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There's something to be said for the sleeping nettles, actually. They make it a lot easier for Hunter to pretend he isn't dreaming.
He tells himself that there's a bedroom with wood-paneled walls and stacked bookshelves and a crackling stone fireplace, and there is. He tells himself that the rugs are soft and that the wide, curtained bed is warm, and it is. He tells himself that Luz isn't angry, that she'll follow him here, that she'll stay with him, and she does.
He should maybe use his dream-time to do something other than lie down doing nothing. But there's nothing else he wants to accomplish, and he'll never get to do this again, once he's awake. So.
He still remembers everything, though. Luz hasn't been gone long enough for her memory to fade from his subconscious. She lets him pull her to him and bury his face in her hair, and she smells just like Luz, she feels just like Luz, she's a perfect facsimile. None of the ephemeral or abstract failure of dreamstuff. If Hunter stays alive for much longer, he'll lose the capacity to do this. The smell will go first. He'll forget her scent, even though scent is the best pathway to memory.
He can't even go home to get her. To get her, or her bedding, or her old clothes, or anything else that might keep her smell for longer. He can't keep anything of her, he can't bury her somewhere beautiful. He can't do anything for her anymore except dream up a living copy and pretend things are different.
The thought makes him so heartsick he's nauseous.
Luz breathes softly against his throat, the same easy rhythm she always has, because he remembers everything about her. She's so quiet. So calm.
As if hearing his thoughts, she murmurs, gently, "You should kill yourself."
Her voice is still perfect. Her voice had been perfect in the kitchen, too, the kitchen of this fake chilly cabin with its pretty snow-frosted window panes. The kind of place Hunter might have brought her, if he hadn't been too stupid to escape, too cowardly to keep her safe. She'd been standing there gazing out at the island, her expression faraway, and he'd arrived with a blankness and a creeping dread that didn't bode well.
It hadn't taken Hunter long to figure the game out. He'd said, "This isn't real," and she'd said, "No, of course it isn't. You let me die."
And he'd said, "I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Please don't wake me up."
Hunter is a little afraid of upsetting the dream's balance, now. It would be easy to replay the events of the past day – Belos rearing back, Luz's scream, her shadow between them, the wet sound of the impact. The lurching awfulness as she fell. It would be easy for her to become a corpse in his arms all over again, her blood seeping into his clothes, into his skin, her muscles limp and her eyes empty. Hunter knows how nightmares work. He's dreamt Luz's death before, dozens of times, before the real thing even happened. He knows how nightmares work.
Probably the dream will twist either way, though. So with his mouth still pressed to her hair, he murmurs, "She wouldn't say that.”
Luz pulls her head back, but only a little. Just enough to meet his gaze. Hunter waits for a trickle of blood to escape her mouth or for glassiness to overtake her eyes, but she remains alive. She's still warm. She's not angry at him, either – or at least, he doesn't think she is. Her face has the half-amused, disbelieving expression it always does when he argues with her about magic.
“Are you giving me notes?” she asks.
“I’m just telling you. Luz wouldn’t say that.”
Of this, he’s certain. Amity had put it best, out in the waking world, back when she’d knocked Hunter’s staff away and restrained him with her own magic because he wouldn't stop clawing his way back toward the castle. It hadn't been a fair fight, because unfair fights are the only way she can consistently beat him. And maybe he hadn’t been in top fighting form, either – maybe the desperation and the pain had made him more than a little erratic. He hadn't exactly been strategizing. Hadn't been analyzing her movements.
“Luz just fucking died for you,” Amity shouted, furious tears rolling down her cheeks, “and you want to throw that away?”
She's right. Luz wouldn’t want him to throw that away.
Hunter knows this. He knows what Luz would want, because he knows her. He might only be her guard on paper, but she's half of him. She's most of his heart. Everything he's ever loved, he loved because she loved it first.
That’s the only reason he’s opted to drug himself out of his mind instead of to make an active plan. He has the capacity to get away from the others, he knows. He could escape the Owl House. He could finish things. As long as he’s calm, as long as he plays nice, he can pretend that he isn’t about to take drastic measures. He can convince them he’s fine and then he can–
Luz wouldn’t want him to do that.
Luz would not want him to do that.
Luz would be furious with him for even considering it.
The dreamt Luz hums. She brings a hand up – Hunter flinches, expecting slime, expecting blood, expecting a blade – and gently lays her palm against his cheek.
Hunter’s breath catches with pain. He presses his face against her.
She runs her thumb along his mouth, her gaze softening. Pity. Pity and desperate sadness, the kind she always has when she reads about any of the now-extinct creatures that the Empire slaughtered. So much has been done to ruin this place. So much false hope in the Titan's name. She'd wanted so badly to fix it all.
“Maybe I wouldn’t say it,” she says. “But I’d think it.”
“You wouldn’t.”
Of this, he’s also sure. He's not even being stubborn. It's just fact: Luz never knows when to give up on a lost cause. She wouldn’t be able to put a sick bird out of its misery, even when snapping its neck is the kindest option; she certainly wouldn’t ever believe that Hunter is better off dead. Even like this. Even without her.
That’s one of the things they’re most likely to argue about – no, that they had been most likely to argue about. Back before all of this happened. Back when they could still argue. He's never going to argue with her again, fake dream notwithstanding.
Lost causes.
She sighs. “I’m only saying it because you know it’s true,” she says. “You should kill yourself.”
Yeah, that's fair. He does know it’s true.
On some level, he thinks, the dream is trying to do him a kindness. His mind itself is trying to do him a kindness. The truth of the situation is unbearable, and so his subconscious needs to lie to him. She wouldn’t be angry, if you gave in. She wouldn’t hate you. She’d understand. She’d wait for you and she’d understand, she’d take you home, she’d let you rest. She wouldn’t be angry. It’s okay. It's okay. You don’t have to keep fighting.
Hunter has always needed to keep fighting. The only person who’s ever offered him respite is gone; there's nothing left to do but fight.
“Who are you even fighting for?” Luz asks, once again reading his thoughts. “You already failed.”
She would want me to.
The pain in his chest builds, makes it hard to breathe. It reminds him of that one time when Amity had slammed him into a wall – too hard, too fast, at just the wrong angle. The crunch of bone, the sudden shooting agony. The shallowness of his breath, unable to expand his ribs to get enough air. Her panicked call to Darius, because even then she knew better than to call the Healing Coven. Darius being well and truly furious with both of them, stabilizing Hunter anyway, getting in touch with some healer he actually trusted.
“Seven cracked ribs, are you out of your mind?” he’d snarled at Amity, and then to Hunter, “Your lungs shouldn’t even still work. I don’t understand how they do. Must be stronger than most witch’s. Don’t you dare pull this shit again.”
That hadn’t been the last time he’d fought Amity, of course. They'll probably be fighting each other until they both die. It's a good way to take the edge off, back in the castle.
But she hadn’t broken seven ribs at once since.
It feels like that, the grief. When he’s awake, it’s worse. A lot worse. Seven cracked ribs is nothing, comparatively. But in the dream, with Luz here, with the sight and the smell of her, it’s not so bad. Seven cracked ribs instead of two punctured lungs. He unwraps one arm from around her waist to touch his ribcage, gingerly, just in case he actually is injured. Anything can happen in a dream.
Nothing seems amiss. The pain is all in his head.
“That wasn’t rhetorical,” Luz says. “Who do you think you’re fighting for?”
Hunter closes his eyes.
“Yourself?” Luz laughs, and now it’s meaner, hard-edged. “You don’t have a self, Hunter.”
True enough. He’s been orbiting her for his entire life. Now he’s spinning, adrift. Lost in the inky blackness of space. He doesn’t create his own light or his own warmth; he never has. He's loved her, always, with everything he has and everything he is. He's always loved her. She's always been home to him. She's always made his light.
The fire in the fireplace is dying down. The room is growing dark. It’s getting colder, here; he can feel the chill on his face. It bites.
“You’re not a person,” Luz continues, low, ruthless. “You were a dog to me and a toy to Belos. And you couldn’t even get that right. If you’d done either of those things right, maybe I’d still be alive now. Maybe you’d still be protecting me instead of pretending to care. Maybe you wouldn’t have let me fucking die.”
The pain makes it difficult to speak. Begging has never moved Belos, and so Hunter doubts that it’ll move this nightmare – this subconscious thing that speaks with Luz’s voice and the Emperor’s cruelty.
“Please,” Hunter says softly. “Please. I would have done anything for you. You know that. You know that. If you were her, you’d know that, and if you’re my mind, you’d still know that. Please, Luz – whatever you are. Whoever you are. I love you. Please don’t do this to me.”
“Hunter?”
There’s a shift in her – her voice, her tone. None of the meanness of before, none of the viciousness. She sounds confused, like she’s just woken up, like she also can’t remember how she stumbled into this unfamiliar cabin. Like she's his Luz, the one he lost, tripping into his mind from the other world.
Hunter’s eyes snap open. She’s looking at him with wide eyes, her breath turning unsteady, her lips parted in what might be surprise.
Or fear.
He touches her face, brushing a stray curl back behind her ear. “Hey,” he says, “hey, yeah, I’m right here. I’m right here.”
This comes easy. It always has. The world could be ending and Hunter would still promise her that everything is fine. He's an expert at biting down on pain, on worry. He's good at this. It's part of his job.
“Hunter,” she says, “help me. Help me, please. I don’t want to die.”
“You’re not gonna die,” he promises – quick, automatic. “You’re safe. You’re here with me, and we’re safe, okay? You're not going anywhere. We’re–”
“Hunter,” she whispers, again, and exhales a raspy little sob. “Please, I don’t want to die. Don’t let me die. You’ll take care of me, right? You promised, you promised me, I don’t – I don’t want–”
“It’s okay,” he tells her, frantic, trying to pull the pieces of the dream back together. But the frigid air swirls around the cracks in the bedroom windows, and her body is growing colder, and now she’s bleeding, soaking the sheets and his shirt. She hadn’t had time to be frightened, when she died for real – but she’s frightened now. Pressing her hands against her wounded chest, struggling for breath, crying with pain. She's so scared. She's so scared and she needs him to make it stop, because he's always made it stop before, he's always kept her safe.
Except when it mattered most.
“It’s okay,” Hunter says, “it’s okay, I’ve got you, I’ve got you, just hang on,” but he doesn’t, he doesn’t, she’s crumbling to ash in his arms. Even as she’s grasping for him, grabbing handfuls of his shirt, she’s dissolving. She's crying for him, as he tries to grab onto her, to keep her body intact. All her warmth, all her softness, all her kindness, ripped away by the howling wind–
–and he wakes on the dark floor of the Owl House, and he’s still reaching for her, grasping for a body miles away and a girl who doesn’t exist anymore. Amity’s watchful eyes peer at him from her position on the couch, because even though she hates him, she's not willing to let him die. Luz doesn't exist anymore, she isn't thinking about him, she isn't calling for him, she won't be waiting for him on the other side. And he’s alone.
He’s alone.
He’s always been alone.