Grace had never taken the sleeping pills that were kept in the infirmary before but she remembered some of the children who did complaining that they gave them weird dreams. Grace assumed this was what the children had meant. She stood all alone in white void. Void. That word had been thoroughly ruined for her. Grace was aware that this was a dream though she wasn't sure why. "That's called a lucid dream." someone said to her. Grace turned around to see who'd spoken to her only to find the last face she'd expected greeting her. "Hi Grace." Hazel said. This Hazel was odd, in that rather than take on the appearance of a single one of Hazel's forms she seemed to cycle through all of them at random. Sometimes Hazel would be a full turtle, the next minute human looking and then half way into her turtle form.
"You're confused." Hazel said matter of factly. Grace nodded her head.
"How did you know that?" Grace asked. Hazel smiled and began to explain.
"This is a sleeping-pill induced lucid dream, you can make whatever you want here." Hazel gestured to the endless expanse of whiteness surrounding them. "You haven't created anything yet so the world is empty." she explained. Grace nodded.
"What about you, what's your deal?" Grace asked Hazel who continued shifting through her forms.
"I'm a manifestation of your subconscious." Hazel said. Grace raised an eyebrow.
"If you're just a projection of my inner thoughts how do you know about stuff I don't? " Grace asked her.
"We know all the same things. It's just that it's more difficult for you to process some information on your own so your brain chose the person who you'd be most likely to listen to as an avatar for your subconscious thoughts so that they could reach you." she added. Grace still looked at her curiously.
"But if all you do is explain my subconscious thoughts what's the point? Why would I need another person to regurgitate the things I already know?" Grace questioned. Hazel put her head in her hands frustrated.
"Just because they're your thoughts doesn't mean you know them. You," Hazel gestured to Grace up and down. "Represent the conscious mind. I represent the subconscious mind. While we both have the same information I have information that you can't process unless given to you by another person. Am I making any sense?" she asked. Grace nodded.
"A little I guess. So, why are you Hazel?" she asked. Hazel simply shrugged.
"I guess Hazel is the person that you trust to give you correct information making her the best vehicle for delivering thoughts from the subconscious to the conscious. Also before you ask me I'm cycling forms because your internal vision of Hazel doesn't have one concrete form and this was the most accurate way to represent that. Do you have any more questions?" Hazel asked. Grace shook her head. "Great, so what do you want to do?" she asked. Grace thought for a moment.
"You're not the real Hazel, so nothing I say will badly affect you, right?" Hazel nodded. "I want to kill Simon." Grace said angrily. Hazel simply looked at her.
"Okay, make it happen." she said stepping aside. Grace cracked her knuckles and tried to conjure up the scene she was going for. The white abyss dissolved into the Mall car around her.
"Alright, I've got the setting down." she noted. "Now to create…" Grace trailed off. Hazel squeezed her hand.
"You know Grace, you don't have to talk if you don't want to. I can hear everything you think." Grace paused at this for a moment before laughing.
"No offense but hearing that come out of Hazel's mouth is supremely creepy." she said happily. Grace then closed her eyes and focused on conjuring up Simon. "Ugh, no this is wrong!" Grace said annoyed. The Simon who she'd imagined looked more like the dork that she'd called her best friend than the violent unstable asshole who'd broken her leg. Grace tried again to bring to mind the ridiculously high number and loose hair of the Simon who she wanted dead but again found herself unable to conjure him. Grace turned to Hazel frustrated. "What gives? I thought you said I could make whatever I wanted here?" she questioned. Hazel nodded.
"You can. But it's kind of a weird thing about making people, they always come out as the version of them who you most associate with them even if it makes no sense. That's why I keep cycling, why you have two working legs, and it's probably why this is the Simon you keep making." she explained. Grace let out a groan of frustration. She hadn't even noticed her leg was fine.
"But that's not the version of Simon I want. Looking at this," she gestured to the Simon that she'd created. "Just makes me sad that he ends up so awful." she explained. Hazel held her hand again and let out a pitying sigh.
"Let me help you." she said beforing conjuring up the more recent Simon Grace had been aiming for.
"Thank you! But how did you-" Hazel cut her off.
"Don't worry about it. Just decide how you want to kill him and live out that thought." Hazel explained to Grace. She nodded in response and began thinking. How did she want to kill Simon? She hadn't put much thought into after deciding that she wanted to so having free reign to do whatever was a little overwhelming. Grace turned to Hazel.
"Are the Apex kids going to see this?" she asked awkwardly. Now it was Hazel's turn to look confused.
"Do you want them to?" she asked. Grace furiously shook her head.
"Not at all." she responded.
"Then they won't; Grace this is your imagination." Hazel replied. Grace still looked awkward at trying to conjure up her method of ending Simon's life. Hazel, who had grown tired of this, looked at Grace and offered a suggestion. "You know, we don't have to do this if you don't want to." she offered. Grace looked serious.
"I do want to do this." she responded stoically. That much was true at least. She did want to kill Simon; it was just that she hadn't pictured it like this.
"If you want to do it why don't you?" Hazel asked her earnestly. Grace let out a frustrated groan and put her face in her hands.
"I don't know? I just always thought that it would happen in like, the spur of the moment so that I wouldn't have to think about it." Grace offered an explanation. Hazel rolled her eyes.
"You've killed people before Grace." she reminded her. Grace let out another frustrated groan.
"I know, you're right. It's just that this is different." she said tiredly, herself unable to explain why it felt so frustratingly difficult to decide on how she was to kill her abuser.
"Why was it different? Because those other times you were killing nulls?" Hazel asked. There was a little bitterness in her voice that Grace recognized as her mind calling her out on the hypocrisy of the situation.
"No, not because they were denizens." Grace said using the correct term for the people of the train despite her own mind daring her to do otherwise.
"So why then?" Hazel was goading her and Grace knew it but she had no defense. Hazel was right, of course she was right. Of course her mind had chosen the one person who was excellent at getting her to admit things she'd have rather kept secret.
"Because they weren't Simon okay! Because I didn't spend eight years caring about and loving them only for them to turn cartoonishly evil! That's why it's harder even though Simon deserves it more than any denizen I've ever met." Hazel nodded and gently patted Grace on the back.
"It's okay to be conflicted Grace." Hazel offered. Grace shook her head.
"No it's not. He's awful. He hurt me, he hurt you." Grace shook her head. "This should be easy, he deserves it." Grace said to herself. Hazel waved away Grace's conjured Simon and the conjured mall car leaving them once again in the white void. She sat down and gestured for Grace to do the same. After a moment of hesitation Grace followed suit sitting down across from Hazel.
"Just because he deserves it doesn't mean it's easy. He was your best friend Grace." Hazel said knowingly. Grace hated that fact. She just wanted everything to be over with so she could move on and try to block the last eight years from her head or dismiss them as a hoax. Hazel looked at her disapprovingly. "Grace if you pretend that you didn't care about him because it's easier for you, you'd be playing his game." Hazel said evidently looking into Grace's mind.
"But it's hard! It's hard to want him dead and at the same time remember when that wasn't true. If I just pretend that our entire friendship was a scam wouldn't that be easier for me to kill him?" she asked. Hazel shook her head.
"It wouldn't be the truth.' she reminded Grace. In response Grace put her head in her hands again.
"Who cares about the truth?" Grace asked.
"You do." Hazel said seriously. The two sat there in silence for a while after that, trying to understand what they were to do next. It was Hazel who broke the silence. "We can talk about something else if you want." she offered. Grace gave her a small smile.
"I wish I could talk to the real Hazel." Grace said sadly. "Do you think she's okay?" she asked. Hazel shrugged. Grace looked off sadly. "I wasn't a very good guardian to her, was I?" Hazel shook her head.
"You tried." was the best response she could offer.
"Not hard enough." Grace said, criticizing herself. Hazel looked at her sympathetically.
"You know Grace, there's still a car full of kids who need a good guardian." she reminded her. Grace looked at her surprised.
"What do you mean?" she asked.
"Maybe if it's too hard to think about how you're going to kill Simon, just think about how you're going to save the kids. Think about getting their numbers down and sending them home." was Hazel's response. Grace considered Hazel's suggestion for a moment before agreeing with it. All of the kids who Grace had wanted to keep safe still needed to be kept safe. They were still on the wrong path towards going home and Grace was the only one close enough to them to help them. That could be her mission, to send the kids home, to disband the Apex. Content with her new goal which would require killing Simon but didn't force her to think about how she'd do it Grace looked at Hazel.
"Thank you." she said to her mental recreation of the girl. Hazel nodded before sinking into the white void, indicating that Grace's dream would soon end. As Grace sat there alone in the moments before she'd wake she heard the fleeting sound of Hazel's voice.
"Good luck Grace."