Archive of Our Own ^beta

Willow Park noticed the Coven Scout about halfway through the Emerald Entrails' second practice. Which, she supposed, was completely disingenuous to the Scout's training; their main purpose was not to be noticed. But, if the Scout was hiding in order to have the element of surprise, Willow figured she'd earned the same advantage over the bastard. She put it to one side and decided to ignore them until practice was over.

She discreetly sent vines out from her palm and into the ground when she was crouched and ready for a running exercise, directing them until they surrounded the Scout. If they tried to flee early, if they were only here to gather information of some kind, Willow would be able to feel it, and would already have the means she needed to capture them at a moment's notice.

It took ten minutes for her to consider that she may be unprepared to take on the forces of the Emperor if there were more of them. She could deal with four. Maybe five, depending on how tired she was after practice. But if they were planning an ambush, they would have sent more.

What do they want with us, anyway? she wondered as she set up some drills for the team to work on their reflexes. Each of them took turns controlling this particular area of training, so as to accommodate for the widest scope of magic. It was her turn now, so she sent that thought to the back of her mind so she could concentrate.

Really, they were a group of teenagers playing a sport. What could the Emperor possibly want with them?

Something settled in Willow when she came back to her thoughts: there was no way the Emperor or any of his Coven Heads would waste their time with them, least of all by sending a Coven Scout who was so easily caught.

Willow had spent the best part of the past few years gritting her teeth and trying to build up her confidence where it had been so thoroughly beaten by her fellow classmates. Things were better now, far better than she could ever have hoped, but she still heard that dark voice that told her she was worthless sometimes. This was one of the rare instances where it was smart to listen to it; she knew, deep in her gut, that she was not important enough to be ambushed by the Coven Guard.

So, she could definitely fight them. More than one if necessary, since there probably weren't that many anyway. Especially if one of them was dumb enough to give themselves away. Probably a new recruit. Possibly around her age, as well.

Willow expected to feel sympathy for them. In all likelihood, they had been coerced into working for the Emperor, if not outright forced to. And even if they went of their own volition, they would still have to leave behind everyone they knew. It was undoubtedly a miserable existence.

Where her sympathy failed was at everything the Emperor and his followers had done to her and her friends. Willow understood what it was to finally feel in control of your life, the elation that power could give you, and the relief of making other people feel small for once. Still, she had the sense not to listen to that small, cruel part of herself. She knew better than that.

She couldn't assume every Scout or Guard or Coven Head was caught in an impossible situation. There wasn't a single person on the Boiling Isles who had the emotional bandwidth for that. Even Luz had her limits.

It was when they were packing up their equipment that the final piece of the puzzle slotted into place. Through the quiet of the mostly deserted school grounds came the muted but unmistakable sound of a bird. If the court were any busier, Willow may have missed it. She closed her eyes at the sweetness of the sound, so light and cheerful and—

—familiar.

She laughed to herself, she couldn't help it. Of course.

"I'll put the rest of this stuff away, you guys," she called out to her teammates. "You can go home."

Replies of, "Thanks, Willow!" came from Viney and Skara first, then from their newest recruit, who was still learning the ropes. Gus insisted on staying to help Willow anyway, and she would have brought him along with her when she went to talk to the lurker, but his dad called him before they finished and Willow could tell before the call ended that he would be going home.

Her heart sped up pleasantly in anticipation as Gus flew away. She felt an almost instant pressure on the ground above her vines, and couldn't resist the urge to manoeuvre them so that a root popped up just beside it. There came the delightful sound of the lurker's tripped-up and disordered footsteps, followed by the profound quiet as he stilled himself. Willow giggled to herself and decided she'd had her fun.

"Hi, Hunter," she said.

He didn't respond. Willow wondered if she had overstepped. She didn't actually want to scare him off, if only because she was intensely curious about him. But then he stepped out from behind the trees, Scout helmet pushed up to reveal his face and his palisman nowhere to be seen. As he marched towards her, grumpy as anything, Willow noted that there was no real malice behind it. He was less indignant than she had expected, given her little prank. Maybe the prank was the very reason for it: she had caught him off-guard.

Just as he opened his mouth, she asked him, "How are you?" effectively disrupting his idea of how this should go for the second time that evening. He grunted in frustration.

Through gritted teeth, Hunter replied, "Fine."

"Good!" She smiled at him earnestly. This was the last straw for Hunter: any resolve he had to maintain the upper hand in this interaction was squashed. My court, my rules.

"Would you mind helping me with the rest of the equipment?"

He said nothing as he took down his hood and tossed his helmet aside. She gave him the remaining flags and picked up the last slalom pole for herself.

He followed her to the equipment cupboard. "So, did you get all your duties done early today?"

Hunter laughed. "What do you think I do all day? I'm curious."

"Hmm." Willow paused to set the pole down and made a show of tapping her chin. "Well, I'd say you spend a good portion of it figuring out how to use Penstagram."

The tips of his ears went pink. He was a good sport, though, and persevered. "And?"

"No fucking clue."

"Ah."

"But it's probably not something you can tell me, anyway, is it?" she guessed.

He tilted his head. "Correct. You get one point."

She snorted. "I think I get at least one more for tripping you up earlier. And another for clocking you in the first place. You make a lousy Scout, by the way. I think you'd do better in school-level competitive sports."

Hunter opened his mouth to retort, but couldn't help but smile at her for the last bit. He breathed out. "Yeah, it's probably good that I'm not a Scout then, isn't it?"

There was still a sarcastic bite to his tone. Willow returned it with her own. "Yes, the elusive responsibilities of the Golden Guard. Weren't we just talking about this?" He was grinning at her, interested and amiable despite himself. The corners of her mouth tugged upwards even as she continued, "I can't exactly tell you whether you're good at your job if I don't know what your job is."

"Fair, fair," he admitted, flashing the gap between his two front teeth as he smiled.

Thing was, she did know. She knew all too well that his job was to do the Emperor's bidding, whatever that may be. She pretended not to know, and would continue to pretend as long as he let her.

He got one chance. One more chance. He had earned that much by taking the fall for them with Darius. But that was all.

In the meantime, she pretended. And by Titan was it fun to pretend.

"Well, aren't you going to ask me how my day was?" she said, adopting a faux-offended tone she never would have dared to use just a few months before.

Now, it gave her a thrill to enact such confidence, and another to see Hunter's eyes light up as he played along.

"How was your day, Captain? Was it full of riveting and educational classes?"

She began the walk to where she had stored her bag, Hunter following closely behind her.

"It was, actually." Willow took off her glove and elbow guards. "We're getting into an entirely new sect of plant magic. It's really interesting."

"You know, you could study all that and more in the Emperor's Coven," he said.

She turned and jabbed a finger at him. "Nope! No recruitment. Not even as a joke."

He at least had the decency to look sheepish. "I know, I know, I know."

Willow picked up her bag from where it was tucked under a bench. She sat down and packed away her gear. She had just ducked her head to take off her knee pads when Hunter spoke up again.

"You'd be so good at it, is all."

Willow looked up.

Hunter narrowed his eyes, clearly uncomfortable with her gaze. "I just— I don't know if I made that clear. I don't think you're— I didn't make a mistake in trying to recruit you."

"Yes, you did," she replied easily. "None of us wanted to go."

He huffed. "No, I know, that's not what I meant. Look, what I'm trying to say is that you'd do well in the Emperor's Coven. You're a great witch."

Willow shoved her knee pads into her bag and abruptly stood up. She jutted out her chin to make up for the height he had on her, squared her shoulders, and accused, "You're trying to recruit me again."

Hunter was undeterred. "I will not force you to join it. I respect you too much for that. But I didn't mean what I told Darius. You'd be great."

Willow burned. She thrust out her hand and pointed over his shoulder. "Leave."

This shocked him. "What?! You can just say you don't want to!"

"The fact that you're even asking me in the first place means you have no idea of the kind of witch I am," she told him, her voice firm even as she felt herself start to shake. "Leave."

Hunter pursed his lips. He huffed in confusion as he turned away and stormed off.

And in all honesty Willow thought that would be the end of it. She heard nothing from him on Penstagram and didn't expect to either.

However, he showed up again at their next practice. This time it was closer to the end, and Willow didn't just catch a glimpse of his helmet as she had last time. He hadn't bothered to disguise himself or hide this time, just made his way to the edge of the treeline as she watched him with narrowed eyes.

She excused herself from the exercise—"Will you guys give me a moment?"—and dropped into the ground. When she resurfaced, she attempted to grab him with her vines, but he had anticipated the move and dodged out of the way. She tried again, to no avail.

"Can you—" Hunter phased out of the way for the third time—"stop, please?!"

Willow stilled her magic, keeping two vines at the ready. "I know you're not going to try and recruit me again. What is this tactic, anyway? Wearing me down? It won't work."

"I'm not here to recruit you," Hunter ground out.

And Willow, running on adrenaline and anger, had to take a moment before she replied. "Fine. You have one minute to explain yourself. Go."

"I wasn't trying to recruit you before," he said, then hurriedly added, "not like I was the first time. I wasn't sent by anyone— I don't think they're accepting new recruits at the m—" he stopped himself, apparently deciding this was classified information. "I just wanted to clear the air. Take back what I said to Darius about you."

"Honestly?" Willow spread her fingers and let the vines creep towards him. "I don't believe you."

Hunter clenched his jaw and tried again. "All of the Scouts and the Guard are adults. I can't deny that I'd appreciate having someone closer to my age in the ranks. But—!" he amended as Willow lunged for him—"I accept that you don't want to join it. I don't agree with it, but I accept it."

She stared into his eyes unblinkingly, searching for any hint of a lie. She found none.

"Okay," she said, letting the vines dissipate. "So, what?"

Hunter frowned. "What d'you mean what?"

"It's such a— small thing to set straight," she explained. "I'm not joining the Coven Guard and you don't have a day off until next year. So, why bother going through all this trouble when you could have just…I don't know, messaged it to me?"

Hunter wrinkled his nose and mumbled something about not liking Penstagram very much. Willow hardly listened, her emotions smoking out like the tip of an extinguished match. She breathed, in and out, trying to quell her gut response to fight him now that she had the full story.

She sighed. “You’re just trying to make amends?”

He straightened his back. “Yes.”

“You promise?”

“Yes.”

Willow nodded. That would have to do. She’d stay vigilant, in case he was better at lying than she thought, but she could let it be for now. "I don't really have the time or energy to talk at the moment. Just come back next time and we can start over."

His expression tensed as he suppressed his joy. "Next time?"

Willow gave him a tired smile, and nodded.

"Alright." He turned to leave. "Until then, Captain."

It became a routine of sorts. Hunter wouldn't be there every time they had practice and he wouldn't ever get there early enough to join them for it. Willow told her teammates to expect his return after his second visit, and so their practice often ran as normal and then rounded off with Hunter joining them for a chat.

They came around to him quickly, though privately shared that they still didn't trust him. Gus was the most hesitant of the bunch, for which Willow was extremely glad; she knew he'd be in her corner if it ever came to cutting Hunter out of their lives. Even so, Hunter picked up on the way Gus responded to positive reinforcement, and from then on lathered him in it at chance he got. Though he remained sceptical, Gus let himself be won over, if only for the time being.

A handful of times, when Hunter got there early enough, Willow would call him down from his seat on the bleachers so that he could join them for a flying exercise. Hunter, elated, would accept the offer every time, even though it was just for them to work against his particular method of phase-flying.

Willow never offered him a chance to rejoin the team and, curiously, Hunter never asked.

The team were particularly fond of Hunter's palisman. Viney insisted on using Hunter as a translator so that she could talk to the bird, and after some persuasion Hunter agreed.

They also revelled in teaching Hunter how to use Penstagram correctly. At first, it was just an excuse to make fun. But there was something extremely endearing about Hunter's willingness to learn, and all five of them learned in turn to answer him clearly and directly when he had a question. He could always be made fun of afterwards, after all.

And given that she was often the last on the pitch, sometimes it would just be Willow there when Hunter arrived.

Once after a bad practice—one that was reasonable, since Willow had never been a captain before, and nothing she couldn't come back from, but still a stinging marker of her shortcomings—Willow had stayed behind to practice on her own. This was not allowed, as she was on a strict agreement with the teachers about when she had to return the equipment and surrender the pitch, and she could have just taken her pity party home and trained there.

Instead, she was attempting to recreate a manoeuvre that her dads had told her about. She had spent all of today trying to get her team to recreate it, and had become frustrated when it just wouldn't work. She had stuck to her stubbornness and drowned in embarrassment when her friends tried to suggest they try something else, and she still wasn't quite ready to give it up now that they had left.

Hunter appeared on the pitch while Willow was in the air, having been too focused on what she was doing to notice his approach. She tensed at the sight of him, abjectly aware that she was in a terrible mood and unwilling to let him see this weakness on her so plainly.

Though she knew she had to eventually, she could not bring herself to fly down to meet him.

Then, to her horror, Hunter flew up to meet her instead.

Once they were level, Willow met his gaze. Hunter read her expression perfectly. She explained what she was trying to do, the words emotionless on her tongue after having been repeated so many times already. He asked if he could try it, and she said yes.

Hunter couldn't do it any better than Willow, or Gus, or any of the other team members. Watching him fail at it, tired as she was, gave Willow the clarity she needed. It wasn't about natural skill, and they weren't a terrible team for not being able to do this. Nor was she a terrible daughter just because she couldn't get it right.

They exchanged very few words that evening, but before they parted ways, Willow turned to Hunter. Once his eyes were on her, she moved her hand slowly and clearly to hold his arm, something they had all learned to do within the first two weeks of knowing him. He didn't flinch.

"Thank you," she said, giving his arm a squeeze before letting go.

"For what?"

She shrugged. "I don't know. For being here today, at the time you got here. You pulled me out of my spiral. Thank you."

And so, for a while, it was good. Moreover, it was just good. But it couldn't last forever, and it didn't.

“Emperor Belos is away on a mission tonight,” Hunter said, his voice sounding casual but his expression betraying him. The interest of the other five witches was immediately piqued. He cleared his throat. Casual. “There’s no one that will call on me until tomorrow morning.”

“Cool,” Gus said. “We could…go into town, then?”

His teammates nodded, but Hunter shook his head. “There’ll be Coven Guard in Bonesborough. I can’t risk being recognised.”

“I could do an illusion, I guess?”

“Or we could stay on the grounds,” suggested Viney. “I know how to break into the school building.”

Hunter didn’t even pretend to think about it. “No offence, but I don’t really like it at Hexside.”

Willow watched him closely. Hunter was clearly dancing around something.

“No, I was thinking we could go to one of your houses and hang out there.”

And there it was.

The group was silent. Everyone except Hunter exchanged a look as they individually realised they weren’t comfortable with him knowing where they lived, and looked to each other to confirm that this feeling was unanimous.

“What?” he asked, looking at them in distress. The longer the group stayed quiet, the more it dawned on Hunter that he had trodden on a boundary beyond a simple faux pas, and the more he looked like a cornered animal. Willow decided to be the one to break it to him, if only to put him out of his misery.

“We’re not going to show you where we live,” she said plainly, hoping he would accept it without question.

He didn’t.

“What?!” He let out a shocked laugh. “Why? I mean, I know why, but I’m not going to use the information against you.”

“We…can’t take that for granted,” Gus explained.

Hunter made no effort to hide his upset. He spluttered, searching for words of protest for several long moments before he found them. “Well, let me put it this way: if I was going to try and find you, I wouldn’t need to know where you all live. I know when you come to school and I know when you’re on this pitch and mostly alone. I would have done it by now.”

More silence.

“...Are you going to try something?” said Skara.

“No!” Hunter was pink in the face. “That’s the exact opposite of what I’m saying!”

“But you want us to know that you could?” Willow pressed.

“I—” Hunter paused to consider her words. He threw up his hands in defeat. “Fine, okay, I guess I get how it could sound like that.”

“You do have that power over us.” It was just him and Willow now, eyes locked in a staring contest of sorts. “At any time, you could just decide to have us thrown in the Conformatorium, if you wanted.”

He made a strangled noise in the back of his throat. “But I’m not going to!”

“But you could.”

“But I— Okay, this isn’t getting us anywhere. I’m not going to, and it’s just a byproduct of my job. My home, my life, and the position I was given. I can’t change it.”

“Sure.” Willow stood up, signalling to the others that it was time to get off the pitch. Everyone but Hunter followed suit. “But we’re not going to show you where we live, either. Viney, how do we break into the school?”

Viney lit up with excitement and began to explain where they needed to go. The team followed her lead. Hunter, for all his dislike of Hexside, decided that he didn’t dislike it quite enough to waste an evening off. He trudged after them.

A few days later, Willow had the thought that she would miss Hunter when he was gone, whenever and whyever that would be.

The next time she saw him, when she confessed she had been having trouble getting her teammates to listen to her and he suggested she threaten to kick them off, Willow reconsidered that thought.

“I’m not gonna do that!” she said, laughing because he was laughing and it was easier if they pretended this was all a joke.

“I’m serious!” Hunter attempted to quell his laughter. “They have to know you mean business.”

“They’re my friends.”

“They’re also your inferiors.”

Willow burst out laughing again. Hunter laughed too, his eyes squeezing shut as he did. Willow snuck a glance at him, confirming that yes, he absolutely believed every word he was saying, and no, he had no idea how ridiculous he sounded.

“I don’t know how things work in the Emperor’s Guard,” she began, “but in the normal world, you can’t threaten people and expect them to still want to be around you.”

“Okay, okay. So you should, like, hex their lockers or something. Graffiti their team uniform, I don't know.”

Willow shook her head, grinning. “Titan, Hunter, I’m just going to talk to them about it.”

“Hm.” He shrugged. “Well, call me when that doesn’t work out.”

“Mm, I don’t think I will. If it doesn’t work, I’ll just deal with it. It’s a school sports team, not the end of the world.”

He hummed. “You care about it a lot, though, don’t you?”

She met his eyes. Yes. Yes, she did.

"This has been a terrifying insight into the way you think the world works," she said, shocking herself with the truth of the words. How many people had tried to keep Hunter in line by threatening him? How often had he used those same tactics himself?

If Luz's stories were anything to go by, all the damn time.

Hunter's cheer was unaltered. "How does the real world work, then? Since you're being so condescending about it."

Willow rolled her eyes, and began to recount the more chaotic anecdotes she had of her school life. Hunter knew bits and pieces already, having been subjected to the others' gossiping habits more than once, but Willow now made an effort to embellish the stories for the perspective of someone who had spent so much of his life in a castle.

This turned into an unnecessarily detailed history lesson of all the dating lives of the students in Willow's year, which turned into a discussion about Grom. Grom? You don't know about Grom? I'm a bit scared to ask.

Willow wasted no time pulling out her scroll, chattering on about school tradition and wondering aloud why Hunter hadn't ever asked about the Grom photos on her Penstagram. He explained that Skara had forbidden him from scrolling back too far on anyone's Penstagram account because it was uncool.

"I'm giving you permission to scroll back as far as you like on my account," Willow said, "because look at how cute my dress was!"

Hunter was flustered by the sudden pressure to comment on her outfit, and stammered out that it was very cute, yes, just as Willow launched into the story of Grom night.

After she explained Grom Kings and Queens, Hunter asked, "Oh? Who was chosen last year?"

"Amity," Willow said evenly.

Hunter wrinkled his nose. He placed a gentle punch on her arm. "Eh, I think you'd do a better job than her."

She tried in vain not to let that go to her head. To be told that she was good at magic was still a bit of a novel concept to her; to be told that she was better at magic than Amity, whose friendship was still a fickle and tiresome thing, threatened to break the careful distance Willow had maintained between herself and Hunter once and for all.

She deliberately thought of what Amity and Luz had said about Hunter, and reminded herself that in a lot of ways, he was not on her side.

Even if he might have been on her side, had his circumstances been different, or given the right direction and power to change things. Even if it often felt like Willow was the only person left in her friendship group who wasn't enamoured with Amity.

"It's not just about magical strength," she said. "You have to be strong up here as well." She tapped her temple, and began to explain what the Grom even was.

As she spoke, she showed him photos where she deemed them relevant. She noted his hesitation when Luz or Amity featured in the photo.

"Your dress is a lot better than the human's," he said at one point, a backhanded attempt to do-over his earlier response to her dress.

Something in Willow soured. Here was one of many things that threatened to break her friendship with Hunter, if she poked too hard at it. She could uncover nasty thoughts he harboured about one of her closest friends, how he thought her ears were weird or that she was unintelligent. Hunter worked for the Emperor; he undoubtedly shared his view of wild magic. What would happen if he so much as saw Luz in her Hexside uniform?

Willow couldn't justify a friendship with someone who held those views, who would threaten her friend because of them and mean it, too.

What was she doing, really—nestled comfortably in the calm before the storm, even though she could see dark clouds on the horizon?

"I think that's enough photos," she said. They were down to the final thread, she told herself. One more moment like this, where she could see the nastier parts of him so plainly even if they weren't directed at her, and she would end it.

Hunter straightened his back. His head whipped around. "Shit. Shit! How long has it been?"

Willow blinked. "I…I don't know."

"Shit," he said again, bolting to his feet. "Why didn't you tell me how late it was getting?!"

Willow stood up too, curling her hands into fists. That was it. That was it.

"No, wait—" He was paying her no attention as his expression zigzagged between emotion after emotion. "Sorry, I— It's not your fault. It's not your fault. I'm sorry I snapped at you."

This was said with his eyes wide, pleading with her. The fight left Willow in an instant.

"I'll see you," she said. He gave her a nod, then flew off.

Later, much later, when Willow was hardly awake, she received a message from Hunter. Rubbing her eyes, she peered at her scroll.

Sorry about earlier.

I have a strict curfew and if I don't meet it there's repercussions.

Willow didn't want to get into the nuances of her feelings on the matter, not with Hunter, not at this hour, not over Penstagram.

She sent back, it's fine, i'm not mad, and put her scroll back on her bedside table.

Truth was, she was still stung from him blaming her for missing his curfew. But the hours since then had allowed a guilt to form around that feeling.

Hunter hadn't told anyone about his visits to Hexside. He flinched at sudden touches as if bracing for a blow and he thought threats and violence to be an appropriate punishment for stepping out of line.

Willow wasn't stupid.

It wasn't something she had ever discussed with her fellow teammates, but she knew they understood it too. It was haunting, the way this information rested in her mind without ever being spoken aloud.

Really, he had every reason to freak out when he missed his curfew. That didn't excuse him for placing the blame on her, even for a moment, but it did mean Willow wasn't quite as ready to cut him off as she had been.

Willow also knew about Amity's parents. She figured that one out years ago, long before Luz came into the picture.

Hunter's comment stung because of the uncomfortable familiarity of someone using her as a punching bag because of their own mistreatment. And she felt guilty over it because years of bullying was not the same as harsh words followed immediately by an apology, and wasn't she supposed to be friends with Amity now anyway?

No, she couldn't end things with him over that.

At times, Willow let herself believe she would never have to end it at all. She had seen it in Hunter, little glimpses of realisation that, Oh, this is what life is supposed to be like. She wondered, if she coaxed him in the right way, if he would grow into a person she could be friends with no holds barred.

She'd learned the hard way that it wasn't on her to change people. And then she'd seen for herself the way people did change the way they treated her once she acted a certain way: confident and careless in a real way.

And so, a small, stupid part of her believed she did have the power to change him for the better.

It was this:

Willow spraining her ankle after she fell off her staff and didn't quite catch herself at the right angle. She put on a brave face, Captain Mode activated, and politely asked Viney to summon a bandage for her.

"Do you know how to wrap it?" Viney asked.

And Willow, humiliated from her fall and prideful as a reflex, replied, "Yes."

Gus volunteered to take over for the rest of practice. Willow squeezed his hand in thanks as he passed her.

She knew how to wrap her hands, at least. For boxing. She figured it was the same principle. Cross it over so it didn't slip. Yeah, that looked about right.

Hunter appeared in a bright flash of red beside her. Willow screamed and shoved him, and he pushed her back, by which point Willow had realised who he was. They continued to wrestle until Willow pinned both of his arms behind his back so he couldn't use his staff.

"Ow, ow, okay! You got me!"

Willow released him. He grinned.

"Would you like me to re-wrap your bandage?"

She frowned. "I think it's fine." She lifted her leg to show him, and he shook his head.

He dropped down to the bench below and held out his hand. Willow sighed and lowered her leg.

She watched closely as he did it, and he talked her through why you had to wrap it this way instead of that way and which areas of the foot needed support.

"How do you know all this?" Willow asked, but she felt she already knew.

"I've had my fair share of sprained ankles and wrists," he said with an extravagant wave of his hand. Willow laughed.

"Do they make you work even when you're injured?" she asked, casual, like she was just curious.

"Uh, yeah." He stepped back up to her bench. "One day off a year doesn't happen for no reason."

He said it flippantly. He knew she and the others thought one day off was abnormal, but he still believed it necessary. "They shouldn't make you do that," she said weakly, as if it would solve anything, as if a single sentence could break through a lifelong principle.

Predictably, he shook his head. "If I use a bandage I can push through and still do my duties, so I have to do it."

So, she tried a new angle. Argued on his terms. "What if you fuck up your foot long term by not letting it heal?"

She could tell from the look on his face that he hadn't thought of it like that.

She continued, "I'm sitting out now because I want to be able to play later. I want to be on this team and other flyer derby teams for as long as I physically can. If I work myself to death now, it'll just come back around to bite me in the ass later."

His brows were knit. She took a moment before delivering the final blow.

"If you did the same, you'd be of no use to anyone."

"...I guess you're right," is what he said after several moments of silence.

And maybe it didn't do anything. Maybe he re-convinced himself that his job was worth ruining himself for the moment he was off the pitch. But maybe Willow had planted a seed of doubt in his mind that, if nurtured properly, would help him see the bigger picture.

And did she have time for that? No. Did she want to focus all her energy into someone else when her life had improved so much from investing that focus in herself? Absolutely not.

But did she want to see the theoretical version of Hunter who existed on the other side of all of this? Yes. Desperately.

There would be no constant doubt. No shadowing parts of herself to retain the upper hand. She would be able to introduce him to people as her friend— her teammate, too, in all likelihood, since he'd have more free time.

She'd have grounds to convince Luz and Amity to give him another shot.

She'd be able to have endless conversations with him like this:

"Do you know why I decided to give you another chance after you stormed away that day at Hexside?"

It was an early evening on another day where the Emperor was out, and so Hunter had no curfew. He had arrived at the pitch enthused and energetic, ready to spend time with the gang without keeping an eye on the sun's position.

She'd seen the glimmer of disappointment when he got there and realised he had missed the others. She didn't let it get to her.

They were somewhere in the woods, walking aimlessly and timelessly. Willow felt contented and glad for Hunter's company, and so she was teetering on the edge of sharing too much of herself with him. That had been happening a lot lately.

Hunter guessed, "My flying skills?"

"Nope."

He grinned at her. Thick with sarcasm, he said, "My charming personality?"

Willow snorted. "No, you doof. It's because you called yourself half-a-witch."

Sunlight streamed pleasantly through the trees, casting brilliant shadows on the ground.

"I didn't come into my magic for years," she said, "and I was stuck in the wrong magic track, so I was called half-a-witch too."

She said it calmly, factually, like this moment would mean less if she pretended hard enough.

"'Half-a-witch Willow'," she continued, glancing up to catch his eye. She knew he understood how important this was. "That was me."

It hung in the air between them for a while, Hunter finding a place for this new information and Willow happy to let him have it. The world was silent except for the crunch of their footsteps and the occasional chirp from Flapjack overhead.

"The reason I'm called half-a-witch," Hunter began carefully, "is because I'm powerless without a staff."

Willow already knew this, of course. It was something Luz had drilled into her, back when she had first started being friends with Hunter and Luz was just as apprehensive about it as she ought to have been.

If he tries anything, remember that he can't do magic without a staff. Disarm him, and you're good.

It was advice on how to deal with him if worse came to worst. The fact was something to protect her.

Now it was something else.

A piece of honesty that she couldn't take in good faith, and a shocking show of trust. If Hunter ever had an advantage over them because of his position, he had now entrusted Willow with an advantage of her own.

And pretence was second-nature to Willow when it came to Hunter.

She shared another glance with him, one she hoped was equally as profound and understanding as the one he gave her. Even though she already knew he was a powerless witch, all that mattered now was his trust.

"Thank you for telling me," she said.

It was too good to be true.

Not a week later, Hunter let Willow know in advance that he'd be able to spend the evening with the team after practice. She hadn't heard from him since she last saw him, and grew excited at the thought of seeing him once more. She messaged him back that she'd pass on the word.

Then, on a whim:

He typed for a long, long time, sending nothing. By now, Willow knew it wasn't because he struggled with the app.

What he replied with was this:

I'd like that.

And Willow could tell how sorely he meant it.

They met up the following day to plan the practice together. Hunter had been passively analysing them for weeks from his position on the benches, and leapt at the opportunity to input his own thoughts. The two shot ideas back and forth, sitting on a log in the woods just outside the Castle.

Postponing practice, of course, was against school rules. And while meeting Hunter wasn't against her own rules, meeting him off school grounds to plan a team practice just for him felt to Willow like it crossed a line.

But he was fair. He wanted exercises that challenged him just as much as he wanted ones that the others enjoyed.

In his own way, he had crossed a line too, with the spontaneity of meeting her on a day with no practice.

When he left, she had the thought that she'd like to plan every practice with him. She wondered why she had never thought to ask Gus or her other teammates to plan practice with her before.

She went home, feeling triumphant at the success of the day and light as anything.

While she was winding down for bed, she received a message from Amity, simply reading Willow.

It was vague and ominous enough that Willow wasn't planning to open it. But then another came through:

Do you still want to know if Hunter is seen on missions and stuff

Fuck.

Okay.

You need to talk to Luz.

The next day came sluggishly. Several times, Willow reached for her scroll to message Hunter, then had to force herself to remember that she wanted to speak to him in person.

Practice began at the usual time and went by without a hitch. Willow let the others know what was going on, so they finished early. She was surprised to find that no one protested. She guessed they had all harboured their doubts just as much as her.

"What are you going to say to him?" Gus asked her.

Willow understood what he was really asking: Is this going to be the end?

She buried her face in her hands. When talking to Luz earlier, her anger had consumed her fully, so much that she couldn't even bring herself to speak. Willow, I'm sorry, Luz had said, and had meant it even though she disliked Hunter and had been right about him all along.

Now, her eyes welled with tears. She looked up to the sky and blinked her tears away, then sighed. "I'm going to ask him to leave the Coven Guard."

Gus' eyebrows shot upwards. He knew as well as she did that it was a lost cause. "Shit," he said simply, and Willow thought that about captured it. Shit.

It had come too early. She'd wanted more time to show him a better life, more time without the status quo being blown to pieces, more time to have him as her friend.

But that was done now. She knew it. The time was up.

"Do you want me to stay with you?" Gus asked.

"I think I have to be the one to talk to him," she said. "I'm the one who promised he could be in practice today, after all."

Gus nodded. "I'll wait for you."

Hunter appeared at the treeline, decked out in the very uniform he wore the first day they met him. Willow hung her head and let out a whine. She stood up, exchanging one last glance with Gus before she made her way down the bleachers.

"Let's take a walk," she said to Hunter, whose confused face was a little hard for her to look at.

"What's going on?" he asked. "Did something happen?"

"The others went home," she explained. And we did practice without you.

"Oh."

They came to a stop. "Look, I'm just going to say it," Willow said. "I know about the mission you were on a couple days ago."

It was dumb luck that she knew. Or whatever the negative equivalent was. Eda The Owl Lady had been in the area when members of the Coven Guard were sent on a raid for wild witches. That she had been there at all, at the right place and time, to see any of it, was so improbable that Willow felt as if fate had it out for her.

He didn't play dumb. "Ah."

Willow didn't know what else to say.

"You're angry," he guessed.

And, yes, that set her blood boiling. "I am a bit fucking angry, Hunter, yeah!"

"Well, what do you want me to say?!" He wouldn't look at her, caught-out and dutiful to the very end. "You know what sort of missions I get sent on. How does this change anything?!"

"Did you think I was okay with it?!" Her voice climbed louder and louder.

He huffed. "No!"

"Right." Willow let out an exasperated sigh. She stared at the ground, willing this to stop, for him to see reason, for her to stop caring so much about all of it.

"This isn't fair," Hunter was saying, pacing in place. "I wasn't even in charge of the mission, I was just there to oversee it. I didn't do anything."

Willow laughed, Ha! "That's not how this works, that's not how any of this works." Her head swam. What had changed? What had changed?

"I'm friends with the version of you that exists when you're on Hexside grounds," she explained. "Not the version of you that goes along to a raid like it's a fucking field trip."

"They're the same version," Hunter said darkly. "They're both me."

"I know." Willow shook herself. She felt numb. "I knew that, really. I just thought I could ignore it."

She chanced a look at him. His face was contorted in hurt. He'd known on some level this was coming, too.

"What can I do to make it better," he said quietly, hardly a question, hardly directed at her.

And maybe Willow would have forgotten her ultimatum if he hadn't asked. She already felt it was hopeless and he had all but proven her right. But this made her hesitate; through all her anger and apathy and disappointment in herself, she felt a spark of sympathy for him.

"Quit," she said.

He looked at her, like, You can't be serious.

"If you leave the Coven Guard, that will make it better."

"Ask me to do something else," he begged.

"There isn't anything else."

"This is my life! Not just my job, my— my family! My home!"

Willow scrunched her eyes shut. "I know."

"You know," he said in utter disbelief.

She looked at him. "I know. This is the only way things will go back to normal. But you can't quit, and I can't ignore it anymore. None of us can."

Hunter seemed to realise, then, that he couldn't talk his way back into her good graces. He realised he was losing her, and Gus, and the others.

And even though she was angry—even though she was disgusted by his actions—Willow still managed to catch one final glimpse of the person she thought he could be.

The person she knew he could be, really. If the circumstances were different. But the circumstances had shaped him just as much as they had constricted him, and she had to move on.

The two stood in silence for a long while. As this was a goodbye, Willow considered hugging him more than once. She was struck by how little and how completely she felt she understood the boy in front of her.

When he left, she watched him go, until he disappeared over the treeline.

And that was that.