DISCLAIMER: Looking for Alaska owned by the one and only John Green.

Beta-read by the very awesome wood painted flesh.

Miles,

I know that a letter, of all clichéd things, is probably not what you were expecting. With all the rumors around campus about 'how Alaska took her own life', were you expecting a message on a Ouija board?

Okay, that wasn't fair to you, was it? No, probably not. It wouldn't be fair to me either if someone I care about died. But isn't that a given? I don't expect to know about what others feel, but I can definitely tell you that it was probably the shittiest I'd felt when my mother died. None of it was 'fair'; none of it explained why her time was up.

I'm not going to psychoanalyze it and give you a whole load of bull about five stages of depression and all. Because when you grieve, you don't differentiate between all the stages, nor do you know which one you're on because in those moments, all you're aware of is the hole in your heart where that someone you cared about used to be. Well, that's what it was like for me in the very least.

I can't justify my actions and give you reasons for what happened. But what I can say is that I screwed up. Not just once but so, so many times. I wasn't what my mother would expect of me, I wasn't the ideal daughter nor was I the perfect student. But that didn't matter.

What mattered that I saw a way out and I took it. I didn't think of you, the Colonel, Takumi or my father. How could I? How could I think of anyone when I thought of the fact that I'd forgotten the one day that I cared about, the one day I actually gave two shits about? But let's not think about whom I did and didn't think of.

I'd like to say I'm sorry for what I did. But for being sorry, don't I have to feel it too? Getting out of the labyrinth was all I wanted to do.

I got out, granted that it was the easiest way. Straight and fast. Who the hell would do that just to prove a point? I, apparently, would. Because I kept using the assumption that I would someday get out, sometime in the future. But what I didn't realize -what you didn't either- was that I kept using that idea of the future to escape my present.

So, I got out. And I challenge you to do the same. But no cheating like I did.

Yours truly,

Alaska

A/N: Let me know what you think in your review!

-Arelia