Chapter Text
Chaos.
A golden beam of light- no- magic , ascending into the heavens and drawn towards the sun.
A red, red sky. Just a shade lighter than blood.
The skull. A should be empty place of history, worship, and if you didn’t care for such things, still a place worth the respect given to a god. Now, a desecrated empty hull for a ruiner to build on his plans and destruction.
The ruiner that Hunter knows well, loves still too. Maybe it should be past tense, but he can’t bring himself to think that yet. Especially not now, as they urge their palismen further and faster to get to Luz.
Titan, Luz. Why did she have to do it? Trade her life for his? He would have been safe (maybe), but Belos would hold no reserve in making sure her life ends short for getting in his way. The Emperor is not a merciful man. It’s simply not in his blood.
But what does that make him? Him, a grimwalker of whatever friend Belos had in a past life. In his past lives.
The veil has been back from his eyes. Rose tinted glasses shattered and left behind. Pulled from his corner and told, “Here, here are the lies, the truths, the things he did not want you to see and the things you didn’t want to either.”
Here is the monster you didn’t abate, here is the monster you helped, here is the monster you love.
Here is the monster who stops and stares with blue, blue eyes and a body made of melting magic and a curse you could have never healed because he is the one who carved it into his skin, made it a part of his bones, allowed it to corrupt his heart and maybe his mind too.
Here is the monster, your Uncle, who allows a shred of humanity to pierce through this grotesque form he’s built for centuries.
“Hunter.” And it is said with the reverence he had faked for the masses in talk of the Titan. But it’s not fake, not here and not to him. “Hunter.”
“Uncle.” It chokes its way past his throat, burning like salt water that Belos had once forced him to drink when he had been sick once in his youth. It had helped him. It still burns.
“Why- why are you hurting me?”
Unfair. That’s unfair. Hunter hadn’t hurt him. He’s only been protecting his friends, running to and fro as a distraction. He hasn’t hurt him. But hasn’t he? He had run away, had strayed from his side because, because… what he was doing was wrong. So, so wrong. He’s hurting people. Killing them.
“I love you. After everything, I still love you.” Belos almost begs. Begging, his Uncle has always told him, was not something that suited people like them.
The monster with his Uncle’s face draws closer and his feet stay rooted to the spot. “I-I-”
“Hunter.” His Uncle, closer, closer. He can see it in his eyes. The love he’s always seen. All the times he’s hurt him, shunned him, humiliated him, there’s only ever been love. “You’re hurting me.”
Any other person would argue it’s the love someone holds for an item, for a possession, for something you own. Anyone on the outside looking in would argue for it, shake him to maybe get the truth to settle in. But that’s not the truth.
The doll house is burning and real people are standing outside as the dolls begin to realize how full of plastic they are.
“I’m sorry!” Hunter shouts, backing away with a stumble and pulling Gus behind him. “I’m sorry but this isn’t right!”
“I loved you!” Belos roars. Roars and rears up and Hunter flinches, bringing Flapjack to protect him with as much trust as he’s never had in his Uncle. Love, yes, but never trust.
The bright red of the bird contrasts the blue of his Uncle’s eyes and the rage (the hurt) intensifies.
He’s the only one close enough to hear it and the familiar name sends shudders down his spine, a chill of death his echoes have felt all too many times before, a last breath from a man none of this century had ever met but has been the catalyst for all the things happening now.
“Caleb.”
The door shuts behind them as they fall to the muddy ground, the splash of cool ( cool ) rain dousing them in an instant.
The sounds, the chaos, the red sky, the skull of a being no one had ever seen but the son of one who had saved them from it all. It disappears as though it had never happened.
It happened though. It did.
The plastic has melted, the veil burned and those rose tinted glasses crushed under his own feet and the walls that boxed him into his corner were torn down with all the grace of an earthquake.
Reality is biting, cold, though that may just be the rain and the mud talking, and it fucking hurts.
He almost wants the doll house back. But Gus is crying, Willow and Amity have no idea what to do, and Luz looks empty. Luz, so full of life, of chaos, of fire and love and hope and light, holds the essence of an empty tub. The dichotomy guts him and Hunter knows that given the choice, he’d never go back to that doll house.
The chill runs through him again, slithering down his spine like the corrupted magic that Belos roped into his very soul that smattered against the wall and he shudders.
But he loves them, loves them like he never loved Belos (loved, past tense) and so he pushes back the biting wind, pushes back the bile that rises in the back of his throat, the breath that catches in his lungs before he can even get the chance to exhale. He pushes it back and reaches for Gus, pulling the younger boy into his side and standing.
He makes his way to Luz.
He loves her. Loves Gus, loves Willow, even loves Amity. So, he holds onto their hands with the vice grip of someone who’s had the rug pulled from his feet too many times to ever be sure of their footing again. He makes a silent promise to himself and to them to never run from them, to make sure they make it to the end of this- whatever this is- and to love them. He loves them and so he makes this promise to them and for them and maybe for him too. He won’t hurt them because he loves them. He loves them…
But he had loved Belos too.