he’d known, he’d fucking known right in that instant what she was going to say and what was going to happen to him then, came on again, gripping and desperate.

What I am going to do now?

Late at night on long tours, when he hadn’t been able to sleep and there had been nothing else to do, he’d turned on the television and sometimes found shows about people who were diagnosed with fatal illnesses; stories of courage and strength, of spreading joy in waning days. He had watched them with idle detachment, but now, as he reached up to lay a hand on the glass, he wondered if those same people didn’t throw themselves down at night and scream; curse at God and wail in fear and desperation. Because life really wasn’t supposed to turn out this way. Not for anybody.

Not for him.

Telltale fears; terrors, began to trace their way slowly up from the base of his spine, reminding him of his deepest fears. Voices that whispered about what it was like to die and what would happen to him when that final darkness closed over his eyes. Mocking voices, teasing him with holidays he would never celebrate, a woman he would never marry, the family he would never have, the songs he would never sing, and it got no farther than that before he shuddered and pushed the whole mess away, stuffing it back into a dark corner of his mind and fighting to hold in the sob. He couldn’t kid himself - eventually, he would have to deal with those thoughts, as black and awful as they were.

But not today. Not today.

On some level, it really did seem like a grand and very vivid dream. A television show; something happening to somebody else. Maybe in just another moment, someone would pop in through the window with bubbling laughter; a man in a three-piece suit and a cheap toupee, shoving a microphone in his face and gleefully announcing, “Smile, Nick Carter! You’re on Candid Camera!” Because things like this didn’t really happen, did they?

Or maybe they were only supposed to happen to other people.

The grandfather clock ticked its agreement.

Turning, he walked across the room and into the empty hallways, letting his hands glide along the walls, deep within his thoughts. On some level, part of him had to know this was real, or he would never have spent an entire afternoon writing those stupid letters. Just for safekeeping, he’d told himself, scribbling page after page until his hands cramped and the words bled together in his watering eyes. Just in case. And he’d finished them and sealed them up; one for Kevin, one for Brian, one for A.J. and one for Howie, and maybe more down the road, too; for his mom and dad, and Aaron, and the girls. Then he’d laughed at himself and went to tear it all up because what was a letter to a life, but he couldn’t, just couldn’t, and had finally hidden them away. He couldn’t remember exactly where, and figured it didn’t matter much. Either he would be fine and would stumble across them years from now when he was healthy and whole and could laugh, or he wouldn’t be fine and…

Maybe that was what really killed him. Not some cancer eating him from the inside out, but the sheer uncertainty of it all.

As he descended the stairs and moved through the rooms of his home, he was surprised to find that he truly was alone. Not that he minded, of course, but they had never let him out of earshot before, and that was before he’d dropped the bomb on them that morning. Maybe they’d had no choice; felt they had to get away before the fear and horror consumed them much as it festered deep in his own soul. God knew he felt that way enough, but his problem wasn’t exactly something he could outrun. In time, they would figure out that they couldn’t run from it, either.

It had been a while since he’d bothered to take a look around, and he paused in the living room, breathing deeply of cinnamon candles and sunlight and furniture polish. The guys had been taking good care of the place, which was a switch - if the tour buses and dressing rooms they’d frequented over the years were any indication, garbage and disarray followed the five of them closer than their own shadows. Hell, he hadn’t been nicknamed Kaos for nothing, and even Kevin and Howie had gotten slovenly during the Black and Blue tour, towards the end.

The end.

His conscious mind blew sharply, and like a candle, the thought was extinguished. Sometime, yes… but not now.

Moving a bit slower now, Nick settled down in an overstuffed white recliner near the back deck and leaned back, gazing through the sliding glass doors at the generous view of the ocean. It would have been nice to go outside and take in some fresh air, but he was a bit cold and the afternoon shadows didn’t look too inviting. The chair was comfortable enough, anyway.

His thoughts wandered to the others. Kevin, he was probably off working on the MTV thing, staying busy so he didn’t have to think about reality or the future or anything but the task at hand. Brian and Howie were probably off in a deep state of denial someplace, and A.J. was no doubt on the road, searching for a bar that served hard liquor twenty-four hours a day. They would have to find their own way through it, he supposed, just as he was going to have to figure it out eventually too. He wasn’t sure what he could do to help them.

Except not die, of course. Wouldn’t that be nice.

Maybe the secret was not to worry about death at all but to drink deeply of every day, of every breath, and do everything he could with the life he had. Because if death was inevitable – and it was, it just came sooner for some people than others – then there was no point of dreading it, or letting it ruin what he had left, right? Who knew if you would live to be a hundred years old or get struck by a stray bolt of lightning the next time you walked out the door? Better, perhaps, to live while he was alive, and then be no worse off whenever death finally did come upon him.

He wasn’t so sure he could do that, either.