Becky, thank you very, very much for your very kind words. ; U ; I’m very happy and very honored that you enjoyed it despite the emotional toll, and it makes me happy that you have such a wise understanding of what I wanted to express through this piece.

I’m a student nurse, and in clinical practice we very much so see this process of dying - sometimes not even of dying itself but just the prospect of dying. I see families grapple with this and the way this fic hurts is just a fraction of the way these people hurt. I wrote Breathe Lightly to be as painful as I possibly could because this is how loss feels. I wanted it to be even the slightest bit of reflection as to how the reality of losing someone you love is. It is painful beyond reprieve, it is your chest clenching like a tight fist, it is breathlessness as you cry. It’s a dull, heavy, continuous ache accentuated by points of extreme sorrow. Then it is a slow burn of healing. It is the gradual flourishing of acceptance. It is hope, it is serenity, and most of all it is love. 

I chose to wrote MCD not because I wanted get some tears flowing. I chose to write it because these things are real and fanfiction reflects reality. Writing MCD is pointless if it does not allow you to live the characters’ pain. You just have to. If you let yourself feel their pain, you then get to feel their hope.