Empathy Goes

Chapter 9

                                                                                      Chapter 9

Our splintered team sat sleeping in the cave resting up for what was to come. Grace was awoken by one of the falling rocks hitting her on the head. She blinked twice before looking over to the door of the cave. Amelia was awake already, making breakfast and sipping from her thermos which was no doubt still filled with black coffee and whiskey. Hazel sat nearby watching Amelia fry up some eggs over the flame. The two seemingly hadn't yet noticed that she'd woken from her slumber. Turning to her side she gently shook Simon who stirred from his sleep and looked over at the others. Him and Grace shared a look of concern. How long had Hazel been around Amelia before they'd woken up? What had Amelia told her in that time? Cautiously the two made their way over to Amelia and the pan of eggs. Hazel looked up and smiled at them. "You two are awake! Ms Amelia is making pancakes!" she said happily. Amelia gave her usual annoyed eye roll.

"No I am not, I've already told you that I'm making eggs." she sighed. Grace and Simon sat down in between the two forming a sort of wall between Hazel and Amelia. Simon was the first of the two to speak,

"Hazel, how long have you and Amelia been up?" he asked. He tried to sound casual with the question but there was the distinctive tone of worry in his voice. Hazel grinned.

"Forever," she began before switching to a whisper "Ms Amelia talks a lot after she drinks her coffee." she added quietly. Grace and Simon didn't know whether to be worried about what Amelia had said or to laugh at the thought of the constantly frustrated Amelia pouring her heart out to a child in the early morning hours. They choose instead to change the subject. Their time was limited after all and convincing Amelia to let them leave with Hazel wasn't going to be easy. Grace turned to address the woman and began.

"So, we've been doing a lot of thinking," Grace said "And while it was shocking to discover how you were related to Hazel's origins-" Amelia cut her off not interested in whatever it was that Grace was taking such a long time to get to the point of.

"We do have a time limit so if you could please speed this up." she reminded her. Grace rolled her eyes at the interruption and continued.

"From what you've explained Hazel will be a threat to any car that she enters and as the leader of the Apex there are people counting on me to keep them safe." Grace took a sharp inhale and Simon looked at her with curiosity. Even if he didn't understand exactly where she was going with this he knew she'd never seriously consider leaving Hazel behind. Grace continued with her speech, "Hazel is one of those people who is counting on me." Grace now turned to look at Hazel. In her she saw everything that she had stolen from her, everything she'd accidentally stolen from the other Apex kids, goodness, uncorrupted purity. "Hazel when we gave you the red wave we made you Apex, and Apex never leave Apex behind." she finished. Hazel looked at her with a fondness, a softness, that Grace almost didn't believe she deserved. After everything she'd learned, after realizing what she'd done maybe she'd never see herself as deserving that kind of softness. But then again, if someone as good as Hazel could look at her like that, knowing all of the awful things she'd believed, maybe it wasn't too late for her after all. This nice moment was ended by a scoff from Amelia.

"I hope you enjoyed that moment of sentimentality because you're not getting another one. I don't know what's so difficult for you children to understand about this but anywhere this child," she gestured to Hazel "Goes cars will eject. You say you have others who are counting on you? You can't possibly put them in danger for the sake of one person. It's ridiculous." she finished. Grace wanted to say something back but the words got caught in her throat. Amelia was right, of course Amelia was right. But they couldn't leave Hazel, she was important. With Grace failing to respond Simon did it instead speaking to the woman seriously.