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Hunter looked up blearily at the sound of the door opening, blinking in the pale light that spilled across the carpet.
"Shh, kiddo, go back to sleep," Eda hushed as feathers receded into her skin and black faded from her eyes.
Hunter was awake now, though. He'd taken the couch in Eda's living room to make more space for everyone else upstairs, because they needed it. There were a lot of people staying at the Owl House right now– a bunch of people's houses got destroyed, a bunch of them didn't feel safe going home alone yet, and a bunch of people were injured and needed help. And some of them– Camila– were currently trapped in another dimension waiting for a portal that would let them go back home.
That was at least partially true. He suspected that his friends had already guessed his real reason was that he wanted to be the closest to the front door, in case anything came through it. Someone had to be ready to keep fighting, in case they had to, but Titan, he was a poor choice at this point. He might be able to teleport again, sure, but he wasn't casting anything else without a palisman.
And he did not have a palisman.
He'd pulled the head off of a mop and was cradling the makeshift staff against his body as he slept. His hands had tightened around it as Eda returned from wherever she'd been.
"Did you find him?" Raine gasped as they emerged from the kitchen. Hunter thought their voice sounded almost panicked, even though they kept it to a whisper.
"I did," said Eda, but her tone was mournful, "Rainstorm, I'm so sorry."
Hunter watched as Eda withdrew a cracked, motionless wooden carving from her saddlebag and held it out. Raine choked on a tiny sob and took it in their shaking hands.
"Oh, Windy," they warbled.
Hunter sat up, his mouth dry. "Is that a palisman?"
Raine looked startled, as if they hadn't realized that he was awake. They quickly wiped their now-scarred face free of tears.
"Yes," they replied, standing up a little straighter. "Yes, he was my palisman."
"You had a palisman?" Hunter balked. "All this time? How did you hide a palisman from me?"
"I didn't," Raine laughed bitterly. "He's been in violin form since I began working closely with the Emperor's Coven. It's how I kept him safe."
"I had no idea," Hunter breathed.
He'd been a coven head alongside them. He'd seen them fight. Hunter had seen that violin a dozen times and never guessed that it was a palisman. He knew a palisman instrument was something that bards could do, but they didn't have to. Plenty of bards used normal instruments. That violin had never changed shape, not once. They'd kept it a complete secret.
"I resisted Belos as long as I could," Raine murmured as they stroked the cracked head of the broken fox palisman. "But I wasn't strong enough to stop him. He piloted my body all the way from the Titan's Skull to the castle, and I fought him every step of the way. I paid for every single second with everything I had until we ended up in the throne room with the Titan's Heart. We'd reached the thirteenth hour. Absolute zero. I could feel my lungs filling up and I knew, I didn't think, I didn't believe, I knew that I was going to die."
"Oh, Rainstorm," Eda whispered.
"I broke him," they admitted, shutting their eyes. "Smashing my violin was one final desperate attempt to stop him. To stop everything. I thought it would be the last spell I would ever cast, one last note that we would play together fighting that monster to the bitter end. Now I'm here, and he's not."
There was a moment of grief-stricken silence as Eda placed a hand on their shoulder and Raine cupped their broken palisman to their chest, before Hunter threw off the blanket and leapt to his feet in a blind rage.
"You did what?!" he shrieked.
Raine and Eda both jolted and stumbled backward in surprise.
"Shhh!" Eda hissed. "What are you trying to do, wake up the whole house?!? Hooty needs sleep too, y'know!"
"You– you killed your palisman!" Hunter yelled, completely ignoring her.
"My palisman died fighting Belos," Raine corrected, their eyes hard and sad.
Hunter frantically shook his head before he stomped forward up to them, the world taking on a strange red hue as he stuck a finger in their face. "No, you, you killed him!" Hunter seethed, "You smashed him!"
"Fighting Belos," they insisted adamantly.
"I would have died to stop him from killing Flapjack!" Hunter cried, balling his hands into fists. "I would have killed myself to stop him!"
"I would have killed myself to save the Boiling Isles," said Raine, eyes holding a hardness that Hunter had never possessed, not even at his worst. "And so would Windy. There were thousands of lives at stake. Neither of ours could ever matter more than that. Windy let me break him, Hunter."
"Fuck that!" Hunter snapped. He was practically screaming, he knew it, but he could hardly control himself. He was shaking with anger. "And fuck you!"
"Whoa, Blondie," Eda said, holding her hands up toward him warily, "Let's calm down here. I know you're hurting right now–"
"Hurting?!" he yelled. "Hurting?! I'll show you fucking hurting!"
Then he punched Raine Whispers in the face.
There was a split second where it occurred to him that he might be overreacting, that he might be acting somewhat irrationally, that he might come to regret this later.
Then it passed, he yanked the broken palisman from their arms, shouldered his way through the door behind Eda, and sprinted into the woods.
Hunter was not entirely certain how long it was that he actually ran for. It was too long for his already significantly overtaxed body, because his legs were shaking when he finally came to a stop, lungs burning as he gasped for air.
He dropped to his knees, leaning against a fallen tree as he threw up what little food remained in his stomach from the meal he'd had before the Halloween festival.
That felt so long ago now. Like years had passed. But it hadn't even been a full day. Everything had happened so quickly, from the possession to Hexside to the Collector to Belos… and then to the aftermath. The winddown. Everything coming to a crashing halt for rest and recooperation that had left him in the lurch, still moving forward as everyone else finally stopped.
Or maybe it was the other way around. Maybe the world had turned and left him behind. Maybe it would keep turning and he'd never catch up, because he'd never move on.
Twenty-four hours ago, Flapjack had still been alive.
He choked on a sob and wiped his wet eyes. He unfolded his hand from his chest where it cupped the remains of Raine's palisman.
It was a rusty brown fox with devious little eyes and a bushy tail, and it was nearly decapitated, its head dangling at a crooked angle and the wood splintered and cracked along with the rest of its body, caved in and warped. It was broken. It was broken in his hand.
He dropped it like it had burned him and then lurched forward to snatch it back out of the air before it could hit the ground. He held it gently over his heart as he brought his knees up and bit back a sob, tears flowing down his cheeks.
It wasn't fair.
The Collector had made him say some horrible things to Luz. He had probably looked in her head, or his, seen everything that had happened and assumed that's how he felt. Of course he'd be jealous. Luz got her family, Luz got her palisman, Luz got to be loved.
But she'd worked for it. Everything Luz had, she had worked for, clawing her way out of a dark well by her bloodied fingernails. Hunter, too, had been in that place, and when she'd seen him festering in the darkness she'd reached out a hand and refused to continue without him. She'd brought him with her into the light.
Hunter had followed her lead. He had worked, and the Collector might have seen his suffering and the results and thought he felt bereft and empty, that he'd lost everything, but it wasn't true. He had so much more than he'd started with. He had worked for family, and he had it. Luz was his family now, Willow was his family now, Gus and Amity and Camila, and apparently even Darius cared a hell of a lot about him. He had love. He had been loved. His friends loved him. He even liked himself. Flapjack was gone and it wasn't fair, and he'd never forgive himself for not being strong enough to stop Belos from killing him, with his own hand no less, but Hunter had not killed him on purpose.
Belos had reached inside of his skin and used it to kill his best friend. He'd used his own hand to ruin one more thing in his life, because no matter much he took from him, it was never enough.
Belos had not killed Raine's palisman. Raine had killed their palisman.
Windy let me break him.
He curled around the broken carving tighter and wailed. He'd let them kill him. He'd done it on purpose.
Belos had reached inside of his skin and used it to hurt Flapjack.
Belos had not killed Flapjack. He had left his cursed hand still with life in his little body. Flapjack had let himself die. He had given up his life to give Hunter that much more time in the world. He had bought that for him for the price of his death. Hunter had taken his life from him, even if he'd not wanted to, not been trying to. He'd taken it.
Flapjack had let him break him.
"I'm so sorry," he cried miserably to the palisman he held in his arms, "I'm so sorry, Flapjack!"
For a moment he hated himself, he hated that Flapjack had saved him, he hated that Flapjack had thought that he was worth saving, but then he shoved that thought down and stomped on it like it was something that he could kill with his hands if he only tried hard enough. He couldn't let Flapjack's sacrifice be in vain. He had to live whether he liked it or not. He had to like himself whether he liked it or not.
He sniffled and cradled Windy against his scarred cheek. He realized abruptly that he couldn't feel it– the skin there wasn't working right, he could feel the pressure of it, he could feel where it touched the undamaged flesh at the end of the scar tissue, but nothing else. He wailed again, grieving for one more fucking thing that Belos had taken from him, had ripped from his broken little body like it belonged to him.
Raine had broken their palisman.
Windy had let himself be broken.
"It's not fair," Hunter choked, shaking his head with his eyes squeezed shut, "You should still be here. You shouldn't be dead. It's not fair."
Windy did not respond, because he was dead.
Like Flapjack.
He cried. He wailed. He screamed at the sky and the ground and whatever cruel force in the universe hated him so much.
The universe did not respond.
Eventually the tears stopped and the exhaustion set back in. He felt hollowed out with a spoon, empty and yearning. He picked himself up on stumbling, weary legs and carried Windy carefully in his arms on the long walk back to the Owl House.
He didn't knock. He opened the front door and stepped inside with his eyes on the floor.
The whispering he'd walked in on immediately halted. Hunter kept his gaze stubbornly down as somehow, impossibly, tears burned again in the corners of his eyes. Surely he had to run out eventually, didn't he?
He thrust the broken palisman out. "I'm not going to apologize," he hissed.
There was a long moment of silence, but no one took Windy from him, and he finally looked up.
Eda and Raine with both staring at him with looks of serious concern, but beside them they'd been joined by a new figure that Hunter distantly recognized from wanted posters as a wild witch and a Palistrom keeper.
Dell Clawthorne.
"Hunter," said Raine, pulling his eyes away as he braced for another fight that he was too tired for, "Are you okay?"
He stalled out. "What?"
"You just had a panic attack," Raine said, "You've been gone for over half an hour. We were five minutes away from sending out a search party."
"I just punched you in the face," he said blankly, "Don't you want to punch me back?"
Raine raised an eyebrow. "You're sixteen."
"But I punched you in the face," he repeated.
"I don't enjoy punching children," they replied flatly, "And I have no interest in retributive justice. You were upset. You acted. I understand why you did and you're back now. We move forward from here."
"Oh," said Hunter. He was still holding Windy out, though he had sort of forgotten that, and jolted a little when Dell took the palisman from his hand to inspect carefully.
"You're really not mad at me?" Hunter asked.
"No."
"Huh." He frowned.
"His soul remains in the wood," Dell anounced, tracing the edge of its broken neck with a trembling finger. "His body may be broken, but he's not dead."
"What?" Raine gasped, standing up straight as their eyes widened.
"Can you fix him, Dad?" Eda prompted.
"Fixing this kind of damage…" he murmured, "Takes a… delicate hand, and a deep knowledge of woodwork and Palistrom magic. It will be no small feat."
"But you can save him?" Raine asked, in a voice more broken and hopeful than Hunter had ever heard from them. It sounded… a little like himself.
Don't say it. I already know.
"My hands are not what they used to be," Dell sighed, "There are so few palismen carvers left in the Isles after so much time, and…" He glanced at Eda, who practically wilted, glancing at what remained of her arm. It was the first time that Hunter had seen her acknowledge it with any kind of sorrow.
"Can I help?" Hunter burst.
They all turned to look at him.
"I mean I'm not– I'm not an expert carver or anything," he said quickly, "But I'm a fast learner, like, three months ago I couldn't sew at all, but Camila taught me how and now, I made this shirt, see!" He held out the hem of it. The nasty swamp water had finally dried from his clothes, but he was sure he still stunk. He loved the shirt, though, and he wasn't letting Belos take that from him along with everything else. "I'm really good with my hands." He paused. "Flapjack said so."
Raine's eyes softened at him.
"I would need to teach you with more common wood before I could let you work Palistrom," Dell said carefully, "It may yet be a while before you're ready to help this fellow."
"It may be a while before anyone is ready to help him, though, won't it?" Raine asked.
Dell nodded.
Hunter felt his stomach swirl. He looked up at Raine. "Can I?"
"I would be very grateful, Hunter," they said softly.
"I haven't had an apprentice in decades," Dell chuckled wryly, "Without Belos… there's a great many things that I could actually teach you now." He sighed a deep breath. "I'd find some peace in knowing that it wouldn't all die with me."
"Oh, Dad…" Eda murmured.
Dell smiled warmly at him. "I'd love to teach you."
Hunter thought his heart might very well burst. Those stupid, baffling tears came back, but he couldn't even be mad anymore.
He couldn't save Flapjack. But he could save someone. Maybe even lots of someones.