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Luz realizes at some point during the day that, despite having been living with them for a little over a year, Hunter has never seen Human Realm snow. By some miracle or tragedy, last year had no snowfall, and much of the holiday was spent just trying to keep each other out of panic attacks as often as humanly possible.
Suffice it to say, they hadn’t really been in the best headspace to celebrate anything last year.
She supposes that’s why she’s been so excited for Christmas this year in particular. It’s an opportunity for her to introduce her new siblings to the wonders of the human holiday, complete with candy, hot chocolate, Christmas movies, and, most of all, snow.
Luz hadn’t missed the distinct fascination that came over both Vee and Hunter when the characters in the Christmas movies would get to see and play in the snow. And she certainly hadn’t missed the slight disappointment that would cloud their faces when the snows they do get in Gravesfield end up only being a quarter of an inch.
That’s why when the clouds darken and the weatherman says to start stocking up on supplies with less than a week until Christmas, Luz feels more excited about the prospect of a horrible storm than she ever has been before—and that includes the year that school had end a week early. Luz honestly can’t imagine a more perfect day than the day she gets to introduce them to snowballs and snowmen and sledding down the steepest hill in town—that is, the one with a roughly two-degree slope.
Luz tries and fails to contain her excitement when the snow finally starts falling. She wants to go out right then and there, but Mamá points out the high-velocity winds and kisses her on the head to keep her dutifully inside. But it’s with a begrudging acceptance. All the while, she’s still practically vibrating in her seat waiting for the go-ahead to finally come; Vee and Hunter just sit by and watch it happen, occasionally attempting to distract her with their new card game or some magic tricks that Vee had been learning, but to no avail.
Eventually, the snow stops just enough for Mamá to allow them to go outside, but only after they go through an entire show of putting on long-sleeved shirts, coats, scarves, two pairs of socks, snow boots, gloves, and hats. She particularly fusses over Hunter because the cold tends to make his scars ache, but he’s obviously doing just fine; there’s a tension to his face that gives away just how hard he wants to smile, and he’s rushing through the dressing process just enough to betray his excitement. Vee is practically bouncing on her heels as well, her hands flapping with an overjoyed and seemingly limitless energy.
When Mamá finally lets them go, it’s Vee that barges out first; she swings the door open, thus welcoming into the house the freezing morning air and a pile of snow.
“Oh, sorry, Mamá,” she rushes to say, “I can clean it up before it melts into the carpet—”
“Don’t you worry about that, mija ,” Mamá says with a smile warm enough to thaw ice. “I’ll take care of it; I actually have quite the experience with cleaning up snow! You kids just go out and have fun.” She gives Vee a swift kiss on the forehead, then traps a squawking Luz by cupping her cheeks to press a kiss onto hers, then beckons Hunter to bend down and receive one as well. Then, she shoos them out the door and they’re out on their own with an entire world to destroy.
Vee immediately takes fistfuls of snow to test their texture, staring with no small amount of wonder; having never been to even the Knee, she hasn’t seen snow in this amount period. Hunter, though she supposes he would have more experience with it, still seems equally as fascinated.
Fortunately, even from here, Luz can tell that it’s the perfect consistency for what she has planned. Because as much as Luz enjoys just watching the two of them observe and experience the calm, white stillness of the untouched snow, she has too many things planned and too little time to waste. Without so much as informing them it’s a role to be taken, Luz appoints herself as leader of the experience and, therefore, leader of the war.
“Let’s have a snowball fight,” Luz says without preface.
Vee straightens immediately, a wild grin overtaking her face. “Just like in the movies!” she exclaims.
“Just like the movies,” Hunter agrees.
“Oh, yes,” Luz says with a grin. “Just like the movies.”
——
The teams are Luz and Vee against Hunter; it seems like a fair fight, considering his admittedly superior strength and reflexes. And so, as the teams each individually pack up walls of snow for their base and create a collection of snowballs, Luz starts with her master plan.
She had explained it all to Vee before and they had expertly timed it.
They spend a few moments gathering their artillery, making as many snowballs as will easily stack up behind their snow barricade. When she pops her head above the wall, she manages to duck just before the snowball smacks devastatingly against the top of the wall, chipping off a piece that spills all over her hat and shoulders.
“Good lord, the arm on that kid!” Luz swears. “This will be a dangerous mission, soldier, but fortunately, we have the power of shenanigans on our side.”
“I’m ready when you are,” Vee says, grabbing a snowball and packing it between her hands.
They built the wall a bit into the forest, half-obscured by the trees, dead and leafless as they are. This was by design. When Vee glances over the wall and immediately doesn’t get hit, Luz darts to the side and into the forest. She runs out a bit, a bowed arch, to approach Hunter’s fort from the side: what will be a premeditated and painful surprise attack.
She sees him, crouched and armed with a snowball in his hand, nearly imperceptibly small holes etched into the wall of his snow fort.
You sly dog, Luz thinks.
As soon as Hunter stands up to throw another snowball, Luz strikes. She lunges out from behind the wall at full speed, aiming right for his torso and tackling him firmly into the soft, freezing powder.
He’s stunned from the surprise, but he won’t be for long. Should he get his bearings, he could easily just sit back up despite the pin, or put her in a headlock, or spit on her or something, and then they would lose the war. And Luz definitely isn’t going to let Vee’s first snow experience end in failure.
“Say ‘mom’!” Luz calls just as Hunter starts to struggle against her unwieldy and dragging weight. She only hugs him tighter, laughing in such a way that she hopes threatens him into submission. “You say ‘mom’ and you can lose every-so-slightly more dignifiedly!”
“No way!” Hunter snaps back, trying to kick out from under her before she manages to press his ankle into the snow as well. He grunts in irritation. “You didn’t say physical violence was allowed; I didn’t stretch before this. And that’s not even a word!”
“Yes it is, I looked it up!” Luz laughs harder. “Now say ‘mom’ before you lose like a wimp!”
“Yeah, right. I’ll lose like a witch ,” Hunter says.
“Then perish,” Luz says as her free arm sweeps out to gather an entire armful of snow—he hates getting ice cubes down the shirt—and dumps all of it onto the back of his head.
She jumps up with a cheer and Vee pops her head up from behind their fort, taking only a moment to both recognize and savor their win. Then she’s vaulting over the snow wall, holding out a hand, and they grin and laugh and share several hi-fives, kicking and tossing up handfuls snow as if it were confetti.
The victory tastes sweet for about ten seconds, because that’s how long it takes for Luz to realize that Hunter hasn’t gotten up, and for Vee to ask, “Wait Hunter, are you okay?”
From his place on the ground, sitting up with a hand pressed tight against his chest, Hunter doesn’t answer. It takes only that for Luz’s entire body feels as though it’s been drenched in ice-cold terror.
She goes to approach, to perhaps drop down to her knees and place a hand on his shoulder, but he jerks back from her movement. His eyes are wide, glazed, unseeing yet focused on her as he hyperventilates, as if daring her to come any closer. He’s shivering terribly, or maybe he’s trembling. She tries not to let the overwhelming guilt choke her, because it must have been the snow.
“Hunter, can you hear me?” Luz asks, hands raised in a way that she hopes comes off as placating, just as Vee settles into place behind her.
Hunter doesn’t respond; his hand closes around the fabric of his coat, his breath wheezes out, and his gaze flicks rapidly between them.
“It’s okay,” Luz says. She’s trying to stay calm, but even she can tell just how much her voice is shaking. “You’re with me and Vee; we were just having a snowball, uh, throwing game. Just throwing snowballs, y’know, having fun. I didn’t know that would hurt you, I promise!”
“Would it help if I held your hand, maybe?” Vee asks, her fingers curling gently around Luz’s upper arm.
“I-I’m okay,” Hunter gasps out suddenly, sounding very much not okay. “S-s-sorry. Sorry. I-I didn’t mean to—”
“No, it’s okay, it’s okay, everything’s totally fine,” Luz rushes out. “Let’s just, uh, take a second to breathe! Breathing is super fun—more fun than snow, that’s for sure.”
She takes in a deep and dragging breath, focus held solely on Hunter, who watches with a breathing pattern that is no less erratic. She remembers there being something before that he would do when he’s on the edge of something like this—counting, something he had learned from Gus—so she scrambles to try and remember how exactly they would do it.
“In for four and then out for four?” Luz asks. Vee nods from beside her and holds her hand out for them all to see. “Let’s try that, alright? In for four.”
This time when they breathe, Hunter joins. His breath catches in his throat and he lets it out too early, but on the next inhale, he’s settled into some precarious sort of calm.
“Is touch okay now?” Luz asks, and Hunter nods; still, there’s an anxiety that sits all too readily in her chest that makes her doubt his claims. It makes her hesitate, to wait just a second longer. “We can go back inside where it’s warm, okay? We can drink some hot chocolate and eat some candy canes, and maybe watch a movie?”
“Your coat is soaked through,” Vee says. “Mamá said you could get sick if you don’t warm up.”
“I’m okay,” Hunter mutters. “I-I’m okay.”
“Yeah, you’re okay,” Vee agrees.
When Luz finally garners the confidence to touch him again, he practically melts into the contact; Vee is quick to support his other side, even if he doesn’t need it by this point. Where his head lolls onto Luz’s shoulder, she can feel just how cold his skin is, and just how much he’s shaking.
“It’s just a few minutes away,” Luz says, not knowing for sure. “It won’t take long. We’ll chill for the rest of the day, I swear. Just keeping cozy. Maybe we’ll even break out the space heaters. That would be fun, wouldn’t it?”
“Definitely,” Vee says, and Luz couldn’t be more appreciative of her. “We could grab some board games from the basement, too. Or just sleep. Sleeping is fun.”
“I love sleeping,” Luz agrees.
They continue chatting like that—every word saturated with the desperate need to keep him calm and complacent—and the anxiety runs so high that she thinks they could nearly choke on it. All the while, Hunter offers an occasional hum, but no words. With every step, she can feel his exhaustion weighing him down, and the guilt grows stronger, and it’s the longest five and a half minutes of Luz’s life.
Finally, they reach their backdoor, and it only takes a few seconds for Mamá to appear in the doorway and immediately start asking questions.
“What happened?” Mamá is asking desperately, eyes alight with fear. She comes just close enough to cup Hunter’s face in her hands, her gaze already searching for wounds. “Hunter, baby, are you alright? Ah, dios , you’re freezing cold! And wet. Goodness, you’re completely soaked through—girls, please close the door, let’s get you into some dry clothes.” Then in only a moment, she leads him into the living room so he can continue to be fussed over from the comfort of their couch.
Hunter is gone, the panic is ebbing, and yet Luz still can’t find it in her to breathe fully in.
“You should get some dry clothes, too,” Vee says as she closes the door, and it’s only then that Luz realizes she too shivering from the cold, her pants wet from the knees down from where she was kneeling in the snow.
She knows objectively that she should, but it feels too good for her. She’d been an idiot; tackling a traumatized kid to the ground, smothering him with snow, cheering about it. Standing in the kitchen with cold clothes seems like a small price to pay for the abuse of her brother, she thinks, because that’s a completely insane thing to say.
“Did you know he would react like that?” Vee asks, placing a firm hand on Luz’s shoulder.
“No,” Luz says, “but I should’ve.”
“Did he ever mention something that would indicate he would be triggered?” Vee asks. “Was he scared when you tackled him? Apprehensive about the snow?”
No is the answer. No, Luz wants to say, but she knows where this is going; this is Vee worming logic into the situation—logic that unfortunately is both very sensible and very annoying for Luz’s purposes. She’s done something irreparable. Again. Yet another thing for Hunter to hold against her, to prove for sure that she’s no worse than—
“You can’t possibly anticipate what he has trauma about,” Vee insists regardless. “I don’t know what happened, but you would never hurt him on purpose. This was an accident, and you shouldn’t feel bad about an accident.”
“He completely shut down, Vee,” Luz says, trying not to let the images reenter her mind. “He didn’t—I don’t think he even recognized us at first.”
“Luz,” Vee says, and Luz finally looks her in the eye, only to realize her face is blurry with the shield of tears that have begun to well up. “Luz, he didn’t tell you anything. You can’t know what he doesn’t tell you, you just can’t. You helped him when he was scared—you asked him if touch was okay, you helped him calm down, stand up, walk back home… that’s what matters.”
Luz doesn’t know why the words don’t sink in. It feels like an unbreakable forcefield has surrounded her, letting the assurances bounce effortlessly off her painful, freezing body. She hates the way her throat aches with tightness and how her eyes burn and how it feels like the guilt, heavy as it sits in her stomach and heart, refuses to unlatch. It makes her feel sick, and she can’t say a word.
Mamá’s footsteps can be heard rushing about inside the living room. It feels like too soon when she finally returns to the kitchen, attention split, but nevertheless worried when Luz dares to let a searing tear escape her. Then Mamá’s hands are cupping her cheeks again, pressing a kiss to her forehead, pulling her into a tight embrace that feels as good as it is undeserved.
“Oh, he’s okay, mija, I promise,” Mamá says as Luz trembles in her warm and all-consuming arms. “He’s a little shaken up, but he’s okay. And I can see you’re pretty shaken up, too; I think some hot cocoa will help calm you three down and get some warmth into you. In the meantime, I think you should go sit with him.”
“He probably hates me,” Luz manages to squeak out of her tight throat.
“Luz,” her mother says firmly, strongly enough to strike her to the core. “I don’t care what you did, that boy could never hate you. Now go sit with him. After you change out of those clothes, don’t think I didn’t notice you were also soaked.”
When Mamá finally releases her, Luz glances to Vee for help, but she only receives a daunting stare that very clearly demands the same thing of her.
“Yeah, okay,” Luz says weakly, trying not to let the fear and shame curdle too much within her guts. “I can do that.”
As Mamá starts pulling out the lactose-free milk and cocoa powder, Luz slinks into the living room. She knows she looks about as ashamed as she feels; it’s as if the weight of the world is sitting on her body, making every step a challenge.
She almost wants to ignore her mother’s demands. She wants to avoid the living room altogether and simply lay in bed, ignoring the world around her until somehow, in some way, it either stitches back together or falls fully apart. It would be better than the dread of sitting next to the person she had hurt so severely and in so many ways.
She would do it, except that she sees Hunter laying there on the couch, looking so small and crumpled without the layers of sweaters and coats and scarves to hide him. Even with the bulky quilt wrapped haphazardly around him, he looks wet and pitiful, his head tossed back against the back couch cushions as if he’s completely passed out.
Luz sees him sitting there and can’t bring herself to let him suffer by himself. Mamá had told her to sit by him, to make things right, and it would be shirking her responsibilities to ignore him now. She needs to be present. She needs to help.
She sits down stiffly onto the cushion that sits the farthest away from him—that is to say she sits right next to him, because of course he’s been laid right smack in the middle of the couch. She can feel the way the water from her pants soaks into the fabric, and she has only a second longer to feel guilty before a weight drops firmly onto her shoulder. She recognizes it immediately.
Hunter’s jaw sits heavily on her shoulder, his stupidly overgrown and shaggy hair tickling her ear, the movement all too achingly identical to the way he’ll rest his head on her to watch her play video games, or to tease her for being shorter than him, or just to be close to her when he’s aching and craving for contact.
Her breath comes out in a wheezy sob, the tears finally breaking free again, and it takes everything in her to bite her lip to keep everything from spilling out fully. She shouldn’t be acting like this, as if she was the one who had been hurt, because she’s supposed to be helping Hunter.
She hopes he hadn’t noticed, but of course he does. He always does.
“Are you okay?” he rasps out, sounding so incredibly exhausted but regardless so, so concerned. Always concerned for other people, always putting them first, and Luz feels terrible.
She can’t keep the next sob in. Her body shakes with them, despising every moment that the attention remains solely on her, hating how she can’t even get over this enough to help him.
He wraps an arm around her, dragging a corner of the quilt over her shoulders, and holds her firmly against his side. He feels so warm, which means she’s freezing cold, and she just wants him to stop.
“Why are you doing this?” Luz asks, rubbing away her falling tears. Why can’t you just leave me be? she wants to add, but it would be too angry for Hunter. It’s too far, too ungrateful, and she can’t do that.
“You’re soaking wet,” Hunter says simply, because of course it’s that simple for someone like Hunter. He sees someone uncomfortable, he eases that discomfort. He’s just a good person like that. A better person than her.
“I pushed you into the snow,” Luz says, pressing the heels of her palms firmly into her eyes. It doesn’t stop her voice from shaking or her throat from going tight enough to choke her. “I-I tackled you. I shoved you into the snow a-and I threw it on top of you, I smothered —“
“Luz,” Hunter interrupts, squeezing her arm.
“You should hate me,” Luz sobs. “I made you panic. I made you remember him . I-I helped him—“
“Luz, stop it,” Hunter hisses, only hugging her tighter to his chest. “I don’t hate you. Please breathe.”
She breathes, but it comes in gasps. She wraps her arms around him, burrows her face into his new, dry sweater, and tries so hard to drown out the emotion that threatens to burst from her. At some point Hunter had begun to rub her back, pulling the other corner of the blanket over her to shield her from the world, and it makes her feel brittle. But safe.
“I-I’m sorry,” Luz sniffles.
“I don’t hate you,” Hunter says again, more firmly. “I could never hate you. Everything that happened was all an accident and you know it.”
She does know it, but she still can’t shake the belief that she somehow should have known.
“I didn’t tell you about the trigger because I didn’t know I had it.”
That makes her pause. Open her eyes, seeing the tears that cling to her eyelashes as she rubs them away yet again.
“If I didn’t know,” Hunter says slowly, “how were you supposed to know?”
Luz hates how calm he is about this. She hates how easily he forgives, how he pierces through her logic, and she hates how he’s not even remotely wrong.
“I couldn’t’ve,” she admits in a guilty mutter.
Hunter hums and, selfishly, Luz savors the vibration against her ear. “It would have happened eventually anyway,” Hunter says. “It always does. I usually don’t…” He shakes his head. “I’m just glad that it happened when I was with you.”
“But I caused it,” Luz argues.
“But you helped me afterward,” Hunter argues right back. “You didn’t take advantage of me; you helped calm me down. You feel guilty because you care about me. You were worried you hurt me, but I’m okay now. No harm done. Promise.”
Luz knows he’s right but regardless grunts a petulant sound of disapproval. He laughs and ruffles her hair with enough force to completely remove her hat. Somehow, it makes her feel a little better.
“Hot chocolate for my babies!” Mamá announces, and Hunter pulls away just enough for Luz to peek from out of the quilt. Three mugs of steaming hot chocolate sit on a TV tray just a couple feet away, and Mamá sucks in a breath at the sight of her. “Luz! I thought I told you to change, you’re still soaking wet!”
Something about the tone breaks Luz, but in the good way, and she laughs nearly uncontrollably. Mamá shoos her off the damp couch cushions, chases her up the stairs, and Luz can’t help but beam at the sound of Hunter’s echoing laughter from his place on the couch.
When Luz finally does change and returns downstairs to indulge in a warm cup of cocoa, Hunter insists on sitting beside her, and Vee offers a smug “I told you so.”
So, begrudgingly, Luz lets herself enjoy it.