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The morning after Belos was defeated, Raine barely recognized themselves when they looked in the mirror. Pale scars traced down their face from their eyes to jawline, following the path tears would fall. Their hair was much longer and shaggy instead of the neat and short style Raine had kept it in as a Coven Head.
They kept getting stuck on the hair. The scars made sense – Belos had taken control of their body and they’d felt that goo eating away at their skin – but why had their hair grown? Shouldn’t it have been left alone or lost length or been entirely removed by Belos? Why would it have grown while the rest of Raine’s body was being consumed?
Did Belos really like long hair enough to cause hair growth while he was possessing someone?
It was a small, ridiculous, inconsequential thing to be focusing on at the moment, but it felt much more manageable than dealing with everything else related to being possessed by Belos, breaking Fiddlesticks in an attempt to stop him, getting turned into a puppet for months, hiding themself in the coven system for years to take down Belos, and their life’s work for the last two decades being for naught when they failed to stop the Day of Unity.
Poor Raine. You tried so hard, didn’t you?
Hm. Perhaps Raine has been suppressing far more than they thought they were. It had been a rough few months . . . well, a rough few years, really. They should probably deal with that at some point.
“Raine! Other people need to use the bathroom!” Darius shouted, knocking on the door.
“Oh leave them be, fancy-pants!” Eda’s voice responded from further in the Owl House. “We all know you’ll take far longer!”
But now was not the time to get into it, because they were currently living in the Owl House with ten other people. Eda, King, Hooty, Luz, (and sometimes Lilith?) lived here already, and of course Luz’s mom (Raine thought that was who Camila was, they certainly looked related, but there hadn’t been an opportunity to politely ask) was staying here as well, but Eda had graciously let Raine, Darius, Eberwolf, Hunter, and the Collector stay here too. Raine was trying to not think too hard about the Collector still being here – something about wanting to make a portal door to the Human Realm before he flew off to the stars? Hunter clearly had nowhere to go and wanted to stick with Luz for now, understandably. Darius’s home, supposedly, was currently uninhabitable.
Personally, Raine thought Darius was feeling antsy about leaving anyone he cared about out of his sight at the moment and was using the “uninhabitable house” thing as an excuse, but they were not going to say so to his face. They would let Eda do it and deal with the inevitable offense Darius would take to that.
“Raine! Open the door!”
Right. They needed to stop staring at the mirror before Darius broke the door down. Shuffling over to the door, they probably took too much joy in opening it mid-knock so that Darius fell over.
He scrambled to his feet with a distinct lack of grace. “What’s taking you so long, Whispers?”
Unable to stop themselves, Rain blurted out what they had been thinking. "Darius, do I look like myself?"
Darius blinked, dumbfounded. "Who else would you look like?"
"Not me. I don't look like myself anymore. I have these scars and my hair is longer and I didn't choose to change it! I didn't choose any of this!"
"Ah." Raine could see Darius switching from his aloof mask into his dealing with a friend’s emotion crisis mode. He carefully shut the door behind him. "I think you still look like yourself, Raine. After all who else would ever think to wear that hideous vest all the time?
"Ha. Ha."
"What brought this on? How did you end up with these? I don't remember anything doing this to you on the Day of Unity."
Raine's laugh sounded broken even to their own ears, and seemed to only concern Darius further. "Oh, no, this happened yesterday. Belos possessed me as a puppet and gave me these."
Raine traced their fingers down the new scars on their face. "I tried to fight him off but I didn't until it was too late. I broke Fiddlesticks trying to stop him and I didn't stop him. I failed."
"You did not fail. You did all you could. We did all we could. And it's all worked out in the end."
"Don't tell me you believe that."
"No. But I'm trying to believe that. Belos is gone, thanks to your stomping, and the Collector is no longer causing problems. We can rebuild, Raine."
As always, Darius was annoying when he was right. "It's going to be such a mess."
Darius groaned and slid to the bathroom floor dramatically. "Titan, don't make me think of how much we have to do."
Raine chuckled, crouching down to join him on the floor. They sat in companionable silence for a few moments, shoulders brushing slightly, before Raine spoke again.
"It's silly, but I keep thinking about my hair being longer. Belos ate away at the rest of me but grew my hair out?"
"Belos really likes mullets? Thought you’d look better with that than the short hair you had before?"
"’Oh, yes, I'm possessing Raine and eating away at their skin with my goop but I know they would look so much better with a mullet so I'll take care of that!’"
Darius cackled in an unrestrained way that Raine hadn't heard since they were both at Hexside all those years ago. Then he stopped suddenly. "Ate away at your skin, you said?"
"Yes? Why do you ask?"
Darius groaned. "I just need to ask Hunter something. He came back from the human realm with some pretty intensive new scars. I'd thought it was from something there and he'd tell me later, but they look very similar to these."
He pushed aside the loose sleeve of Raine's shirt and idly traced one of the jagged scars on their arm with his fingers.
"That is concerning."
"Yes. I'll talk to him about it. Now you," Darius pulled Raine to their feet and gave them a push toward the stairs, "go cuddle with the Owl Lady or something. I'm going to do as much of my beauty routine as I can."
“Yes, we wouldn’t want you looking like the old prune you really are,” Raine teased.
“Oh, begone with you!” Darius shoved them out of the bathroom and closed the door.
Raine laughed and headed down the stairs feeling much more at ease with themself. Downstairs, they found controlled chaos. Hooty was curled around Lilith in a frankly disconcerting way while she argued with Eda about errands. Eberwolf was watching Hooty intently and with great suspicion. King was keeping the Collector occupied, and Luz was talking with Camila and Hunter. Eda navigated the kitchen, using some of the supply of food Darius brought yesterday evening to make a meal for everyone. Raine watched her fondly from the doorway for a few moments, admiring the way she maintained her part in her argument with Lilith while moving smoothly through the kitchen.
Raine only stepped in when she fumbled a pan, apparently not entirely used to cooking with one hand yet.
"Need a hand there, Calamity?"
Eda cackled. “A hand?”
Raine flushed, mortified. “Oh, Titan. I am so sorry –”
“—don’t apologize Rainestorm this is hilarious –”
“—I only meant do you need any help –”
“—funniest think that’s happened today and that includes Hooty and Eberwolf growling at each other for ten minutes –"
“—didn’t mean to bring it up and I am sorry for that too –”
“Raine. Breathe. It’s fine. You saved me and this was hilarious.” Eda smiled at them, her grin making Raine’s heart stutter like it always did. “I’m gonna have to ask for a hand more often.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes, Raine, I’m sure.”
“Aww, you two are adorable,” Luz piped up from the table.
“I think you mean sickening,” King observed. The Collector tilted their head as though he was noting down that phrase for later.
“Let them be, you two,” Camila scolded.
“Thanks?” Raine said weakly.
“You and your mushiness,” Eda muttered at Luz.
Luz stuck out her tongue in response. Eda returned the gesture. Raine watched fondly; seeing Eda being her version of motherly gave them butterflies.
“Still. Are you sure you don’t need help?” Raine asked.
“I can manage fine.”
“Sure. But it would be easier if someone helped, yes?”
Eda looked at Raine. “. . . it would. Still, you should rest. I can have someone from this hungry group of monsters help.”
Luz and King objected loudly to this description of them. Camila chuckled. Hunter stood up, seemingly ready to rush into the kitchen.
“Let me help, Eda.” Raine held Eda’s gaze. This was about more than just helping with breakfast.
Eda relented. “Fine. You can stir the eye-porridge.”
“Thank you, Eda.”
“Yeah, yeah, whatever.”
Raine began stirring the porridge. Out of the corner of their eye, they saw Camila give Luz a confused look. Luz shrugged. Hunter slowly sank back into his seat at the table.
As lovely as it had been to watch Eda cook, it was even more wonderful to join her. They moved around the kitchen together like they were dancing. They passed things to each other seamlessly, and both of them had wide smiles on their faces.
Soon enough, breakfast was ready, and Raine felt slightly disappointed that the moment was over. Their growling stomach quickly dispelled that feeling.
Seating was awkward. The salvaged table wasn’t meant to seat nine people, and not all of them knew each other that well. Lilith sat on Hooty, and Eberwolf took the floor. The Collector didn’t need to eat and instead hovered disconcertingly in the air. Camila and Luz sat next to each other and Hunter. A recently reemerged Darius somehow ended up at the head of the table. Raine found themself next to Eda and across from Hunter. Everyone dug into the meal ravenously. Last night, they had all been too exhausted by recent events to eat much and had simply passed out. Now that they were more rested, their hunger was making itself known.
Partway through the meal, Raine subtly glanced over at Hunter. The new pink scars across his face and arms certainly did look like Raine’s new scars, just like Darius had realized, and they dreaded the implications. When had Belos done this? The Day of Unity, when the kids somehow ended up in the skull? The Human Realm? Returning to the Boiling Isles and running across wherever Belos had been on the Boiling Isles before he found Raine? Was it recent? Had it hurt, too?
They wanted desperately to ask, but they couldn’t. They were still a stranger to Hunter.
Raine hadn’t known Hunter at all, really, when they both worked in the castle, and had barely begun to get to know him when he was at the CATT’s base. In the castle, Hunter was the Golden Guard, Belos’ right-hand man. Raine (and Darius and Eberwolf) couldn’t risk Hunter finding out anything about their plans, for fear that he would have turned them in or given something away to Belos. So they had had to keep him at a distance and not get too close lest they risk everything. Raine had been concerned about Hunter – Belos was not someone you wanted near kids – but it had looked from the outside like Belos cared enough about Hunter that he wasn’t in immediate danger.
They knew that wasn’t the case now, and kicked themself for not seeing it before. But even if they had seen it, what could they have done? Belos was too powerful for them to have ever gotten Hunter out to safety. The only way they could have helped was the way they had; by working against Belos.
But if they’d succeeded in stopping Belos on the Day of Unity, maybe Hunter wouldn’t have all of those fresh shiny scars. No. Raine couldn’t think about that right now.
They finished up breakfast, and Eda chivvied the kids into the kitchen to wash the dishes. Through the open doorway, they could hear Eda explaining the concept to The Collector.
That left Raine sitting with Darius, Lilith, Camila, and Eberwolf, who had perched himself on Darius’s shoulder despite there being an available chair.
Hooty slunk away from Lilith and began chasing a fly around the house. Raine didn’t question it, but Camila looked vaguely weirded out. To be fair, Hooty’s seemingly infinite ability to lengthen his body was disturbing if you weren’t desensitized to it.
Lilith was the one to break the awkward silence. “So! Yesterday was eventful.”
“Titan, how are you still this awkward?” Darius rolled his eyes. Lilith glared at him.
“Yes, yes it has been a very eventful couple of days.” Camila said, looking somewhat dazed.
Raine softened, refraining from saying something snarky to Lilith. It wasn’t just them and their old Hexside friends here. Camila had to be overwhelmed by being in a new realm, not to mention recent events, and she didn’t know anyone here.
“It has.” Raine agreed. “And lots of things have changed. Lilith, I’ve never seen your hair that short.”
“Eda cut it.” Lilith sighed. Well, that explained everything.
Darius snorted. “Why did you let her cut your hair in the first place?”
“I set some of my hair on fire by accident while making elixir and she offered to even it up.”
“And you believed her?” Eberwolf asked in Beast-Speech.
“Enough of that!” Lilith said hurriedly. “Raine, your hair is longer, it looks nice!”
Darius made a cutting motion to try to get Lilith to stop talking but did not succeed.
“Yes, Belos is a goop monster who possessed me and decided I needed a mullet while also eating my skin.” Raine said drily.
Lilith instantly looked very apologetic. There was a prolonged moment of silence as everyone at the table stared at them. Then, Lilith spoke, shock apparently overcoming the awkwardness.
“Belos was a goop monster?”
“Apparently,” Raine said tiredly. That was the takeaway here?
Darius looked contemplative. “That seems like something that would have been hard to hide. How did we not notice?”
“Well, he did wear a mask most of the time,” Lilith said.
“Sometimes you’re an abomination goop monster but that isn’t immediately obvious.” Eberwolf added.
“That’s not entirely accurate –”
“Similar principle though,” Lilith said.
“No, Darius is just abomination matter. Belos was stringy bones and kind of rotten flesh goop.” Raine said.
Darius made a supremely disgusted face. “I am nothing like that.”
“I figured that wasn’t a normal thing. So this is something he’s done to more than just Hunter?” Camila said. It was then her turn to be stared at.
“Hunter was possessed?” Darius asked, alarmed. “When did this happen?”
“A couple days ago, leaving the Human Realm. I’m still not sure how it all ended up happening, it all happened so fast, but Belos was trying to get back to the Demon Realm and was looking for Titan’s Blood. Belos destroyed Flapjack, and I think that’s what gave Hunter the strength to fight him off enough to throw the Titan’s Blood into a pool and then Belos made him jump into it. I had to pull Hunter out and he wasn’t breathing for a bit. Flapjack gave his life to Hunter, I think he might have been dead for a couple of moments.”
By the end of the story, Darius looked incredibly concerned. Eberwolf was growling nervously. Lilith had a hand covering her mouth. Raine felt somewhat numb, and a crushing sense of grief for Hunter. Losing a Palisman was hard – Eda had looked over them and said Fiddlesticks was going to be okay, but the time in which Raine thought they’d lost them had been terrible. And to pair that with your Palisman sacrificing themself for you and being possessed? Poor kid.
“Ugh, Belos is so vile! I wish I could have hit him with my bat.” Camila finished angrily, pounding her fist into the palm of her hand.
“I stomped on his skull. It was very satisfying,” Raine offered.
“Good.” Camila’s grin was wide and slightly feral. Yes, that was definitely Luz’s mom.
“Is Hunter doing okay?” Lilith asked, looking very concerned. Touching, considering what Raine remembered of their previous interactions. Still, Raine shot Lilith an “are you kidding?” look. The answer to that was obvious. She winced.
“He was excited to show us his wolf shirt,” Darius offered.
“Pup did a good job on it. Looks better than Darius’s sewing!” Eberwolf added. Darius swatted at him without looking.
“Oh so you’re the one who got Hunter interested in sewing!” Camila realized.
“Yes, thank you for encouraging him to keep working on it.”
“Oh no problem! He was very enthusiastic.” Camila said. “Oh. Sorry. That was off topic. I don’t think Hunter’s been doing great these past few days and it was clearly a traumatic experience.”
“Right,” Darius said intently.
Camila then turned towards Raine. “The two of you should talk about it. It’s not good to bottle things up and talking to someone with similar experiences could be beneficial.”
“Maybe,” Raine hedged. It would, likely, but how would they even go about approaching Hunter about all of this?
Raine deliberated about how to best broach the subject well into the afternoon, and in the end, conversation happened on a break from cleaning some of the graffiti off the Owl House. In the grand scheme of things, it was a minor problem, but achievable at the moment. Darius and Eberwolf were off hunting down the other Coven Heads. Eda had taken Lilith, Luz, King, Camila, and The Collector with her to go scrounging through the confiscated items stockpile to bring back all of the furniture that had been taken. That had left just Raine and Hunter at the Owl House, with Hooty keeping watch.
Raine suspected that the fact that it was just the two of them still at the Owl House was not a coincidence. After some arduous scrubbing of some particularly rude graffiti that if they didn’t know better, they would have assumed was Eda’s, Raine decided to take a break. They strolled over to where Hunter was cleaning, finding him lying on his back looking up at the clouds.
"Oh! Uh, hey Raine." Hunter said, sitting up and rubbing the back of his neck awkwardly.
"Hello Hunter," Raine said warmly. "How is cleaning going for you?"
"Well. Everything is coming off easily."
"Good. I appear to have found some graffiti from someone who learned from Eda." Raine said ruefully.
". . . Luz?" Hunter guessed tentatively.
"Ha! No, I just mean that it won't come off for love or money, and Eda is very good at that kind of enchantment.”
"Ah. I see." Hunter said in a tone that said that he didn't see but did not really want to know. Sighing, he rubbed a hand over the shiny new scar crossing his nose.
Raine sank down next to him, careful to leave space between them, and rested a hand on Hunter’s shoulder to get his attention. They rubbed at the new scar down their cheek. “They itch a lot, don’t they,”
Hunter jerked in surprise at the contact, and blinked at Raine, seemingly taking in their new scars and longer hair for the first time.
“He got you too?” he said, horrified.
“Yes. He did.”
Hunter buried his face in his knees. Raine moved their hand from his shoulder to his back. Hunter leaned into Raine’s hand, and they began rubbing circles.
“I didn’t want him to hurt anyone ever again. That’s how I fought him off. And he hurt you. I didn’t stop him.”
Oh, this poor sweet kid. “That is not your fault, Hunter. It’s his fault. You are not to blame for his actions because you weren’t able to stop him.”
And, they realized, that applied to them too. They had done their best, and likely slowed Belos down some despite failing to stop him. They were not to blame either.
Camila was right. Talking about this was helpful.
“Why did he have to hurt so many people?” Hunter asked, voice thick with tears. “Why couldn’t he just leave us alone?”
“I don’t know.” Raine sighed. “His actions are his own.”
Hunter tipped sideways until his head was resting on Raine’s shoulder. Raine brought their arm up around him.
“I don’t feel like myself anymore,” Hunter admitted. “He took over so easily and I couldn’t do anything. And now I have all these scars and my hair is longer and my eyes are brown because Flapjack gave his life to save me. And I like that they’re a reminder of him, but I don’t look like me anymore.”
“You know, I had the same breakdown earlier today when I looked in the mirror,” Raine said.
“Really?” Hunter looked at Raine in amazement.
“Yes. I felt horribly out of control from that, and being a puppet before that. My body and actions haven’t been entirely my own for quite some time. But my appearance was one of the things I could control. So seeing that he’d changed it was –”
“—horrifying?” Hunter finished.
“Very much so.”
“I cut my hair short because I was so worried that – well, that I’d look like him. And then Belos just. Regrew it.”
“Weird that that grows that while he ate away everywhere else.”
Hunter laughed at that. “It is a little silly when you say it like that.”
“Mhm.” Raine hummed. “Are you going to cut it?”
“I don’t know. I kind of like how it feels around my ears, but it’s also a reminder. Are you going to keep yours?”
“Yes. I used to have my hair this length and I changed it when I started climbing the ranks of the Bard Coven. Made me look a bit more serious, in a non-threatening way. I don’t need to make that consideration now.”
“I don’t like that the scars will just always show that this happened. That I failed.” Hunter said.
“I don’t think that’s what they show. They show that we survived, that Belos couldn’t beat us.”
“I like that way of looking at things, but I don’t think I can believe that right now.”
“Me either. I am not okay yet. Neither are you. But we’ll get there some day.”
“You think so?”
“I know so.” Raine reassured.
Hunter slid down to lie on his back and look up at the clouds. Raine joined him, though they knew that getting up would be somewhat painful with all of the bruises they had picked up from yesterday.
“I’m glad we talked. It definitely helped like Camila said it would.”
“She got to you too, then?” Raine asked.
“Yeah.”
“Well, she does seem to give good advice.”
“She’s the best.” Hunter said resolutely.
“Indeed.”
Raine let the silence settle for a moment, but not for long. Something Raine knew was that heavy conversations like this were best followed by laughter. And from Hunter’s connection with Darius, Raine had a good idea of something that would make him laugh.
“You know, I knew Darius when we were both at Hexside. I was closer friends with Eda and Lilith, but the three of us and Darius and Alador and Perry all hung out and got into all kinds of trouble. I have all kinds of stories about him from when he was younger.” Raine offered.
Hunter’s eyes lit up with glee. “Yes, please!”
“Alright. So, when we were about sixteen, Darius was mad at the Abomination teacher’s grading on a project and had the brilliant idea to –”
Hunter was relaxed and happy, content to listen to the story of Darius, Raine, and their friends’ teenage mischief. Darius was going to be displeased that this story was being shared, but that was his problem. Right now, Raine had a happy and engaged teenager hanging off their every word and distracted from recent events. As they became absorbed in telling Hunter the story of how Darius and Alador’s attempt at extra credit ended up sparking a school wide prank war that culminated in Eda setting the cafeteria on fire, Raine realized that they felt at peace for the first time in a long time.
There was work to do to rebuild the Boiling Isles, and a future to plan for. But for now, Raine was content to tell stories and let time pass. They had earned their rest.