Chapter Text
“I say ‘the Titan has big plans for you’, and he does what he’s told. Unlike the previous attempts.”
“I’m starting to think you make those things just to destroy them. You have fun with it! Admit it!”
“What a shame. Out of all the Grimwalkers, you looked the most like him.”
Flapjack’s frantic chirps jolted Hunter back to the present. Distantly, he knew he was sitting on the faded floorboards of the Owl House. Luz was next to him, silent and waiting. If he turned around, he knew the exact face she would be making. The sickening sympathy. The silent promise that she would listen. Hunter had no idea what she had to gain from the false kindness, but she needed to know that he would not fall for it.
He would never fall for anything again.
“What a shame.”
Flapjack fluttered beside him, and he could sense that he knew. Something is wrong, the chirps seemed to insist. They can help. Tell them everything.
In reality, the little bird was simply chirping something that Hunter recognised as his name, over and over. But Hunter knew his palisman well enough to understand what he wanted him to do.
He knew he was in the Owl House, he knew that. But all he could see was his unc- Belos’s- sharp glare. The animosity screamed in his head. Hunter had seen the very moment when he had decided to kill and replace him, written plainly on his face. The look that told him he had done it hundreds of times before, and held no remorse. How disposable he truly was.
Flapjack was still butting softly against his head, the chatter twisting and reforming in Hunter’s head until it was a rhythm he could understand.
Areyouokayareyouokayareyouokay?
No.
“He knows,” Hunter heard himself whisper. His voice fractured at the edges. “He knows we were in there.”
No reply. Even Flapjack seemed to quieten. They were all disgusted by his fear- of course they were, even the lowliest Scouts knew never to show fear. Not of anything. Especially not fear of the emperor they were meant to sacrifice their lives for. They were all looking at him in disgust. Obviously they were. How far the mighty Golden Guard has fallen, Luz must be thinking. Perhaps they were delighted, overjoyed at seeing the façade shatter. The prodigy- broken.
But he couldn’t stop himself. Belos’s words pounded in his head, every little attack now a death threat. He was disposable. He was going to die. Dust-covered picture frames seemed to surround him, each one a grisly tale of a different demise. Deaths that, if he focused hard enough, perhaps he could remember. Or at least, he could remember the agony that followed. Shattered masks covered the floorboards, surrounding him until he feared he would cut his hands on the shards. He cracked.
“I can’t- I can’t go back!”
“Kid. Breathe.” The Owl Lady’s voice, firm and yet gentle.
It was a trick. Everything was always a trick. He forced himself to look up, to see the disgust, the pity- but when he met her eyes, he could only see… He didn’t know. He didn’t know anything.
She offered her hand.
“Hunter,” Luz had said. The Inner Belos was just behind them, and he was just about to die, and- there she had been, offering her hand like it was the easiest thing in the world. It had come so easily to her.
The Owl Lady offered her hand. He could not- would not- take it. She was a Wild Witch, and she could kill him. She will kill him, he knew it.
He knew nothing.
Hunter scrambled backwards. Distantly, he could hear someone’s gasping breaths, tearing from someone’s throat painfully. It was a few moments until he recognised it as his own. His heartbeat thundered in his ears. He was alive, he told himself. He was alive. But for how long?
Hunter didn’t remember standing up, but now he backed away. It was then that he recognised the cloak still proudly slung around his shoulders, and the insignia that was not his own. The blood of his predecessors covered this cloak. His blood covered this cloak. He ripped it off. It fluttered to the floor, as if it was unaware of the sins it carried. The insignia was in full view now. The clasp that held a thousand lies.
Belos was going to murder him. He could see it even now, the demises that had hung, like blessed art, in his emperor’s mind. They were all his deaths. His family's deaths? It didn’t matter. Either way, he would soon join them, the only memory of him a rotting ornate frame. A frame that held his life’s last, desperate, fleeting moments.
His breaths would not come. They ripped his lungs open. Maybe they were all still speaking, imploring him to sit down. Hunter didn’t know. All he could see were twisting, decaying trees, and thousands of memories that were not his own. And yet somehow were.
He had to get out. He met his palisman’s eyes. The scar that stretched over his eye. He looked just like the corpse that had broken on the breeze not an hour before.
He shoved the door open, and ran. Flapjack followed close behind.
“Hunter!”
He did not turn around. That was not his name. Only witches had names, and he was not a witch.
He had no idea how long he ran for. Hours, perhaps. He ran until every fibre of his body screamed at him to stop, to breathe, to live. Flapjack screamed at him to stop too. He ignored both.
Eventually, he could not. His legs crumbled beneath him, and he fell to the ground pathetically. He lay there for a few moments, staring up at the sky. In other circumstances, it may have been a beautiful night. The stars shone brightly regardless of whose life had been destroyed that night. The stars did not care, and they offered no pity. Hunter was glad of that.
Flapjack settled on his chest, rising and falling with every breath. Slowly, they became more rhythmic. He barely noticed when he could breathe normally again. All he could register were the stars, Flapjack’s tiny weight, and the crushing, endless certainty that sooner or later, he was going to-
He was going to die. If not tonight, then tomorrow. It was as clear as the night sky. Hunter was replaceable. He would die, and then another would spawn, naïve and perfect and so relentlessly desperate to prove himself.
“The Titan has big plans for you.”
He found himself reliving every moment of his entire life. Trying to see some pattern, some misstep Belos had made that clearly spelled out that Hunter had been an idiot this whole time. He could not find one. But there had to be. Belos had raised him several times over. And every time, he perfected his technique. How to convince him to not go against him this time. How to raise the better version, the uncorrupted version. The perfect pawn.
“As long as he stays on the right path.”
But he had never done so, not for eternity. Belos had admitted it himself. Had he really gone against the man who had called him his own that many times? Belos had treated him like his own blood.
Hunter had no blood. Not a witch’s blood. Just like he had no name. A name was something a parent gave to you, something- there was something so irredeemably normal about it. Every witch had a name. He used to love the idea that that was one thing he had left of his parents, that name that they must have spent hours deciding on.
Grimwalkers had no parents. He only had Belos, and he wanted him dead. Of course he did. He had been erased so many times. For being useless, for being a traitor, for not following Belos’s simplest requests. He was useless. No wonder he was destined to die.
As if he could hear Hunter’s thoughts, Flapjack started his affectionate head-butting once again. Hunter sighed. “Do you blame me?” he said quietly. “I’m an idiot, okay? I get it. Let me wallow in peace, for Titan’s sake.”
Go back. Tell them that you’ll help them.
“No, okay? I can’t, they’ll- they don’t want me.”
But Luz-
“It doesn’t matter!” Hunter burst out. “It doesn’t matter what she said, because she’s- she just says things like that! To get you on her side!”
Silence. Flapjack let out a chirp that sounded far too much like an exasperated sigh, and settled on the ground next to him. Hunter found it in himself to sit up, at least. He sat stiffly, pulling his knees to his chest and leaning back against the nearest tree. He hadn’t realised how close he had been to the edge of the mountain. He remembered this place. He had no idea how- he had never been here- but he used to sit here when he was younger. One of them did.
The Golden Guard had overheard a conversation. He wasn’t meant to have been there. This was not Hunter’s memory, and yet it formed in his mind as suddenly as if he had lived through it himself. It was as natural as breathing.
Whoevers eyesight this was, it was terrible. It blurred at the edges, details escaping as soon as he tried to distinguish them. The Golden Guard seemed to be used to this. It had hardly bothered him.
Belos had stood in the throne room. Normally he stood with all the righteousness of the Titan himself, poised and perfect and infallible. But this day, he was not. Instead he appeared deranged, wild, appearing to talk hastily to no-one. The Golden Guard had feared for his emperor’s health- he had never seen him this way- and so he lingered by the doorway. Seeing through this Guard’s eyes, Hunter could see how his line of sight barely met the door handle. He was young.
“I must dispose of him,” Belos was saying now, irritable. Whoever he was talking to, he was trying to win them over, and was quickly losing patience. “He can barely see, and he looks nothing like-”
He was interrupted. By what, The Golden Guard could not tell. There was a fraught, long silence, as Belos took in a response that he could not hear. Finally- “He cannot serve, Collector. He is one step away from blind.”
The Golden Guard flinched. It was him that was being spoken about. No one else in the castle had serious eyesight problems like he had. He knew that, but- he could still help. Belos had given him so much, he had to be of use. But regardless of how he already knew that he was who the emperor's anger was aimed at, he tried to reason with himself silently, calming the surge of dread. ‘It could be anyone. Maybe a Scout.’
It was then that Belos looked up from his conversation, and saw him. The murderous look in his eyes killed all doubt.
The Golden Guard fled.
He had wept here, where Hunter now sat, for hours on end. Until he was found by Belos, sobbing, weak and young and pathetic, and his blood had soaked into the grass.
Hunter returned to himself, eyes wide. He hadn’t meant to do that. It felt like an invasion of privacy, watching someone’s final moments- the terror the stranger had felt, crying in this very spot. Hunter looked down, expecting the grass to be stained with dried blood. It wasn’t- of course it wasn’t- but that did nothing to quell the rising panic. That Golden Guard had been nine. He didn’t know how he knew that, but he did, as certainly as he knew his own age.
“He was nine,” Hunter repeated softly. Flapjack had no idea what he was referring to, but looked up concerned all the same. Hunter couldn’t find it in himself to explain, so just looked desperately at his palisman, willing him to understand. He didn’t, but still gave Hunter that same look that he loved, the quiet chirps a constant comfort.
Hunter pulled the little bird into a hug. And in the same place as that little Guard so many years before, he wept.