The Fault in Our Infinities

Chapter 6: Broken Promises

"Hazel Grace," Augustus says, as we walk calmly down the dark, surprisingly empty streets of the city, rain falling lightly on our clothes. "I have heard on the grapevine that you are mad."

"Basically, Kaitlyn told you."

He ignores me. "But you see, to be mad is to be ignorant. And to be ignorant is to have no empathy."

"I don't understand how you made those links." I say, but I am serene, listening.

Again, he doesn't answer me. "Kaitlyn said you heard what I do?"

"You do this for everyone." I say, unable to explain my deep sadness. "For every sick person."

"That, of course, is not true." He says, and my heart leaps. "It would be impossible to help everyone, of course."

I sigh, my stomach plummeting. "So it's true."

"It's true." He says, and then he says nothing more.

We turn into a small lane. In the dark of the night, illuminated by just the moonlight, the pathway seems beautiful. It's overgrown with bushes and trees, but the green leaves glitter with the raindrops, sparkling in the night.

I don't ask him where we're going. I just walk beside him in silence.

We reach another pathway, this one at a steep incline. Gus asks if I can manage it, and I nod, not wanting to turn back now. We make our way up the pathway, and it's not until we're half-way up that I realise we're climbing up a cliff. The wind that sails off the ocean batters at me, but I fight it, inhaling as deeply and evenly as I can manage, ignoring the sting of my struggling lungs.

Finally, we get to the top. The sight steals my breath away. The ocean glitters underneath the light of the moon, washing calmly onto the surface of the silent beach below. The cliff hangs over the beach, so it looks like we're sat above the sea. There are some grey clouds in the sky, darkened only by the night's shade. Rain falls, drenching us further, and though I am slightly cold, there's no place I'd rather be than right here, on top of this beautiful cliff, staring nature in the face, with Augustus Waters.

He takes a seat near the edge of the cliff, crossing his legs, looking into the horizon. After a while, I sit beside him, close enough to feel his body heat. We don't speak for a while; we just enjoy the beautiful of the natural world before us, both of us accepting that someday, there'll be no more.

As if to voice my thoughts, Augustus finally speaks, his voice so low that I almost miss his words. "I fear oblivion." He says.

"You do?"

"I fear it like the proverbial blind man who's afraid of the dark."

I close my eyes, inhaling the light scent of salt and the sea. "Augustus."

He just sighs beside me.

"Augustus," I say again, and I open my eyes and look at him directly. "There will come a time when all of us are dead. All of us. There will come a time when there are no human beings remaining to remember that anyone ever existed or that our species ever did anything."

He nods, swallowing slightly. "Everything that we did and built and wrote and thought and discovered will be forgotten and all of...this...will be for naught." He agrees.

"Maybe that time is coming soon," I tell him, "and maybe it is millions of years away, but even if we survive the collapse of the sun, we will not survive forever."

He says nothing. He just looks away. "Nothing lives forever, Hazel Grace."

"Augustus, if the inevitability of human oblivion worries you, I encourage you to ignore it." I sink my head in my hands, sighing. "God knows that's what everyone else does."