As Our Tragedies Atrophy

Prologue

A/N: This fic was written for Phandom Big Bang 2015!  I can't believe I actually did this omg this is the first "multi-chaptered" phanfic I've ever actually finished. Thanks to my beta, Meg, for listening to all my rambles and changes and helping me decide what fit and what didn't. Hanna was deffo a trooper who helped me as a pinch hitter artist last minute. You can check out her art on my tumblr acc (@skellester). Anyway, I leave this for you all to read. I would appreciate it greatly if you tell me what you think, either on here or through my tumblr! I won't be posting the fic all at once, but in eight separate parts that aren't necessarily the same length. Enough of my rambling, here we go! Soz in advance for the tears.

You're so strong, they said. I can't imagine going through this. No one can. Some people are more resilient than others. For fifteen years, Dan Howell was one of those people. Except he had to handle comments that were just the opposite. Why don't you leave him? There's no point in staying. You have a future ahead of you. Don't throw it all away for him. This is weak. You're being weak.

The truth is, he was neither strong nor weak. He was just going through the motions, letting the wind sail him to whatever direction fate intended him to. That's the thing about fate, he's reasoned. If you're being dealt cards from the hands of fate and you have no choice but to accept it or be an utter arsehole for quitting the game, that's not being strong. It's living.

He thinks about his days in his early twenties, when he was so fixated on the future and what it held for him (or what it didn't), that he'd drive himself into an existential anxiety. Common sense would say finding out the person who means the most in the world to him has been diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease would only worsen that existential anxiety, but that wasn't the case, and he never claimed to be the golden poster child of common sense either.

There was never any time to worry about the future or his own for that matter. The news kind of shocked him into a carpe diem frame of mind. At the fear of time weighing upon them and the prevalent knowledge that one day Phil Lester might not even remember who he is, he was more concerned with savoring every lasting moment they had with each other.

Hindsight's burden is a beautiful thing. It's a curse and a blessing all at once. A curse because it's funny how something as morbid as death changes things, makes everything feel more real, yet justified. The blessing, on the other hand, is clarity, perspective.

This perspective could possibly help him solve the answer to the most prevalent question that weighed in his mind: Who am I without Phil Lester? Everything he's done for most of his life was for him, because of him, because he loved him.

Now that's not to say he'd rather take everything back. After all, he's always been a believer in 'everything happens for a reason', or at the very least, that his life might not have turned out the way it did if he chose an alternate path. Believe him when he says that although there are far too many cringe worthy moments he'd rather have not gone through, he wouldn't change one second of it.
Even if he wanted to, Phil's fate wasn't his to take back. That wouldn't be fair to him, to deny his resolution just because he hoped it would be different. No, he won't do that. He won't curse and rage and fall into a pit of despair. 'Til the very last second, Phil never faltered. Why, then, should he? Dan will always remember him as that: the hopeful. The strongest of them all.