two deaths and a reunion

   (tfois fanfic)
   
    It's gotten to the point where he can't remember much. But he can see Hazel Grace. He doesn't know if she's a dream. A memory. A hallucination. 
   There she is, slouched in her chair in the literal heart of Jesus - fiddling with the cannula that's keeping her alive. She looks radiant, despite everything. Despite the drugs and the exhaustion and the lack of air. Her eyes are bright as she catches his glance, and her lips curve up into the tiniest smile. She is so beautiful.
   There she is as she sits next to him on that lonely swingset, her face solemn and lit by the light of the cloudy sky. Staring down at her lap, she's telling him to stay away, but even as the words leave her mouth, he can feel the magnetic pull between their hearts, and he knows that promising to stay away is a promise he can't make. 
   There she is when he's dying at a gas station in the middle of nowhere, only a husk of the former great Augustus. Now he is only Gus. The scared little boy with his shirt drenched in vomit. But Hazel is there, and she is only Hazel. She has never been anyone else but herself - unashamedly so. She is the Hazel who wears t-shirts with obscure Magritte references and gets sad about pathetic swing sets and is willing to drive out to recite poetry to him when he's losing himself. He may have tried to be many things, but she has only ever been Hazel, and she is more than enough.
   When death finally comes to Augustus, there is one thought - one thought directed at whatever capital S Something is waiting for him. 
   Give her more time. 

   She can't breathe.
   She hasn't been able to for a while now, but this is different. This isn't like before.
   She has always been drowning. Always struggling for air past the liquid that insisted on filling and refilling her tired lungs. She has always felt the weight of an ocean inside her, trying to drag her down into its unknown depths. 
    But there is no water now.
    Now, there is fire. 
    It licks at her chest and the smoke rises to clog her throat, to turn her screams of pain into muffled, bloody coughs. It burns unreachable places of her. For the first time in her life, she wishes that there was water enough in her lungs to make it stop. 
    And then it does.

    There is light.
    Then there is air in her lungs. Sweet, pure, cold, and real - painless. She gulps it in like it's water and she's been dying in a desert. That's what it feels like - like water soothing her cracked, dry, burned-out lungs. She finds herself on her feet and the air keeps filling her and she feels no exhaustion. It's like flying or falling, or like swallowing pure goodness.
    She takes a few steps forward and then breaks into a run. She hasn't run since she was thirteen - since before the diagnosis. And now she's racing like her feet have wings. When she stops, she doesn't have to bend over to catch her breath or to still her pounding heart. She doesn't collapse. She just stands there surrounded by whiteness as tears fall down her cheeks and as her lungs don't fail her. She feels reborn. The new and improved - 
    "Took you long enough, Hazel Grace."
    Now her breath catches. She looks up and swipes away her tears, but they only continue to gush as she considers the figure before her. Someone radiant and tall, wearing a crooked smile and tousled hair.
    "Augustus," she gasps, and then his arms are around her. She leans her face against his powerful chest and cries. He's laughing, but when she looks up at his face - God, she's missed his face so much - she can see that he's crying, too. She raises a hand and places is it on his cheek. His skin is soft and his tears wet her fingers and she can't get past the fact that he's here, right in front of her. "You're real?"
    "I'm real," he tells her. 
    "This is heaven?"
    He grins. "If ever there were a literal heart of Jesus, this would be it."
    She laughs. And then she puts a hand on her chest, so overwhelmed with joy that she almost feels lightheaded. "Gus, I can breathe. I can breathe. Look at this!" She steps away from him to spin in circles, her laughter filling the air. Just as she's about to fall over, Gus catches her, and as she's laughing in his arms he pulls up his pantleg. "Check this out, Hazel Grace." His leg is whole.
    She can't stop staring at his face. The Augustus she missed, the Augustus who left her behind - she can't believe he's here, real and warm against her skin, and without thinking she stretches up on her toes and kisses him. She doesn't have to stop and gasp for breath.
    When she breaks away, he's smiling, and he relinquishes his hold on her to drape an arm across her shoulder. "There are some people you need to meet, Hazel Grace." He looks forward, into the indeterminable whiteness, but then his eyes meet hers, and he smiles. "Okay?"
     Smiling back, she takes his hand and holds it to her chest, gazing at his fingers. Nails, skin, muscle and bone, all real and soft and holding her. She says, "Okay."
     And they step forward together into an eternity that, this time, is real.