Recovery

[badbutsadboy]

Who: Hunter badbutsadboy and his CR
What: Hunter recovering
When: After he gets out of the hospital
Where: Jason's Safehouse
Content Warnings: N/A for now

[He's only in the hospital a few days. Vascular injuries are bad but the artery wasn't completely severed, the muscle was only nicked, and the rest was mostly a flesh wound. It was a low speed, small caliber handgun of some kind.]

[Hunter spends a lot of his recovery sleeping on the pull out couch where he can be checked on. At some point, he plans to ask Nico if Will can heal him (though he wouldn't be shocked if Nico brought him around soon on his own) but Flapjack chases away everyone so he can sleep first.]

[So he spends a lot of time just knocked the hell out on pain meds, until one day he feels like he's rested enough.]

[And then he's left at a crossroads. Huvrye wanted him to stay with someone and he knows he meant an adult. But...]

[But he's still feeling so unsure about it. Even with adults rushing him to a hospital, even with them staying by his side while injured.]

[So whenever he gets a visitor they find him sitting up on the couch, in sweats and fuzzy socks, his arm in its sling packed with ice packs. He sits, staring forward at the TV, expression troubled, lost in thought.]

[The TV is off.]

[Flapjack is squished next to his thigh on the couch and the fingers of his good hand gently pet his fathers.]

Comments

[badbutsadboy]

No, I'm not joining either guild.

[He holds up his wrist to look at his coven mark.]

You know, I was ten when I passed my coven scout trials to become a scout. [The youngest to come down from the Knee alive.] I became the Golden Guard when I was thirteen.

[Both were ages where someone isn't old enough to have caution about possibly being tricked, especially if they were groomed into thinking the system around them was a good one.]

[He drops his arm.]

The guilds only exist because people are afraid of anyone with power and they want to control them. That was what Belos wanted all along, to control everyone on the Boiling Isles long enough to kill us all.

The guilds could just as easily be doing the same. Or trying to control people with the purpose of using them to hurt other people, like the Emperor's Coven.

I'm not letting myself get tricked into joining a coven again.

That's why I ran away and why I was trying to survive on my own. Until I could go home again - or at least back to Luz's version of the Human Realm.

The fact I got hurt doesn't change anything, I'm still not going back. I just...have to figure something out.

[He says it like he doesn't have multiple adults willing to take him in, like he's not sitting on the couch of one of them.]

[harageous]

( oh, how the tables turn.

eda snorts, a quiet "ha!" as she listens to hunter explain his newfound position on the coven system. if only they had had more time before the day of unity, he would have probably had his own face plastered upon on a wanted poster beside hers. luz's. lilith's. hooty's.

he'd probably have ended up in the owl house with the other strays too. which would have been fine. that place had plenty of rooms. the only downside was hooty. )

Good on you, kid. Be your own person.

( he tells him approvingly. her own stance is already well known, so she doesn't bother to add to the assessment.

no, no. what she wants to talk about is whatever thought is brewing in that kid's head. )

But what's to figure out exactly?

[badbutsadboy]

[He definitely looks pleased with her approval. She's the original rebel, one of the first to successfully open defy Belos for that long, so clearly he's doing it right if she thinks he is.]

[But the question has him lost in thought for a second as he tries to word things right.]

Where to go.

[He looks around the room.]

I've met adults here that.. I know they care - or at least it seems like they do. And I know they'd take me in...

But Jason, for instance. He doesn't live here. This isn't his normal house. It's got first aid kits, food, supplies...

It's a safehouse.

Why does a bar owner have a safehouse? Why does he need a safehouse?

[It's easy to forget that, while being the Golden Guard meant he was a bully and a jerk, he had sometimes gotten a W in, too. He was sharp, sharper than some adults sometimes.]

[He'd had to be. It was what Belos had wanted.]

Back home, the adults I know, I've seen you all defy Belos. Or protect people from the Emperor's coven. I've seen you take risks. I know that everyone in the resistance and the teachers of Hexside are good people willing to do the right thing.

All I've got to go on here is people being nice to me but that can be faked. That's the easiest thing to fake, Belos did it my whole life. I haven't seen them show that they're good people.

I don't want to trust someone, and live with them, and start to see them as - as something. And then find out they had some terrible secret all along.

[He can't do it again, he just can't.]

So I need to figure out where to go, because I don't want to stay here. Or go with Huvrye.

[He perks up a little.]

Nico and his boyfriend are staying somewhere without an adult; they found this abandoned house that's in pretty good shape. I might go with them.

[harageous]

( hm.

eda leans back in her chair, crumpling up the tissues between her fingers as she rolls hunter's words over in her mind. she already knows what he's getting that. that he's hesitant to trust a bunch of strange adults from strange places despite the fact that they have been perfectly kind to him. that he would rather stay with someone that he already knows he can trust.

she gets it. )

That's a pretty roundabout way of asking to stay with me.

( little ham-fisted to mention that he was considering staying in some abandoned place with some others kids though. there's no way. one of them seems to have "stupid" as a character trait. surely that wasn't a real consideration? or did he think she needed the extra greasing?

then she shrugs. )

Are you sure you want to do that?

( because she'll take him if he is. )

[badbutsadboy]

[His expression betrays his complete and total surprise.]

I...I wasn't, actually. I know you're new here and that you probably won't want to be with the guilds, either. It's not easy to get established here without their...their special cards?

They have lots of those apparently.

I figured you'd want to go off and do that.

I was mostly just thinking out loud.

[He looks mystified. Because it's one thing for people to accept him on team good guy, to treat him like he's not an enemy anymore, but to want him around...]

You'd do that?

[...It still surprises him every time. Especially when he'd treated her so terribly, threatened her and Luz and King...]

[Is he reading that right? Was it an offer or just her thinking that's what he was angling for?]

[harageous]

( that much makes eda laugh. it's a low tittering laugh as she adjusts herself in the chair, moving to rest the side of her face against her fist. she had thought him to be fishing, but apparently that doesn't seem to be the case! she wasn't planning on holding it against him if that had been true, but she also thinks it's much funnier this way.

for as much as hunter can posture like an adult, he's still young. )

You don't know me.

( a fact. eda doesn't say that with any unkindness in her voice, but she does think it should be said. hunter doesn't know her. he knows of her, knows plenty of second-hand stories, and probably countless mistruths. after all, he had been the emperor's coven underneath belos for . . . well, probably always.

also whatever luz has said. luz says a lot of stuff. too much stuff.

then she flashes a fanged grin. )

I've taken in worse.

( who would have thought she'd been crying so recently? )

[badbutsadboy]

[He has trouble finding the right words for a second, because he is thrown, and a little moved...but also guilty.]

[Without meeting her eyes.]

No you haven't.

Luz is so good and the ra- uh, your son? He saved all of us. And Luz said Lilith was only ever trying to save you. You took all of them in but they're good people even if Lilith is...Lilith.

[His view of her is very colored by years of her being...her.]

I threatened you and your family, and tried to arrest Luz, and I've done horrible things. And I helped set Belos up for the Day of Unity.

[And what he did to all those Palismen over the years...]

[It's murder. Palismen are alive, they think and feel and can even talk. And he helped kill them.]

It's one thing for Luz and the others to give me a chance because it's just as much a way for me to do good things for them as it is for them to be my friends.

But you - you'd just be giving me something I couldn't give back equally.

[He knows he'd never be able to make enough to pay for his share of the rent.]

And it's different than someone like Jason offering when I haven't done anything to him or his world.

[harageous]

( that's more than a little annoying.

her face clearly reflects her disapproval when hunter nearly refers to king as a rat for what wouldn't be the first time. he's got to cut that out. )

His name is King.

( she interjects, making sure to correct him. he should both know and use his name. it's really the least he could do, considering what king did for them. that's another thing that this kid doesn't know about either. doesn't know who king really is and why it is especially troubling to have him involved at all with the collector.

maybe one day she'll reveal this particular truth.

still, eda listens as hunter tries to explain his feelings. it isn't until he finishes that she flaps a hand dismissively, obviously unconcerned about all of that. )

Yeah, yeah, yeah. We've all done horrible things.

( some a little worse than others, but eda has never had a track record of being unforgiving or holding onto a grudge. besides. . . what was there to hold against him for working with belos when he lived his life convinced belos was his uncle? that he was doing a good thing?

the problem was with belos. )

Lilith. Luz. Myself. You don't even know the half of it!

( a little laugh.

then she continues before hunter can get a word in edgewise. )

We've all made mistakes. We'll make more in the future too. But, it's not about the mistakes. It's about what you do about your mistakes.

[badbutsadboy]

[King, right. Yes he's a weird little rat-child, but he's her son and Luz's brother and he saved them all so he needs to be more polite.]

If - if you do want me to live with you, I can definitely earn my keep. I can do chores! And I can try to find work to help pay towards rent.

[Yes, she offered, but he wants to make it clear that it'll be worth her while. That he'll be a good houseguest. That he won't be a burden.]

[He won't play loud teen music or anything.]

[harageous]

Hey, hey. Don't trip all over yourself.

( quickly said with a wave of her hand, trying to stop him before he starts doubling down on his offers of servitude. she's got the picture and there is no need to start drawing up terms of contract or something. neither did eda want him to worry about money.

she'd make plenty use of him without needing him to concern himself about that. he might as well get it out of his head now. )

Just don't give me a hard time and we'll be alright. ( then she clicks her tongue and points at him. ) If you play your cards right, maybe I'll teach ya something too.

( more importantly, however, is that none of this can happen immediately. not only is she still living in the hotel that they got her set up in when she'd arrived, but hunter needs time to recover from his wounds. that, and she is also entirely certain that all of hunter's friends would turn into a swarm of angry firebees.

it would be much less of a headache to let him recover here for a while and allow everyone the time to settle down before she retrieved him. )

But for now, you should probably stay here.

[badbutsadboy]

[He perks up at the mention of being taught.]

Can you teach me how to use magic?

The Confluences can give people powers when they're brought here, ones they don't have back home.

[He eagerly grabs a nearby pencil and scribbles on a piece of paper on a notepad. The light glyph.]

Even though we're away from the Titan, glyph magic works for me. See?

[He touches the glyph with his hand and just like it does for Luz, it curls up delicately, like a flower blooming in reverse and turns into a little orb of light that he cradles delicately in his hand.]

[He holds the spell like it's a living thing, something precious like Flapjack. He still looks awed that it's something that has come out of him.]

Without the Titan here, it feels like it's coming from inside instead. Even though I don't have a magic bile sac.

But even when I can figure out glyphs, controlling the effect of the spell is something I have to practice.

[It's one thing to make vines burst out of a surface but they still have to be guided by his will to do something. Focus and willpower and intuition factor in.]

[Even without her old power, it is something she can help with. There are ways of thinking while working magic, ways of feeling, ways of getting in touch with the world around him that can help, just like how she parked Luz on top of a mountain until the ice glyph revealed itself to her.]

[There's a zen involved that he struggles with because it is possible to try too hard and to overthink something that takes instinct. Emotion. Intuition.]

[harageous]

( tell her how you really feel, hunter.

it's such a contrast to see him now, as compared to before, with his face illuminated by the soft glow of magic. hunter looks enamoured and delighted with it, appreciating it as the gift that it is rather than seeing it as a danger. honestly, it almost feels like some kind of ironic joke.

then a pretty horrible one.

while her curiosity has been piqued by the description of hunter feeling magic inside of him despite his lack of functioning bile sac, it also feels like a small punch to the chest. she's already tried gylph magic herself, but it hadn't felt any different. the hollowness inside of her hadn't been miraculously filled.

it was still hollow. )

Hey, hey, hey. Don't start getting ahead of yourself.

( she says, lifting up a hand towards him as a cue to taper it off. )

I said if you play your cards right.

( and that's an important distinction. she's not about to just offer this kid the whole farm or anything! )

I don't just teach anyone! It's an honour to be taught by me, kid!

[badbutsadboy]

Right. Of course.

[It is an honor to be taught by one of the best witches in the isles. Even if she can't do magic anymore, she has a lifetime of expertise exceeded by very few, even more than many other adults by virtue of not giving up parts of her magic.]

[Now she has guaranteed him trying to prove he is Worthy by doing as many chores as possible, all the time, before she has to ask, during their first few weeks of living together.]

[It doesn't help that he feels like he has a lot to make up for.]

[harageous]

That's right.

( immediately said, making sure to reinforce the idea. it was something important for him to keep in mind, especially after his previous disrespect.

but that's as far as she thinks they need to discuss this. no sense worrying about something that far off. who knows? maybe they'll leave before it even comes up again. no, no, the future plan that mattered was the one where she needed to get a good place for the both of them. )

You heard me before, right? You'll stay here until I fetch you?

( since he's apparently a runner. )