Chapter Text
“If thou shalt love a grimwalker truly as itself, a monstrous beast of claws and teeth shall come on lumbering out.” - P. W. Bane, Deadwardian Era Poet.
Hunter first reads the poem at Hexside, shaking and entirely numb as he holds the book in his trembling fingers. He found it in an anthology that had compiled instances of grimwalkers being mentioned in pre-modern literature. There were several other instances of poems or stories from that era describing how grimwalkers would transform into feral ravenous creatures should they ever be loved, fated to tearing the ones that loved them to shreds.
Hunter rips the page out of the book and keeps it with him. He’s not sure why that page in particular, or why that’s the line that burns itself into his mind forever, maybe it’s just because it's the first one he read. Maybe it’s because it was the first one that was written.
Either way, it helps him at first. And he’s grateful for finding that book, really he is. Coming to terms with the fact that his uncl- that the Emperor had never even loved him couldn’t have been easier.
Not a monster? Never loved. Easy as that.
He’d rather just be himself, whoever… whatever that may be.
He keeps the poem with him when he sleeps over at Gus’s house after the attack on Hexside, keeps it with him still after Darius picks him up to regroup at the base in Latissa.
He feels it crinkle when he moves, hand always drifting downwards to rest on top of where he has it stowed.
It’s in his pocket when they crash through the portal to the Human Realm. In the aftermath he forgets about it for the first time only to find it at the end of the night when he changes his clothes. It would have been so easy then, to throw it out and rid himself of the weight that the paper creates.
He keeps it with him.
A reminder, a warning.
The weight wouldn't have left him anyways, the knowledge weighs on him forever now.
But all the while he’s not too worried, he's certain that there’s no immediate danger. He’s managed to make it through sixteen years of this, of not being loved. What's seven more?
Seven. Only seven more to go.
Seven’s an arbitrary number actually, he merely figures he would’ve never made it past twenty-three in the first place.
The Human Realm takes a while to get used to. It's soft, unlike the Demon Realm, yet foreign in a way that terrifies him to no end. Not that he'd admit it of course. As the adult in the group, he protects his companions to the best of his abilities, trying to make sure that each duty is completed impeccably and that Mrs. Noceda never has a reason to lash out. She never does, and after he breaks a plate, he learns that she never will.
Apparently that’s not something you do to a child.
He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that he’s not one, that he’s not anything actually.
One night after that incident Luz finds him sitting outside on the porch in the backyard trying to map the stars in this new alien world he literally stumbled into.
Maybe ‘limped’ is a better word. The gash in his chest from when Belos raked his claws across it is still healing, the wound twinging in pain if he’s bumped into or moves too suddenly. He doesn’t say anything about his aching though. He just endures it.
It’s too late at night for Luz to be awake when she sits down beside him with a quiet ‘hey’ something which he responds to in kind, his voice barely a whisper. He can feel her gaze on him, but for some reason he’s comfortable not addressing it, continuing to gaze into the night.
Eventually she turns her eyes upwards as well.
He hasn’t told her his secret within a secret yet, he reckons he probably never will, but some part of him is relieved that she at least knows that he’s a grimwalker. It’s this part that asks his question unprompted, knowing that she’d understand where it came from, at least a little.
“Luz, do you think that I’m alive?”
Her breath catches and he hears her jolting movement, imagines how her face breaks into shock and confusion. He doesn’t know for sure what her face looks like in that moment though, his own continuing to point upward.
She takes a few minutes to really think about what he said, taking a deep breath to calm herself as she returns to their previous activity. Eventually she replies to his question with one of her own.
“Do you think you’re alive?”
Is he?
He thinks of his ‘life’. Of how he would wake, follow orders, then sleep (if he was lucky). He thinks of how long it's been since he made a choice based on an instinct other than survival.
That’s all it has ever really been, hasn’t it?
Not a life. Not Living. Not anything.
“I don’t think so. I don’t think I know what it’s like.”
The thought occurs to him then. That maybe to be alive is to be loved.
The stars twinkle particularly brightly after that, distorted by the tears that well in his eyes and run down his face. He doesn’t make a sound, so he’s sure that’s the reason why Luz never notices and calls him weak. He’s never met someone that he could cry beside before so that must be the only reason.
After a while when the tears have dried, Luz wraps him up in a ‘hug’ promising him that he’s alive and that one day she’ll make him feel like he is.
It’s a terrifying thought.