Hazel wakes gently, tucked into Moonstone's side. The Pilot Princess is talking on the phone, voice rough from sleep.
"Okay. Okay. Be there ASAP," Moonstone says, hangs up, and heaves a huge sigh. "Always some damn thing," she mutters, and Hazel decides that's a good time to inch away, turn over, be somewhere else.
Moonstone wraps a warm arm round her shoulders instead. "Sorry about that," she says. "Sleep okay?"
Hazel makes a noise that's muffled from trying not to breathe too hard or move or anything, and Moonstone sighs again.
"Gotta go to work," she says, gives Hazel a squeeze, and rolls out of bed like she's not casually devastating.
Hazel sits in the bed, wrapped in blankets, because that seems to be the safest possible place to be while Moonstone pads rapidly around, dragging a brush through her hair, vanishing into the bathroom, getting dressed—
Hazel carefully stares at the ceiling, face hot—
and then something occurs to her as Moonstone heads briskly out of the bedroom, and she scrambles after her.
"Wait, work? What's—" she finds herself clutching the back of Moonstone's shirt and makes herself let go, shaking. "Is— what—"
"Work," Moonstone says. "You know? Get in the robot. Soul Defenders!— You're not the whole of the job, Hazel."
Hazel drags her hands away from Moonstone and folds her arms tightly around herself to keep them there. "I know," she says, from underwater somewhere, because no, she's the part of the job with a meticulously compartmentalised head that does the most competent mad science possible but is only selectively capable of even perceiving the avenues possible to pursue. She's the part that will rant all day and isn't capable of murdering Moonstone.
She is not even most of the job and what the hell is she supposed to do if Moonstone doesn't come back?
She doesn't hear anything else Moonstone says, and can't look at her to know what look she has on her face, and she has to go to work, and Hazel is trapped in her own clanking machinations. Until I figure out something else, Moonstone said, and Hazel had believed it, but there isn't anything else — Hazel isn't Hazel. Hazel is a meticulously packed bento box of pieces of a Hazel that no longer exists, and carefully synthesised parts of a Hazel that never did. Hazel is an experiment, Hazel is a mad science monster unleashed on the world by...Hazel. Everything carefully arranged in nested contexts, packaged, contained, managed, planned. Designed. Hazel is a rat in a maze that is also Hazel that was also designed by Hazel and outside the maze there isn't any real Hazel left. And everything was designed as an elegant whole and Hazel fucked up.
Hazel fucked up because people know that Robo Grandmaster isn't real, and she can't be Robo Grandmaster again, but Robo Grandmaster is one of the boxes, and there's no Hazel on the outside any more to fix things when they start coming unglued. Because the Hazel that did all this to herself died from it as truly as her death certificate says, even though Hazel can still hear her footsteps circling the rat maze, watching.
And Hazel's going to get out. And Hazel won't be in pieces any more. Being in pieces is what makes her safe. And she'll be able to redesign her boxes, but she won't be in them any more, and she won't be safe any more, and what if what she becomes doesn't even want to pull herself apart and put herself back in the box?
She's the part that will rant all day and isn't capable—
Hazel plasters herself into a corner, as small as she can make herself, and shakes; and the Professor watches, his accusing stare a skewer and an axis that she feels herself rotated on in his mind like a puzzle whose solution will burn the world.
And because Hazel is good at compartmentalisation, she builds a slightly smaller box and puts herself inside that, so that for a while she can't hear the walls coming down. And she gets off the floor and looks in the mirror like there's something real behind her eyes to look or be looked at, makes sure she doesn't look alarming.
She sits and looks at a wall until Moonstone staggers back in, exhausted; then Hazel stares blankly at the kitchen until she somehow retrieves the memory of scrambled eggs, makes them, feeds Moonstone.
Moonstone says something, looking surprised and soft, and Hazel makes facial expressions she hopes will suffice and eats. (Scrambled egg is not on the list of things Hazel eats.)
Sleep is hard. She tries building a slightly smaller box that will contain a Hazel that finds it easier to sleep, but it's hard to work from this far down. Moonstone props herself up on one elbow, eventually.
"You can tell me, if there's something wrong," Moonstone says gently.
"I know," a Hazel-in-a-box says tonelessly, and leans into her a little bit, because that will reassure her.
Morning comes with a blinding headache.
The walls hold. For now.
