Chapter Text
“Raine!” Eda yelled, waking with a start. Her vision was blurry, tears streaming down her pale cheeks as she attempted to gain a grip on reality. The sunlight shining in from a nearby window didn’t exactly help, shifting the blurriness into a blinding flash of light as she stood up and looked at the room.
Home. She was home, she was in her nest, she was in her bed, she was in the Owl House. It was surreal and her dream from the night before had felt so realistic that she didn’t know what to believe. Loud, rushed footsteps outside the room snapped Eda into the moment, and out of her head.
“EDA! OH MY GOD, EDA!” Luz screamed, flinging open the door, running to hug her mentor.
“Luz, you’re- you’re okay.” Eda said, crying again.
“Did you have a dream about the-”
“Day of Unity?”
“Yeah. Mine felt so real, I don’t even know what’s going on right now.”
“Mine too. Raine died in my arms, I think, it was… a lot to process.”
King ran into the room, throwing himself into Eda’s leg. “I had a bad dream and I’m never leaving your side again!”
“That’s okay, kiddo, I wouldn’t want you to anyway.” Eda said, momentarily detaching from Luz to hold King.
“King, I have a question, was your dream about the Day of Unity?” Luz said, petting the young titan’s back.
“Yeah, and this thing named The Collector, who liked to play games. And in the dream I was a titan.” King said, rubbing into Luz’s hand affectionately.
“I don’t think we just had a shared dream, guys.”
“Luz, do you know the date?” Eda asked, wiping a few final tears from her eyes.
“Well, you would think that if it’s the day of unity, it would be September 8th, but, uh, my phone says it’s July 12th.”
“July 12th? That means yesterday was- LILY!” Eda yelled, sprinting out of her room to find her sister.
“Edalyn, please stop screaming. It’s early.” Lilith replied from the living room.
“Did you have a nightmare about the Day of Unity?” Eda said, sprinting down the stairs much faster than she should’ve.
“Yes, why do you ask?”
“Luz, King and I had the same nightmare.”
“Four people with one shared dream is… strange, but it can be explained.”
“Five people! Wait, six! No, seven!” Luz interjected, hearing her phone ding as frantic texts from Willow, Gus, and Amity came in, asking her if she’d had the same vivid, horrifying nightmare.
“I don’t think this is a coincidence, Lily.” Eda said, looking her sister in the eyes, trying to communicate.
“Get everyone who had the dream here, we're going to fix things this time.” Lilith said, taking control of the situation.
“But what about Hunter? And Raine, and Darius, and Eberwolf, what about all of them!” Luz pleaded, looking between Lilith and Eda.
The two adult women shared a few glances, before Lilith responded. “We can't be sure of anything regarding those in the palace right now. I'm sorry, Luz, but until someone reaches out, they're sort of a lost cause.”
“Oh. Okay. I'm gonna go get changed now so I can look nice when uh- when Amity gets here.” Luz said, her voice trembling and breaking as she ran up the stairs.
“I'm gonna go check on Luz.” King muttered, scampering up the stairs after her.
“And then there were two.” Eda joked, sitting on the bottom step and detaching her hands, one at a time, to stretch them out.
“Was I too harsh on her, perhaps?” Lilith asked, sitting back where she was on the couch.
“Nah, Lily, you did nothing wrong. She's struggling to cope right now, she just had a really traumatizing experience.”
Lilith began to anxiously tug on her hair. “Ugh, I hate how this feels.”
“The emotion or your hair? Because I have an elixir for one and only sort of know how to fix the other.”
“Both?”
“Go take a shower, that usually fixes my brain, and the elixir for your hair is in the bathroom, top shelf of the mirror cabinet.”
“Will it wash the black out?”
“I don't think so.”
Lilith grumbled, flopping back on the couch, a very un-Lilith thing for her to do. “I can’t believe we have to relive nearly two months of life.”
“Relive?”
“Eda, we both know it was no dream, but I do know what it is.”
“And? You have to stop being so vague, c’mon, speak in complete sentences.”
“Fine, then. It was an accidental time-reversal spell, likely brought on by the large amount of magical energy in the air.”
“So what are we gonna do about it?”
“Wait it out.”
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Luz was already crying as she opened the door to her bedroom, sitting down on her sleeping bag, wishing it was still the bed she’d had before they’d… gone back to now? Come back from the future? Whatever had happened. She buried her head into her pillow, trying to keep her sobs quiet.
King cracked the door open and waddled in, sitting down next to her, petting her hair. “There, there.”
Luz giggled and sat up, a momentary break from her sobs, but it didn’t last long enough to matter, as she was crying again by the time she could choke out a broken, “Thanks, King.”
“Do you want to talk about it?”
She shook her head no, trying to catch her breath.
“Okay.” He said, putting his paw on her back, a comforting force, just enough to calm her down.
“Thanks, King.” she said, picking him up and scratching his chin as the final few tears fell.
“Can I help you pick out your outfit for when Amity gets here?”
“You can help, but I get final say, okay?”
“Deal.” King said, running off to find a few items.
Luz sighed heavily, feeling a weight drop off her shoulders. King was like the little brother she never had, and moments like this really proved it. His determination to make sure she looked pretty for her girlfriend, even running off that fast to find… something, was just proof of how much the little guy cared.
One of these days, she’d pay him back in a major way, she promised. One of these days.