Work Text:
Hunter is a little more than halfway to his destination when he hears the ominous hiss of boiling rain hitting the trees around him. This is what he gets for being so keen to actually receive a mission again that he disregarded any signs of the evening’s inclement weather. Just his luck, really.
He debates pushing on anyway - he’s using his artificial staff after all, so it’s not like anyone is getting harmed except for him, and what are a few burns in the grand scheme of things? But then, if he does damage the staff, Emperor Belos might decide not to send him into the field again. The idea is unbearable.
He sighs, dropping his gaze to the forest floor in search of something he can use for shelter. The few drops of rain have become a steady, scalding shower by the time he notices the mouth of a cave, set into the cliff ridge he had been flying alongside. It’s probably home to something large and dangerous, but that’s nothing he couldn’t handle.
When nothing immediately charges him upon landing, Hunter relaxes slightly. Leaning against a cave wall, he pulls back his hood, taking a moment to just watch the rain. It’s almost peaceful.
So of course, it’s immediately ruined.
Hunter nearly jumps out of his skin at the loud gasp behind him. Gripping his staff, he whirls around to find none other than the troublesome human girl he can’t seem to get rid of, sitting just behind a small boulder a few feet into the cave. She’s panting slightly, regaining her breath, a paper one of her glyphs disintegrating in her hand. She must have cast some sort of invisibility spell when she saw him coming.
“What are you doing here?” She demands before he can get a word in.
“Not burning to death,” he says, recovering quickly. “What are you doing back there-”
He stops his own question short as he finally, really, looks at her. Not just at her, but at the Owl Lady’s staff at her side and the stone that is tucked just a little further behind her and the boulder, glowing a steady blue. A Galderstone.
The item he had been tasked to retrieve.
Of course.
“Of course,” he says out loud. The human looks confused but he doesn’t feel like elaborating that of course she would have beat him to the one thing he needed. Of course she would be the reason he failed a mission, again.
He takes a step closer and she tenses, her hand going toward the staff. She’s alone, as far as he can tell, and he could probably take her. The problem is he doesn’t really want to, and he’s not even sure why. He never actually promised the Blight girl that he’d leave her - Luz - alone if they crossed paths again but it still feels like some kind of betrayal. Weird, that he’d care about that. He shouldn’t.
Still, he doesn’t try to get closer and Luz settles back, though she still has herself positioned firmly between him and the stone. “How did you even know there was a Galderstone in the Thoracic Ridge?” He asks. “Most knowledge is only of the ones at the Looking Glass Ruins.”
She’s still wary, but smirks ever so slightly. “I know people in the Illusionist Coven. Or, I mean, I know people who know people who- nevermind, you get it.”
Hunter very carefully doesn’t smile back. He’s the Golden Guard; he shouldn’t be finding this human’s floundering amusing (or endearing). “Right,” he says. If she had contacts, she had probably been given explicit permission to use the Galderstone for the portal - something even the Emperor’s Coven couldn’t manage. That’s… annoying.
“Wait, how did you know about them, then?” She asks. “Were you following me?”
He scowls. “I’m head of the Emperor’s Coven, human; I have my own research. Don’t think I need you for anything.”
“Well, it sounds like you did need to threaten me to get what you wanted before,” she points out dryly.
“That was just the truth,” he snaps, more defensive than he expected to be. “Once he learned you were in possession of the only remaining Titan’s blood on the isles, Emperor Belos would have turned the entirety of the coven on you. You had to have known that. I was being realistic.”
Pain flashes across her features. “I hate that word,” she mutters.
“What?”
“Nothing,” she says quickly, but there’s a sour undertone to her voice. He might not know her well, but she feels… off. “Are you going to be ‘realistic’ now, too? Threaten Eda and King, or Amity, or the rest of my friends - my life - here?”
I’d rather not, Hunter thinks but cannot bring himself to say. For starters, he absolutely should be threatening her and while he knows he’s hesitating the last thing he needs is for her to know that, too. On top of that, he can imagine how he’d feel if that pitying statement was given to him - in the strange mood the human is in, he doesn’t think she’d take it any better.
Her eyes narrow when he says nothing. It’s part glare and part… calculation. It makes him nervous. She’s proven to be clever and he’d be a fool not to recognize that.
Then she says, “Catch,” and with no more warning than that, lobs the stone at him. Hunter yelps, dropping his staff as he scrambles to catch it. He manages it - but barely.
“Human! Give a little more warning! I could have dropped that and…” Hunter trails off as he looks down at his handful of Galderstone. The item he had expected to fight - and threaten - to gain. The item the human had just thrown at him.
No. Thrown to him.
“What is this?” He demands, his eyes snapping up to her again. “What are you doing?”
“Saving time,” she says, still with that uncharacteristic bitterness. “We fight, I win, you threaten to hunt us down, and I reluctantly comply in the end. And here we are.”
Hunter blinks, trying to wrap his head around what’s happening. Somehow the first thing out of his mouth is, “What makes you think you would have won if we fought?”
It’s a little more petulant than he planned so he’s not surprised when she snorts softly. “Okay, it was close,” she amends. “That’s my final offer.”
He looks at the Galderstone again for a moment. There’s no way to tell if it’s going to explode the second he tries to fly off with it. No way to tell if it’s already been irreparably damaged.
He tosses the stone back to her. It falls a bit short and she squeaks, lurching forward to grab it. (Point for it not already being damaged, but still very possibly a bomb.) “No,” he says.
“No?” Luz says incredulously. “What do you mean, no?”
“How do I know this isn’t one of your cunning tricks?”
She tosses it back to him. “You think I’m cunning ?”
“Don’t play innocent, human,” he retorts. “Why are you giving this to me?”
He lobs it back to her. Too far to the left and again she has to dive for it. “You’re very bad at this,” she observes.
“Shut up. Answer the question.”
“I told you, I’m being realistic ,” she says, a mocking edge returning to her voice as she throws it back to him.
“You’re a terrible liar,” he says.
Back to her.
“You’re a terrible person.”
Back to him.
“Answer. The. Question.”
Back to her.
“Because I don’t want it! ”
The sudden shout is paired with a particular hard throw - this time truly thrown at him and Hunter stumbles back a step with the force of catching it. When he looks at the human again, she has her knees drawn up to her chin, her posture closed off both from another throw and from any conversation.
With considerable hesitation - not to mention confusion - he asks, “Then why were you taking it?”
Luz buries her face further in her knees. “Well it’s not like I can tell everyone I don’t want it, not after all the strings they pulled to find this for me, not after everything they’ve done to help me get home.” She glances up at him. “I can tell them you took it from me, though. So take it.”
Hunter stares back. Nothing she’s saying makes any sense. What intel he has about the inhabitants of the Owl House is that the human girl living there destroyed the doorway to her realm on the day of the Owl Lady’s petrification ceremony rather than turn it over to the Emperor, and that she had since begun research into creating a replacement the same way his uncle was. Certainly the altercation at Eclipse Lake had proven that this mission was very important to those close to her.
And now she says she doesn’t want an integral piece to a stable portal. Now she’s turning it over to him - and through him, the Emperor - in direct opposition to her earlier actions.
She is the most contrary creature he has ever met.
Met with his silence, she scowls and looks away again. “You gonna go now?” She asks.
“It’s… still raining,” he points out.
There’s a beat and then she mutters something he doesn’t understand but still recognizes as a curse. It makes him want to laugh, almost.
Silence falls between them, broken only by the sound of the driving rain. It doesn’t sound close to letting up. Hunter looks at Luz, all but curled into a ball against the wall of their shelter and wishes he had the slightest idea of what to do now. He shouldn’t care about her internal conflicts - she’s giving him what he wants, and unless she’s a better actress than he’s giving her credit for, seems to be genuine in her very, very strange motivations. Still he can’t bring himself to leave, and it’s not entirely because of the rain.
He just… wishes he couldn’t see her conflict so instinctively; it means he recognizes it. But he’s not conflicted. He can’t be. Not if he wants to help his uncle, not if he wants to keep his place in the coven, not if he wants to be worth anything at all.
The human sniffs, shaking him from his thoughts as, for a panicked instant, he thinks she might be crying . That is the last thing he needs to deal with. When she speaks, however, her voice is steady. “You can sit, you know.”
Hunter hesitates, but if they’re going to be there a while and they’re not going to fight… he settles down, cross-legged exactly where he had been standing. Luz looks up and frowns slightly as if she had expected him to come closer first. He stays where he is, holding the Galderstone in his lap. I should have brought Rascal, he thinks. Then they’d both have someone they’re more comfortable talking to.
There’s another pause and she sighs, resting her cheek on her drawn up legs. “You were right before; I don’t think things through,” she says with no preamble. Her voice is subdued, absent, like she’s not really aware that she’s speaking. “I chose to stay here because I wanted to be a witch and learn magic and maybe not feel alone for once - and next thing I know I have friends and family and- and a life here and it was so new and exciting that I didn’t stop and think that I might have to choose between this life and my old one.”
She runs her hands back through her hair, slicking it back off her forehead momentarily. “And now everyone’s being so supportive - how am I supposed to tell them I’ll never see them again if this works?” She drops her head again, her voice muffled and broken when she says, “It makes me wish I never came here at all.”
For the second time Hunter feels he can do nothing more than stare. What had possessed her to tell all of this to him ? There are gaps in her monologue, things he doesn’t understand - Why does she feel that she’ll have to stay in the human realm once she has the working portal? Is the one she’s creating only going to be good for one use? - but he’s not going to ask. He tells himself it’s because he doesn’t actually care, but honestly, he’s a little worried if he says anything she’ll remember he’s there and go quiet again.
She sniffs again and this time he knows she’s crying. He hates it. Hates that his own chest feels tight watching her. Hates that he feels the need to do… something about it. Hates that he has no idea what to do, because it’s hardly as though anyone’s been around to comfort him in his life. (Well, aside from the Blight girl and that had sure gone over well.)
He sits up straight as a thought occurs to him.
There is… something he can say to her.
But no. No. No, he’s not going to do that. He is not. He is not going to betray the coven’s secrets - his uncle’s trust - just because a girl is crying in front of him. What kind of precedent would that set?
“You might not have to.”
Damn it.
The human’s head pops up, watery eyes wide with surprise like she had indeed forgotten he was there. “What?”
“Choose between this world and the human realm, I mean,” he hears himself say. “You might not have to.”
“What?” She asks again. “What do you mean?”
He swallows. What is he doing ? “What- um, what do you know about the Emperor’s plans?”
“Not a lot,” she says slowly. “Just that it’s nothing good.”
Hunter frowns. “Is that what the Owl Lady tells you?”
In a blink Luz is scowling at him again. “I worked that out on my own, thank you,” she says.
She is a truly terrible liar, but he’s not interested in arguing that with her now. The point is that his assumption was right; she has no idea what Belos is planning. She shouldn’t know, he reminds himself. He absolutely needs to shut up now, but somehow his traitorous mouth keeps speaking.
“I don’t know all of the details either,” he admits. “But I’ve been there when he’s explained it to the coven heads so I know the premise. He’s building this portal to unify your realm and ours.”
Her jaw drops. “Wait, what ?” She squeaks. “What do you mean ‘unify’? Like they’re being merged?”
“I… don’t know,” Hunter repeats. “I know the things he’s been after me and Kikimora to find have been for it and I know the covens play some role. That doesn’t matter. I’m trying to say that… this plan isn’t as ‘bad’ as you might think. In fact, it sounds like it’s exactly what you want. There would only be one realm; you wouldn’t have to leave anything or anyone behind; you don’t need to choose.”
Now it’s her turn to stare at him, mouth agape. Hunter watches her closely, his pulse kicked up with the adrenaline of what might be one of the most reckless, unthought-through, choices he’s ever made. What does he expect to come from this? That Luz the human, apprentice and charge of the Emperor’s Coven’s Most Wanted Wild Witch, would hear this and what? See the light? Join him?
Titan, he sounds like Lilith with her failed attempts to convert the Owl Lady. He’s supposed to know better. And yet here he is in her shoes.
“That’s what he was planning with the door this whole time?” Luz asks at last, shaking him from further self-recrimination.
“Yes,” he says, remembering the wistful tone in his uncle’s voice when he spoke of the human realm. “This- believe me, it’s important to him.”
She frowns, but he can see her posture is less closed off. She’s actually listening, actually thinking about it. “He told me the Titan didn’t want to conquer the human realm.”
He shakes his head quickly. “It’s not conquering. It’s… unity. He calls it a Utopia.”
She’s silent for a few seconds and Hunter almost wants to hold his breath.
“It wouldn’t work.”
He blinks. It’s as much the words as her matter-of-fact tone that catches him off guard. “What?”
“It wouldn’t work,” she repeats. “I mean, magically I bet he could do it - if Eda doesn’t have a say in it - but it wouldn’t be unity and it definitely wouldn't be a utopia.”
“You can’t possibly know that,” he says, thoroughly disgruntled by the frank dismissal of his… not-really-an-offer.
“I absolutely can,” the human retorts. “Who, between us, knows how the human realm really works? People there aren’t even unified with the members of their own species to begin with and you’d introduce a whole different race of witches - not to mention demons - into their world? Do you guys really not know anything about the Salem Witch Trials here?”
“The what?” He asks, completely at sea.
She shakes her head. “Doesn’t matter. The point is this idea has so many holes in it it would sink in a puddle. Either Belos is an idiot - which unfortunately is probably not the case - or there’s something to this that he isn’t telling any of you.”
Well then. Admittedly he should have seen this coming but he is nonetheless frozen, having listened to the human neatly tear into a plan he’s spent his life preparing for. He can’t think of anything to say and wishes vehemently that he hadn’t said anything in the first place.
When he has nothing to come back with, Luz clears her throat awkwardly. “Um. Thanks anyway, though. I… get the feeling you weren’t supposed to tell me any of that.”
Hunter feels an embarrassed flush rise to his face. No point in lying now. “Nope,” he says, popping the ‘p’ in a deliberate attempt at nonchalance.
She smiles, a little too knowing for his liking. There she goes, mentally adding ‘crying’ to his (hopefully short) list of weaknesses.
“I won’t tell Eda,” she adds, as if she could read his thoughts. The smile disappears as quick as it came. “For all I know, she knows all of this already. She tries to keep me away from whatever work she’s doing against you guys.”
And there’s no telling what Belos has been keeping from me, he thinks. He’ll keep that to himself - trying the ‘not so different’ route with Amity Blight hadn’t exactly gone anywhere and the human has made it clear that they’re going to remain on opposing sides. He ignores the uncomfortable feeling in the pit of his stomach that one might call disappointment.
He glances behind him to the mouth of the cave; the drumming sound of rain has diminished and the ground is now simmering only in places where leftover droplets of scaling water fall from branches.
It’s going to be dark soon, and flying at night isn’t something Hunter is particularly interested in. He looks at the Galderstone in his lap, looks at Luz - who is now looking at the Galderstone as well, clearly reconsidering her choices now that she knows what the Emperor will use it for. Nice going, Hunter. He might be fighting her after all.
She meets his eyes, just as wary as he is. Then she says, “Just… make it a good story, alright? Say that I fought really hard for that.”
Hunter nearly sighs his relief. In spite of everything, he finds himself smirking at her. “You won, remember? I had to resort to my underhanded tactics to get it.”
To his surprise, she actually laughs. “You have to admit it’s in character for you.”
“I’m not responding to that.” She grins and Hunter shakes his head, finally getting to his feet, fumbling with the heavy stone in the process. Flying with this isn’t going to be fun.
And, for the second time today, a deeply traitorous thought crosses Hunter’s mind.
“Listen,” he says, trying very, very hard to sound impassive. “Thank you. For this. I uh- I don’t suppose you’ll think about what I said - about the Day of Unity?”
“Nope,” she says, echoing his earlier tone. His lips twitch up again.
“Right,” he says. He manages to balance the stone under one arm as he straddles the staff. “Well, I guess I’ll see you around, human.”
Her smile drops again, her expression unreadable in its wake. “Guess so, Hunter,” she says deliberately.
There’s nothing he can say to that - nothing keeping him there anymore. Before he can let this strange reluctance get the better of him, he spares her a nod, ignites his staff and takes off.
Hunter is a little more than halfway back to the castle when the heavy Galderstone just happens to slip out of his grip, tumbling to the still-steaming forest below, immediately lost in the mist. Hunter hovers for a moment above it, before continuing his trek home. A shame, really. That the stone had been destroyed in his battle with the human.
She really put up one hell of a fight.