Author's Note: Next oneshot, featuring Hazel and Daniel in one of the moments we shall never see.

Disclaimer: Apply the usual here.

XI

Questions of Life

"Hey, Danny… who are we?"

I stared in shock at Hazel, watching her briskly lift her face away from the book she was reading. She was always very curious, and many were the times throughout our early life that I was asked questions I never had answers for. I was curious by nature myself, too, but not so much as Hazel. I put my pen down, for I was preparing an essay for Professor Herbert, and crossed a leg over the other.

"We're we, Hazel; who else?" I asked in return, pushing the numbers off my mind.

"Not like that, silly," she snapped, crossing her arms with a pout I considered hilarious. So much, in fact, that I burst out laughing. "Hey! What's so funny?"

"Your face, that's what's funny!" I said once I had controlled myself. "But really now, what's with that question? You know I barely have any knowledge about philosophy; why don't you ask dad?"

"Because I want to ask you. You're a grown-up-"

"Dad is, too, and more than me."

" –and it's easier to talk to you," Hazel finished, looking down at her hands. I sighed: she was right. Hazel didn't have a steady relationship with our father either (though I was an idiot back then for suggesting such a thing), and it is to her that I will always be grateful. I placed my chair beside her bed and straddled it, looking at her with a smile.

"All right, then. But… Hazel, can you believe I'm twenty-two and I have no idea of what to tell you?" I asked, shrugging. "I wish I knew who I was. Sure, I can tell you I am Daniel and that I am your brother, but that would be… superfluous."

"What's that?"

My smile widened. "Unnecessary; it's something you already know. We never get to truly know ourselves, so nobody will be able to answer that question with all certainty. I could tell you I am a good person, but others will say I'm bad instead, and vice versa, too." I looked around our room, and my eyes fell upon her quill pen on her desk. "Take you quill pen as an example: what can you tell me about it?"

Hazel scratched her temple, frowning pensively. "It's my favourite quill pen."

"Let's see… Would you consider it useful?"

Hazel nodded. "A lot."

"Well, I wouldn't because last time I used it, it spattered my paper and my sleeve," I told her with a nod. "See? Now we could start arguing over such a trifle, like the professor tends to say, and we would never reach a certain conclusion. Do you understand?"

Hazel nodded again. "But that's just an example, innit?"

"Just an example," I said, chuckling. Hazel flopped back on her pillows, annoyance drawn all over her features.

"I wish I knew myself," she complained. "I'm always in bed and I don't have the chance to see what I can do. Say," She looked up at me, "would you do something for me?"

"Do what, exactly?"

"Tell me who I am."

Her smile forced me to comply, and gladly. Since it was night and father wasn't likely to come out, I kicked off my boots and sat in bed with her, keeping her close to me as if she were to vanish in thin air. A few minutes of silence went by before I said,

"I can't tell you that-"

But when I looked down, I saw Hazel had already fallen asleep. And I smiled again.

"I can tell you you're what I love and cherish the most in this whole world. And that I say with the utmost certainty."