Hazel - Post Chapter Nine (Patreon)

Hazel woke with a start. Her gasp for air echoed throughout her room with such a tumble that she was almost sure it could be heard from the market all around.  Sweat beaded against her brow, dappling her skin in perfect beads of dew before falling in slow lines down her cheeks.  Swinging her legs out of bed, she leaned over, hugging herself for one long moment before getting the will to rise.  She swung a soft robe of cotton over her shoulders, tying the sash tightly before padding out into the living area with bare feet.  She paused though. The light in the kitchenette was already on.

She expected to see her roommate, as sleep probably was alluding them after tonight. But instead, she saw Milo.

He stood silhouetted in the kitchen, the stolen lantern a dim glow across his skin.  The kettle was boiling and he was making himself some sort of drink.  When she noticed the cup that sat beside his own, she felt her heart clench a little. It was all familiar. Back when he had been such a fixture in this area.  When Mal had been alive and it was the three of them against the world.

“I almost believe myself to still be dreaming,” she whispered.  The crooked smile that touched his lips could be seen only in profile.

“I’m making hot chocolate. If you want any.”

“Milo, you haven’t been up here in close to ten years. Why are you making hot chocolate.”

“Because I haven’t been up here in close to ten years,” he said wryly.  Removing the kettle from the stove he began going about making cocoa.  Frothed milk steamed from the small little pot, chocolate already placed within the cup. Hazel watched him quietly, still feeling as if she were waking from her nightmare. Dream? She wasn’t sure what she could really classify it as.

When Milo pressed the mug in her hand, he bumped her hip, nodding towards the gathering of sofas before the fire. “I put more wood on for you,” he said.

She smiled at him in thanks, settling down in her favorite chair, watching as Milo gravitated towards the spot he used to fall asleep in.

“I had a nightmare,” she said softly, clutching the ceramic mug between her palms.

“I know. I heard you.”

“You were already here?”

He nodded once, sipping at his own mug. If Hazel hadn’t watched him, she would have thought it would be spiked with something extra. His drinking was getting bad again.  “Want to talk about it?” he asked.

“I don’t know if you’ll want to hear it.”

“There are a great many things I don’t want to hear or do and yet…” he gestured around him as if to show her the end of that sentence.

Tucking her feet beneath her, Hazel tapped her nails against the ceramic lightly, the small plinking sound mingling with the popping of embers.  “I was following Malcolm through the market,” she said after a long stretch of time. “He couldn’t see me.  I tried calling for him, throwing something, anything to get his attention but he just kept walking.” She looked off towards the closed door.  She hadn’t moved anything from in there since long before he had died.  Malcolm had lived on his own for most of their adult life but she had always kept his childhood room for him. It was where he slept when he had been too tired to walk home. Or when he knew Hazel needed someone in the house that night.  “I don’t know if it was a dream,” she confessed.

Milo’s brow rose over his mug. “Meaning?”

“I think he’s wandering the market, Milo. I think he’s lost.” The tears that sprung to her eyes had been ones she had been trying to keep away since waking.  The idea that Malcolm had been walking these streets unseen for years broke her in ways she didn’t think possible.

“He would hate that.”

Her head snapped up, looking at Milo with wide eyes. She had expected a fight. For him to tell her it was just a dream. Keep up his mantra of Malcolm is dead and he’s not coming back.  But instead, Milo’s eyes were fixed towards the closed door, something distant in his gaze.

“He would,” she whispered.

When Milo stood, he went to the door. For a brief moment, Hazel wondered if he would open it.  She was rarely brave enough to do so. But something had changed about Milo in the recent months.  She was sure something had changed about her as well.  But instead of opening it, Milo ran his fingers across a framed painting, hung just to the left. Something small and delicate that Hazel had found long after Malcolm had passed. He had been attempting to paint the lanterns.  Soft colors bled into the black canvas, the muted amber light of the spice distract shining through the shadows that threatened to take the world.

“He was a prick, you know,” Milo said, still staring at the painting. “I love him but damn did he fucking drive me up the wall.  Took everything in me sometimes not to shove him into the nearest pool of water.”

Hazel laughed wetly at that, wiping at her eyes.  Malcolm couldn’t swim.  It had been the chink in the perfect facade for so long that Milo had latched onto it and used it to his advantage. She remembered Milo swimming out to the middle of the pond once just to get away from an argument with her brother.

It was a good memory, one that brought a smile to her face. A smile that fell as she registered his words. “Love?”

Milo turned to her, shrugging. “I’ll always love him, Hazel. Just as I will always love you.”

“Then why have you been acting like this? Any time I talk about getting him back you fight me on it. You–”

“Because I want you to move on,” he interrupted. “Because you have been spending your life in these old walls built by your mother, fixating on the ghost of your brother.  You aren’t living your life, Hazel.  And every time I think you might start trying, something happens, a new little bone gets tossed your way and you are back to having a one track mind once more.  All you can think about is Mal.”

“He’s my brother,” she protested.  The only family she had left and he had died unfairly.  “I promised–”

“You think he would want you to keep a promise that locked you away just as your mother did? You think Mal would look at that and encourage it? He hated her. More than anything in this world, he hated that woman.  There is not a moment he would wish to be like her.”

Tears tracked down Hazel’s cheeks as she stared at him.  They were words that had always been danced around but Milo, as he had grown, was not one to protect her anymore. Not in the way he maybe used to.  “He didn’t hate her,” she whispered.

Setting aside his mug, Milo took three strides to her, kneeling in front of her. Desperately, he clutched her hands in his.

“Yes he did,” he said firmly.  When she started shaking her head no, Milo squeezed her fingers tightly, trying to keep her from running.  “I would catch him sometimes when he was in the kitchen.  I’d wake and he’d be standing there, staring at the herbs and spices, lost in some memory of her. Remembering how she could take the smallest pinch of something and control you two through your food.  Do you know he stopped eating once? Back before she died. He stopped eating because he thought for sure she had gotten into his pantry and slipped something in there.  Was certain that even if he threw it all out she’d do it again.”

“No,” Hazel shook her head. “No. That’s not true.”

“You hold Malcolm on this perfect pedestal ever since he died and you shouldn’t.  He had his problems.  He was wonderful and beautiful and full of life but he also came from a broken home just like you and I. He could be too harsh. He could play his games just as I could and he could be stubborn to the point where he would forgo comfort and love because he didn’t know how to just apologize and be wrong.”

“And so what? I shouldn’t want him home?” she cried incredulously.

“No,” Milo said softly.  “No. That’s not it at all.  I know you, Hazel. You are stubborn just like him. You are going to do whatever it is you’re going to do. But whatever it is you’re going to do, I hope that it’s the end. Bring him back or put him to rest forever because I want you to be happy. You have a chance at that, you know.”

“I’m bringing him back, Milo. I am.” There wasn’t an option not to and she couldn’t understand why he thought differently. He had been there. He had felt Malcolm pass.  He had been the one to hold him through the final moments.

Milo looked defeated. Head dropping between his shoulders as it became clear he wasn’t getting through to her. “If you do, I hope you are not disappointed.”

“What is that supposed to mean?”

“Mal doesn’t sit idle.  You’ll have your brother back, but it doesn’t mean he is going to stay a prisoner in these walls like you are.”

“I’m not a prisoner,” she said softly.

“By your own making, yes you are.”

When Milo stood, he ran a hand through his unruly hair, looking back at Malcolm’s door once more. As if he expected Malcolm to just walk through it. Hazel knew the feeling. She felt like that every day.

“Be safe,” Milo said quietly.  “I don’t know all of what you’re doing, but please be safe.”

“Are you leaving?” She didn’t want him to. The upper floor had been so lonely these past years.  The life and love of her family had all faded away up here, leaving her to hold it all together with old photos and bits of memories that only she seemed to hold dear.

Milo glanced around the room, the walls feeling smaller to him than before. It was a bigger step than he would admit, being here.  Hazel was looking at him imploringly, willing him to stay. Just for a bit.

Walking across the room, he grabbed his hot chocolate before sitting back down on his spot on the sofa. His spine was straight, and his hands were reflexively gripping the mug. But he was here.  He was here because of Hazel.  Taking the opportunity, Hazel wiped at her eyes, trying to cast aside the last few moments. She didn’t want to think of them. She didn’t want to dwell on his words. Adding more wood to the fire, she slowly started gaining composure.

“You’re my sister too, you know.” She heard him say from behind her.  “No matter what you do, Hazel, I’ll love you. I’ll be pissed, but I will love you.”

She closed her eyes.  It was doubtful Milo knew how much she would be counting on those words in the upcoming days.