AN: Sorry these chapters are so short. /: Really, they're more just like breaks in my train of thought. Regardless, enjoy!
"Please pass the pepper, Hazel," Mom requested. Hazel didn't look up, pushing her scrambled eggs around with her fork. "Hazel," Mom repeated, "the pepper." Still no reply. "Hazel!" Mom snapped, voice rising.
"Why eggs?" Hazel finally replied. "Why only at breakfast?"
"Hazel, listen to your mother," Dad said sternly. Well, Rene Descartes mused from his vantage point on a nearby windowsill. Dad is intervening. That can only mean trouble.
Rolling her eyes, Hazel pushed a small, brown container (Is that the pepper, then?) across the table. "Answer my question, then." she demanded. "Why only eat scrambled eggs at breakfast?"
Mom sighed. "You don't make any sense. I don't know, Hazel. People just do."
"Some answer," Hazel said bitterly, before pushing herself away from the table. "I'm done." She snatched the handle of her silver cylinder in one paw and pulled it along as she slowly but resolutely strode across the room to scoop her cat up in her other paw.
Only when they were both out of sight of Mom and Dad did she set him down. Her breathing sounded a bit strained, but it didn't seem to bother her. Or she was too riled to care. Rene Descartes couldn't tell.
"Why did you do that?" he asked, looking up at her in confusion.
"He would have answered, Des," Hazel told him quietly. "Come with me, Des. I'll tell you about him." She started walking towards her room, Rene Descartes right at her heels.
"Who is 'he'? Dad?" Hazel didn't reply until she sat down on her bed, patting the space beside her for her kitten to join her. Rene Descartes leaped up, curling up against her side. "Would the 'he' you are speaking of happen to be Dad?"
"You're not the first man in my life," Hazel said with a small smile. "Before I ever met you, which, granted, was not that long ago, I knew a boy named Augustus Waters. I met him at Support Group. He had, but survived, his cancer, though he lost his leg to it."
"Cancer?"
Hazel thought for a moment before continuing. "He...took interest in me. I went to his house to watch a movie, and met his friend, and I got him to read An Imperial Infliction, which, as it turned out, he loved."
"Oh, I have seen you reading that book. It would be lovely if you could describe it to me someday."
The human beside him smiled again. "In fact, he took me to Amsterdam to meet the author, Peter van Houten, who had offered to tell us about the ending." Her smile widened. "Van Houten turned out to be a real jerk. You see, he hadn't thought that I'd be able to travel in my condition. He didn't give either of us any answers, nor had he ever planned to. Regardless, Augustus and I had a...great time."
"He does sound like a rat for brains, I agree."
Hazel's smile faded. "That's where he told me, though. His cancer had come back, and it was much, much worse." She took a shaky breath. "He told me he was dying."
Whether she could understand them or not, Rene Descartes was at a loss for words.
"And he did, Des. It was not valiant, not heroic. He just...wasted away. He was swallowed by the oblivion he so feared." She sighed. She looked rattled, but there wasn't much Rene Descartes could do. "I loved him."
"I'm sorry," the kitten mewled, rubbing his head against her paw. "I am."
"And finally, with my own cancer...I'm dying too."