Disclaimer: I do not own The Fault In Our Stars, Looking For Alaska, or any of its characters. The plot, however, is mine.

Chapter 1

They'd been staring down at them for several minutes now. No words were spoken, no movements were made. They hadn't looked at each other once. They were just watching them as if what they were doing was the most fascinating thing on earth.

They watched the girl climb into her bed first. She curled up on her side, pulling an old t-shirt from underneath her pillow. She held the thing to her chest and inhaled the scent she was so desperate to smell again deeply, squeezing her eyes shut. Though, they knew she wasn't sleeping or was planning on going to sleep any time soon.

Not long after that, the guy went to bed too, collapsing on the bottom bunk. They'd watched him slip out of his clothes after he'd smoked a cigarette in the bathroom. He wasn't sleeping either.

Silently, the door of the girl's room opened. A dim light shone over the girl, and her mom peeked inside. Something she did every night, just to check if her daughter was still there. If she was okay for as far as she could be. She looked at her for a moment before closing the door again. She too, knew that she wasn't asleep.

In the darkness, a small form on the top bunk stirred underneath the covers. A guy leaned over the edge of the bed to look at his friend. His eyelids were closed, and the dark shadows underneath his eyes were clearly visible. Without saying a word, he laid back down and went back to sleep.

A few more minutes of silence later, Augustus lifted his head. Oceanic-blue spheres met emerald green hues. "That's Hazel." he said, flashing Alaska his crooked smile as he pointed with his index finger towards the girl. "I love her."

Alaska flashed him a warm smile before turning her face to look down again. She motioned with her head towards the guy on the bottom bunk. "That's Miles, but everyone calls him Pudge. He loves me and I love him, present tense."

Augustus bobbed his head in a few nods and fixated his gaze back on the girl. His elbows were resting on his knees, his hands clasped together. "They are having a hard time, aren't they?"

"Yeah, they are." Alaska answered quietly, her plumb lower lip curled between her pearly white teeth.

Furrowing his brows, Augustus remained silent for a moment.

"So, what's your story?" Alaska asked to break the silence. She inclined her head to the side as she studied Augustus' features.

"Cancer. Everywhere." he shrugged. "Yours?"

Alaska smiled. "Drunk. Car crash."

Augustus nodded before fishing a pack of cigarettes out of his pocket. He flipped it open and put a cigarette between his lips.

Raising her eyebrows, Alaska blinked a couple of times. "You're not going to light it?"

"Nope," Augustus replied.

She was clearly confused. "Then why would you.." her voice trailed off.

The twitch of a smile etched at the corner of his mouth as he repeated the words he'd once used to explain it to Hazel. "It's a metaphor, see: You put the killing thing right between your teeth, but you don't give it the power to do its killing."

She laughed at that. "That's so much smarter than what I always said. When Pudge asked me I told him 'Y'all smoke to enjoy. I smoke to die.'"

A low chuckle passed Augustus' brims. "It feels good talking about them, doesn't it?"

"It does." Alaska said, glancing down at her feet. "Miles was always one to remember famous people their last words."

Augustus gave her a funny look and cocked an eyebrow.

"One of the last things he wrote for an essay was: Thomas Edison's last words were, 'It's very beautiful over there.' I don't know where there is, but I believe it's somewhere, and I hope it's beautiful.'"

His lips curled into a grin as he looked at Alaska. "That are some great words. I think my favorite ones of Hazel were the ones she said on my pre-funeral.." Augustus took the cigarette from between his teeth and cleared his throat. "I am no mathematician, but I know this: There are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. I wanted us to have more numbers than we got. But I cannot tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful." Alaska remained silent for so long that he wasn't sure if she'd heard him at all. Gently, he nudged her side with his elbow.

She blinked a couple of times before beaming at him. "That was beautiful. Now it's my turn again!" she stated and started thinking.

Augustus stared at her as he patiently waited for what she was going to come up with.

"You spend your whole life stuck in the labyrinth, thinking about how you'll escape it one day, and how amazing it will be, and imagining the future keeps you going, but you never do it. You just use the future to escape the present. Before I got here, I thought for a long time that the way out of the labyrinth was to pretend that it did not exist, to build a small self-sufficient world in the back corner of the endless maze and to pretend that I was not lost, but home. But the only way out of the labyrinth of suffering is to forgive."

Stuffing his hands into his pockets, Augustus nodded a few times. "Smart guy, that Pudge of yours."

Alaska rested her head on Augustus' shoulder and sighed. "I miss him."

He rested his head atop of hers, comfortingly rubbing the palm of his hand along the length of her spine as they both stared down at the world they had once belonged in. "I know. I miss her too."

Closing her eyes, Alaska muttered. "But we'll see them again. Maybe not tomorrow, maybe not next year, maybe not in five years, maybe not in sixty years.. We'll see them again. Because true love will triumph in the end - which may or may not be a lie, but if it is a lie, then it's the most beautiful lie we have."

Augustus nodded once in agreement. "We need never be hopeless, because we can never be irreparably broken."

It wasn't going to be easy, but in the end, they would survive. Because they had to.