[Someday there are words that are going to be said to him.]
["Yeah. Gonna make sure you're safe too, Hunter. You're family now."]
[They haven't been said yet.]
[Still, this is close. Maybe he isn't her family. Maybe he isn't Hunter Clawthorne, but she's still able to look at him and wish he'd been instead. Rather than hating him, rather than wanting nothing to do with him, rather than even just having empathy for him but not wishing for something they could've had.]
[And he wasn't entirely different, he and the other Hunter. There are some things they share. He isn't going to be be a total defeatist when it comes to his character; he can be objective enough to acknowledge that maybe there is some good in him. Maybe he can be even better. His friends back home had to have seen something to see him as worth being kind to, right?]
[And maybe this means there's hope in earning her esteem in this world. Perhaps not the same level of love and affection but...something. She might agree to be his mentor, right? Maybe he can prove himself to her.]
[But then she says "You deserved better than what you got" and it just breaks him. It's not the first time someone's said it to him, but it's the first time it's been said to him by someone that experienced what he used to be like, that saw him at his worst.]
[Sometimes he wonders if the people he's met in this world would feel the same way about him if they'd faced him as the Golden Guard, if he threatened them, if he'd kidnapped them, if he'd been vicious to them. His friends back home are, after all, pretty exceptional.]
[But Eda not just heard about how awful he used to be. She had seen him at his ugliest.]
[So to hear both things from her, spoken one after the other...]
[He slaps his hand very suddenly to his face, covering his eyes. His other covers his mouth. What he's doing becomes pretty obvious when the first few tears can be seen dripping off his face from underneath his hands. There's a light sniffle and a snorfling noise as he tries to hold most of it in, but he can't. They aren't wracking sobs, but he does start to sob, clearly trying his best to stifle it, like he's used to trying to cry quietly.]
[It's different from the way he'd cried while regaining his memories. Through most of that, he'd cried as the other Hunter, slowly regaining a hurt he'd never known.]
[This time...it's mostly as his real self, his current self.]
[This time it hurts in a different way, one that doesn't feel like something awful is eating him alive. This time it feels like poison is draining out of him, like a wound's been lanced so maybe eventually it can actually heal.]
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["Yeah. Gonna make sure you're safe too, Hunter. You're family now."]
[They haven't been said yet.]
[Still, this is close. Maybe he isn't her family. Maybe he isn't Hunter Clawthorne, but she's still able to look at him and wish he'd been instead. Rather than hating him, rather than wanting nothing to do with him, rather than even just having empathy for him but not wishing for something they could've had.]
[And he wasn't entirely different, he and the other Hunter. There are some things they share. He isn't going to be be a total defeatist when it comes to his character; he can be objective enough to acknowledge that maybe there is some good in him. Maybe he can be even better. His friends back home had to have seen something to see him as worth being kind to, right?]
[And maybe this means there's hope in earning her esteem in this world. Perhaps not the same level of love and affection but...something. She might agree to be his mentor, right? Maybe he can prove himself to her.]
[But then she says "You deserved better than what you got" and it just breaks him. It's not the first time someone's said it to him, but it's the first time it's been said to him by someone that experienced what he used to be like, that saw him at his worst.]
[Sometimes he wonders if the people he's met in this world would feel the same way about him if they'd faced him as the Golden Guard, if he threatened them, if he'd kidnapped them, if he'd been vicious to them. His friends back home are, after all, pretty exceptional.]
[But Eda not just heard about how awful he used to be. She had seen him at his ugliest.]
[So to hear both things from her, spoken one after the other...]
[He slaps his hand very suddenly to his face, covering his eyes. His other covers his mouth. What he's doing becomes pretty obvious when the first few tears can be seen dripping off his face from underneath his hands. There's a light sniffle and a snorfling noise as he tries to hold most of it in, but he can't. They aren't wracking sobs, but he does start to sob, clearly trying his best to stifle it, like he's used to trying to cry quietly.]
[It's different from the way he'd cried while regaining his memories. Through most of that, he'd cried as the other Hunter, slowly regaining a hurt he'd never known.]
[This time...it's mostly as his real self, his current self.]
[This time it hurts in a different way, one that doesn't feel like something awful is eating him alive. This time it feels like poison is draining out of him, like a wound's been lanced so maybe eventually it can actually heal.]