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Raine slowly blinks into awareness. In the predawn gray, they can blearily make out the dark lump of King and the person curled around him—Luz, they remember. When they accidentally bump Eda while feeling around for their glasses, she lolls her head and snores. Once they can (sort of) see again, they carefully step around the Collector and their pile of conjured blankets on the floor.
Even if Raine is uncertain what exactly woke them up, their dry mouth and full bladder set them off in the vague direction of the bathroom, which they’re pretty sure is down at that end of the hall. They step through the open door, click on the light—
—and jump a foot in the air.
Instead of saying something normal, like, “Titan, Hunter! Why are you sitting on the floor in the dark?” or, “You’re holding that pair of scissors like you’re about to stab someone!” or, “It’s too early in the morning for whatever this is,” they say:
“I have to pee.”
And they do! Frankly, Raine is equal parts surprised and grateful that all their clothes are still dry after that scare, and they breathe a sigh of relief as the boy smoothly stands up and steps out.
Once they’ve finished, they open the door to see Hunter standing across from the doorway, scissors away and shoulders slightly hunched. Titan, was his facial scarring always that extensive?
Hunter’s throat bobs as he swallows before speaking. He doesn’t look up. “Sorry if I woke you. I just had to make sure Luz… that Luz was safe.”
Oh. Was he in Eda’s room before? Is that what woke them up?
Raine gives a tired smile. “She’s safe,” they assure him, ready to go back to bed. Nest. Whatever. They have regained some strength compared to yesterday morning, but they could use another twenty-four hours more rest. At least. Fighting off possession—their own, and then the Titan’s—took more energy than they’ve ever spent, and they used to regularly pull all-nighters between full days of teaching, extracurricular espionage, and heart-pounding performances. Raine wants nothing more than to press against the warmth of Eda and drift back off into a dreamless sleep.
However, Hunter nods but doesn’t otherwise move. His fists are curled, tense. Even in the dim light, the scars around his arms look angry. Raine has only seen the kid’s face a few times before, but the dark circles under his eyes are worse than they remember. His head is still bowed.
“Have you gotten any sleep?” they ask.
“Mm,” he grunts.
His taciturnity could just be a teenager thing. Raine so badly wants to believe it is just a regular, grumpy, teenager thing, take it in stride, and head back down the hall. Unfortunately, Raine strongly suspects this is not the case. These are not normal circumstances, and this is not an average teenager.
Something is wrong.
“Hunter?” they ask gently. “Is there anything I can do for you?”
Get him a cup (are there cups downstairs?) of water, maybe, or give him a soothing hug. They kind of doubt hugging is Hunter’s sort of thing, but perhaps they’re wrong.
They’ve been wrong before.
“No,” he whispers. Hunter begins to shake his head before he abruptly stops like the movement physically makes him cringe. He looks up, as if he’s searching for something on Raine’s face. “Actually. Can you—can you cut my hair?” he blurts.
Despite having asked, Raine cannot help but feel that it really is too early in the morning for whatever this is. In their head, they picture saying, “No,” and going back to bed. They picture setting down their glasses and being hugged by Eda, the enveloping warmth a balm to the exhausting, terrible events of the past couple of days.
They picture the tortured, resigned expression of a child who asks for help but, from experience, does not expect it, and they sigh.
There are very few items left in the Owl House’s bathroom beyond a now well-used bar of soap and a couple of damp, raggedy towels Hooty earlier very kindly… deposited. “I can’t promise it will look great, but alright. Can I borrow your scissors?”
Raine has made a lot of sacrifices since beginning the rebellion. Perhaps even earlier, ending things with Eda and joining the Bard Coven in the first place. Sleep, safety, attachments—fighting back against the Emperor and the brute force of the coven system has always been the top priority. Sacrificing themselves was mostly a question of when, not if.
However, keeping their head down has also meant not doing anything about smaller-scale injustices, sometimes, and the issue of the Golden Guard has needled Raine since they became Deputy Head four years ago.
Raine remembers being surprised at how slight Belos’s near-silent golden shadow was. Sure, he looked small next to the Emperor, but everyone looked small next to the Emperor. Even without Belos, though, he was rather… puny. They remember justifying that in their head; plenty of demons were simply on the shorter side. Look at Kikimora.
But after tiptoeing past an argument between Lilith, then Head of the Emperor’s Coven, and the Golden Guard, the justification started to fall apart. His voice was startlingly high and kind of grating. Lilith had called him a brat under her breath.
The Golden Guard was a child. A kid, maybe twelve, overworked, on edge all the time. In any other situation, Raine would have alerted the Witchling Protective Services immediately. Except…
Except they had worked over twenty years to gather intel against the Coven System, and they weren’t nearly finished yet. They couldn’t afford to make waves. In any case, the Emperor could probably silence any complaint that might threaten the status of his right-hand man. His right-hand man, who was a child. Titan.
Raine has made a lot of sacrifices since beginning the rebellion, and the safety and well-being of the scarred kid who steps into the light of the bathroom was one of them. If they could go back in time, they’d probably make the same choice again. The prudence of that decision still doesn’t stop the guilt that forms a lump in their throat and prompts them to reach out their hand. They can give the child a haircut, at the very least. They have no clue why Hunter desires a haircut now of all times, but perhaps, hopefully, this is a normal teenager thing after all. They remember being a little younger than the kid in front of them and chopping off all their hair at some Titanforsaken hour in a dysphoria-induced frenzy.
The craft scissors Hunter proffers are pretty sharp but not really meant for cutting hair.
“It’s okay,” Hunter says when they tell him that. “I just… need it off my neck. Out of my face.”
“You’ll probably get split ends, using these, and damage your hair.”
He gives a single, hollow laugh. “It’ll grow back. There’s no stopping that.”
At their behest, Hunter sits on the lid of the closed toilet and lets Raine run their fingers through his hair as they try to determine the best way to go about this. They used to cut their own hair, in the past, but Hunter’s surprisingly soft locks have a wave to them. Hunter stares at the pale mint hair at Raine’s neck, and they suppose he sees how straight their hair is. How inexperienced they probably are at dealing with hair like his. With issues like his. With him.
Hunter asks, “Does your hair bother you?”
“That it’s straight?” Raine says, scrunching up their face in confusion.
“That it’s… long, now.”
“Oh.” From the possession, he means. Raine takes a moment to think, but no real thoughts seem to be forthcoming. “Not at the moment. Perhaps tomorrow, I’ll feel differently.”
With every minute, Raine feels the tiniest bit more awake. They’ve probably slept around eighteen hours, if their math is correct. Which reminds them:
“How much sleep did you get?” They try to keep their voice gentle and their face neutral as they reach for the scissors they placed by the sink.
Hunter looks away, and there’s something different about his eyes that Raine can’t quite put their finger on. “Um. Six hours, maybe?”
Raine can’t stop their wince from forming, but maybe a joke will help lighten the mood. “Is the couch downstairs just that uncomfortable?”
“No!” he startles, eyes wide. There is definitely something different about them. “No, I-I—it’s—I’m grateful, really.” His shoulders have started to creep up to his neck.
That was the wrong tack, Raine decides.
“I had a nightmare,” Hunter confesses, and they feel grateful they have been too exhausted to dream much so far. “Well. Several nightmares. And I thought—Luz was—I had to make sure she was safe. Breathing.”
“She’s okay,” Raine assures him as they make the first snip. A lock of hair falls to the floor. The back and sides won’t be nearly as neat as if they had clippers, but if they go slowly, Raine is sure they can get the mass of fluffy hair down to a more manageable length. For a moment, they are entirely focused on the right side of his head.
“She died,” he murmurs. It’s so soft Raine thinks they may have imagined it, except he continues, “She shouldn’t have had to do that. It’s not fair.”
It’s not fair, is it? Luz shouldn’t have died. King shouldn’t have been forced to make a half-baked deal with a child-god in order to keep himself and his loved ones safe. The Collector shouldn’t have been manipulated. Eda shouldn’t have lost an arm. Belos shouldn’t have attempted a genocide of the Boiling Isles, he shouldn’t have possessed the land they walk on, and he should not have been allowed to warp a child into a soldier. The guilt reaches deep into Raine’s gut and twists.
In a fair, ideal world, Raine would have been able to prevent all that from happening.
In a fair, ideal world, Raine wouldn’t have had to.
“There are so many things you children have gone through that you never deserved. And… I wish I got you out sooner, Hunter. I’m sorry.” Would the brown eyes staring up at them be quite so haunted if they had filed a report with the WPS the first time they suspected abuse?
Wait. Brown—
“Out of what?” the former Golden Guard asks, brow furrowed. Whatever revelation Raine was about to have about his eyes has fled. As they contemplate how to politely say, your entire isolated, concerning childhood, he chirps, “Oh! The mindscape?”
The scissors stop snipping. Baffled, Raine wonders if things would be clearer if this whole conversation was happening at a more reasonable time than ass o’clock in the morning. Surely it couldn’t be more muddled than it currently is.
“I should apologize to you about the mindscape, actually,” Hunter says, as if it’s a perfectly sane thing to say. “It was my fault I accidentally activated the spell. I probably ruined months of careful planning, didn’t I?”
Raine blinks. How did it get more muddled already?
“Thank you for helping the Owl Lady when you did. Another five seconds, and Luz and I would have been goners. I don’t think either of us would have survived his second attempt.”
Hunter stills, and Raine is plotting out how to quench the guilt setting their insides aflame when the boy abruptly laughs.
It is not a happy sound.
“I guess he ended up succeeding anyways, huh?”
Raine closes their eyes and thinks about stomping Belos into goo until they are certain they can open their mouth without screaming profanities. There are people sleeping.
They declare, “Luz is alive. You and Luz are still here, and Belos is not. I would not call him successful.”
The boy hums noncommittally, but his posture eases a little. Raine returns to trimming his right side and attempts a less ambiguous apology.
“I meant, sorry for leaving you in a bad situation for so long. You deserved a safe, loving childhood, but I never spoke up to stop you from being the Golden Guard.”
The hair close above his ear is clipped satisfactorily, and their stomach has eased a little now that they’ve gotten their apology out. Without that anxiety, Raine can feel fatigue wrapping around them like a blanket once more. They do their best to focus on evening out the hair nearer the top of his head without dozing off.
Hunter, for his part, chews on Raine’s words for a full minute before responding. “I don’t think you could have done anything,” he finally says. “And you were always nice to me. You nodded at me in the halls, and you never jostled me when you walked by or called me names.”
Raine remembers being aggressively neutral towards the Golden Guard, and it’s more than a little alarming that he seems to take a lack of blatant cruelty as kindness. Was his life truly that awful? They card their fingers through his hair, trimming carefully, and say, “I think I could have been—”
Their fingers glance across a shallow bump on his scalp, and Hunter flinches.
Hard.
He topples off the toilet and lands heavy on his elbows. Startled, Raine clamps down on the scissors and, by a stroke of luck, just barely avoids shearing off the tip of Hunter’s ear. Wide awake, their heart pounding, the bard stares down at the boy panting on the ground.
Titan, what did they do? Is he hurt? Was he hurt before, some sort of head wound Raine stupidly overlooked, and now he’s hurt worse? Why did Raine agree to use sharp objects when they’re so tired, anyways? Is their pointless, unhelpful guilt driving them towards poor choices? Did the thump wake up other people in the house, trying to rest but now unable to because Raine was plainly too used to overlooking the Golden Guard’s pain, and now—
The kid’s face goes blank, and he shakily brings himself onto a knee, then bows his head.
Oh Titan, does he have a concussion? Raine doesn’t know enough healing magic for this. Hell, the kid probably knows more about treating concussions than they do, and isn’t that just great, Whispers, that you’ve left an adolescent in a position where he was forced to learn how to treat injuries—
“Apologies for flinching,” says the likely-concussed infant who seconds ago was sprawled out on the bathroom tile. “I failed to warn you. They gave me a bit of a shock when I washed my hair earlier.”
“What,” Raine says stupidly.
“I have, um, uh… nubs,” he says, like that clears everything up. “One on either side. Um. Scars, I—” He pauses and furrows his brows. “Titan. I’m doing it again, aren’t I? Bowing. Sorry. I keep falling into old habits now that we’re back.”
He raises his head to look directly back at Raine, and furthering their suspicions of possible brain damage, his gaze seems perplexed. Or possibly a bit rueful, but still, it can’t hurt to check. Bile sac partially replenished, they call up a simple light spell and hold it over the boy’s face. He squints his brown eyes, and Raine… has no idea what they’re doing.
“What, uh, is this?” he asks, and oh, no, it may be much worse than they previously thought.
“It’s a light spell,” they tell him seriously, mind running a mile a minute. How do you introduce information to an amnesiac? Or, are they not supposed to? Perhaps too much new knowledge at once is detrimental—
“Are you—are you trying to see if I’m concussed?” Now he sounds accusatory. Raine is unsure if that’s a step in the right direction or not, but they nod yes.
Hunter sits back on his heels and gives Raine a look somewhere between incredulous and amused. “You have no idea what you’re doing, do you?” Abashed, they shake their head no. “I’m fine. For future reference, look if the pupils are even with each other and if they quickly get smaller in response to light, although… you should probably leave that to someone else. Also, importantly, I didn’t hit my head.”
“Oh,” they say. There’s something significant about his eyes, still, that Raine can’t quite figure out.
“Sorry for worrying you,” Hunter says. “I forgot about the scars there. They’re more sensitive than I realized.”
He’s always had scars, hasn’t he. It made quite an impression the first time they saw his face, just a few months ago. His youth was concerning, his exhaustion worse than Raine had guessed, but a scar that wide with healing magic so advanced? Either the original wound was utterly gruesome or he had not been able to access the Healing Coven in time.
Unbidden, Raine brushes a hand over their own new scars. They’ve always known Belos was a zealot, suspected for a long time his outright villainy. However, the magnitude of evil, the sheer malice, that writhed in their body yesterday was devastating. They wonder now if Belos ever purposely withheld access to the Healing Coven from the Golden Guard.
“Raine?” they hear Hunter say. His voice sounds muffled, far away.
A boy condemned to years of abuse and neglect.
“Raine, are you okay?”
Their students arrested as rebels.
“Raine?”
Eda nearly consumed by her curse. A sigil intended to limit her. A missing arm.
“Okay, slowly onto the floor.”
Their palisman, Trot, broken not once but twice in the fight against Belos’s tyranny.
“I’ve got the scissors. Can you breathe with me?”
Poor Raine. You tried so hard, didn’t you?
“In, one, two, three, four.” Why is his voice so cottony, anyways?
Oh. Oh.
“Out, four, three, two, one. Hey, are you back with me?”
They nod. Titan, of all the witches to have a panic attack in front of. They follow Hunter’s counting until their heart is no longer racing.
“Thank you for helping me. I’m sorry to put that burden on you.”
Hunter waves off their apology. “I know this is a stupid question, but… are you okay?”
And how are they supposed to answer that? Of course they aren’t. Does it matter? No. It shouldn’t! Belos is gone. No one is a puppet. Their loved ones are alive! Eda is alive, Raine is alive, and that is far more than they ever expected to get. It’s just—
“I failed,” they say, and Raine is so, so tired. “I spent twenty-five years planning a rebellion, and when the Day of Unity came, my plans failed. You and your friends had to fight Belos. King ended up shouldering the responsibility to stop the Draining Spell.
“And I made such a stupid mistake yesterday. I thought… I thought I doomed the Boiling Isles because I didn’t think things through! Luz and Eda told you Belos infected the Titan’s Heart, right? That he possessed the literal Titan?”
Hunter nods sorrowfully.
“He was only able to get there because he possessed me,” they say, and annoyingly enough, Hunter doesn’t look surprised or angry. “Because I nearly drained my bile sac to get him out of me, and I was too short-sighted to realize what he was really after until it was too late! Luz, King, and Eda had to clean up my mess, again. I failed, and my mistakes almost led to ruin, again.”
They remove their glasses and bury their head in their hands. They shouldn’t be putting all this on Hunter; the poor kid has had enough trouble to last a lifetime without them adding to it. A tear slips down their cheek, and Raine realizes their sorrow is going to follow along Belos’s parting gift for the rest of their life.
There’s a sniffle.
“I’m sorry.” Hunter’s voice is tiny.
Wait. Is Hunter… apologizing? “What? Why?”
“About Belos. I tried, Raine, I really tried, I promise,” he cries, distraught.
Raine slaps their glasses on so quickly they almost poke an eye out. They try to ground him by placing their hands on his shoulders, but he flinches again and sobs, disturbingly choked and hushed. “Hunter, it isn’t your fault.”
“I was so close to drowning him. They should have let me drown.”
The back of their neck prickles. “Drown?” they murmur uneasily.
“I’m not like you,” he weeps. “I’m not strong. I couldn’t get him out; I could barely take control for half a minute.”
There’s no way Hunter can make anything out as teary as he is, but he stares up at Raine. His gaze is piercing, mournful and bitter. His eyes are brown, and that means something, doesn’t it?
“But the water in the graveyard was cold, and I knew my body would go into shock, a-a-and I thought I could keep him from opening a portal, but everything went so wrong! I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”
Cold creeps along their spine. Raine has been focusing far too much on the eyes and far too little on all the other signs they should have been attending.
The extensive, extensive scarring, new. They gave me a bit of a shock when I washed my hair earlier.
The sudden need for a haircut. Does your hair bother you? That it’s… long, now.
His apology. I couldn’t get him out. I’m sorry.
Titan.
“Oh,” says Raine a little helplessly. “I am so clueless. He possessed you, too, didn’t he?”
Hunter hiccups. “You didn’t know?”
Raine rubs their temples. “No. I think the things I didn’t know about you could probably fill a book.”
Hunter scoots back to lean against the cabinets and hugs his knees to his chest. “I’m not sure why I thought you already knew. Luz didn’t say you got possessed, but between the Titan and your scars and hair… I guess I assumed you knew about me, too.”
Raine shakes their head. “I didn’t think. You know what I do know about you, though? You are much stronger than you believe.”
He glances up at them, surprise clear on his face.
Despite how wretched they feel, perhaps they can manage to do something right by the blonde kid three feet away. “I spent nearly all my magic fighting him off. The first time I was able to take control of my own body, it only lasted a few seconds, and I think I mostly caught him by surprise.”
“But you got him out,” Hunter mutters.
“With incredible personal and magical effort. I have no idea how you were able to accomplish what you did without magic.”
The eyes that meet their gaze are wet and miserable. “It cost everything.”
“And—you were prepared to do whatever you could to stop him, Hunter. I hope you never have to do anything like that ever again, but I promise you, that is not the sign of a weak witch.”
He shuts his eyes and shakes his head minutely, and Raine is at a loss. Still reeling.
They marvel at how little they know.
“You know, I met you four years ago, and until the night you fell into Belos’s mindscape, I never even knew your name.”
“No one was really supposed to,” he says. His sniffles are beginning to slow.
“I guess not,” they reply. “Darius was really worried about you that night, and even he didn’t know your real name. He told me later he was confused when Luz called out after you, when you ran. He thought your name was Caleb.”
Hunter freezes for five long, nerve-wracking seconds where Raine is certain they have once again screwed something up without meaning to, before he finally clicks his tongue. “The beach. Willow called me that, didn’t she?” Raine is pretty sure he’s talking to himself.
“I didn’t know Belos was your uncle until Darius said so, then, either, and I had no idea you didn’t have magic.”
He huffs. “That was on purpose. You never saw me when I was younger, before Belos gave me that artificial magic staff.”
They consider a small child, growing up surrounded by witches who were supposed to be the best of the best, trying to get by without a functioning bile sac. Darius had admitted rather shamefacedly that he had been cruel about it. Looking back, Raine recalls Lilith making barbs with just enough plausible deniability. They think about that child receiving a tool from a supposedly benevolent uncle that allowed them to rise past that disability. About being forced to hide it in order to be taken seriously. “You made it look natural.”
“I thought it felt natural for the longest time,” Hunter admits, and it sounds much closer to a confession than a boast. “Every time I used that staff, I tasted iron. I thought all magic was like that until I used Flapjack, actually. I didn’t even realize the first time until after, you know?”
“What’s Flapjack?” they ask, and Hunter buries his face in his knees.
“My palisman,” he whispers.
The Golden Guard has a palisman?
He doesn’t look up. He doesn’t offer any more information. He is unnervingly still and silent. This time, Raine recognizes the twin grief.
Had. The Golden Guard had a palisman.
Yesterday, when day finally broke and the sun’s rays pierced through the clouds, it didn't take long for Raine to search what remained of the throne room and find… well, find what remained of Trot.
“When I started really climbing the ranks in the Bard Coven, I hid my palisman so he wouldn’t be taken,” they say woodenly.
Hunter’s ear flicks.
“I wanted to protect Trot, but I couldn’t bear to part with him, and he refused to leave me.”
A sort of strangled whine escapes him.
“He disguised himself as my violin for years.” Playing that violin always brought a sense of camaraderie with Trot while he was unable to safely come to life. They were still able to communicate through their bond.
“When the B.A.T.T.s were captured by Darius and Eberwolf, he got damaged in the fight. Thankfully, he was able to recover after I patched him up with wood glue.” Raine remembers the pain and distress they had to hide until they were finally alone and could begin repairs. They wish now that a little wood glue could fix everything.
It can’t.
“Yesterday, right before Belos possessed the Titan, he overpowered me, and the only magic I could access to stop him from invading the Heart was… was Trot. Trot knew it, too.” Their voice breaks.
They could stop talking now, they think momentarily. They don’t have to continue on. They could keep the words inside their throat and never speak it out loud. Only, Hunter looks up at them, and Raine knows keeping that hurt inside will make it fester. They should talk about this. Selfishly, they hope that maybe it will bring them some comfort, eventually.
“Bard magic works through sound, and I only had one hand free. I knew I was going to die,” they start.
Raine matches Hunter’s stare. “I knew I was going to die. I was so sure of it,” they choke out. “I smashed my violin against the ground, and it almost worked.”
They shift their eyes to the tile of the floor. They can’t look to see what he thinks. They don’t want to meet his gaze and find disgust or pity.
Instead, Hunter whispers, “Wood glue?” as if he is hoping despite its futility.
Raine shakes their head. “It’s not enough for this,” they reply, and speaking it aloud makes it more real, somehow. It sends their stomach plummeting. They can feel it churning throughout the lengthy pause that follows.
Hunter lets out a shaky breath. “You did it on purpose. You hurt your palisman on purpose.”
“For a purpose,” Raine corrects as mildly as they can manage. Cruelty has never been their motivation for anything, and it stings to hear the unspoken accusation. Stings to remember the sensation of the wood cracking, the strings snapping.
Hunter is silent. His face shows hurt and faint nausea.
“But… yes.”
After a long moment, the boy swallows and speaks.
“Belos used my hand to hurt Flapjack,” he says. “It is the most awful thing I have ever, ever felt, and I’m glad,” he spits. “I’m glad because it was almost the second worst thing I would have ever felt, because—because—he tried to make me drain him, and that was when I fought back hard enough. But Flapjack is gone now because of me. Flapjack is gone.”
There are no words to make this better. This time, Raine tries for a hug instead of a hand on the shoulder, and Hunter lets them. As the boy sobs into their chest, they contemplate sacrifice and loss, responsibility and the promise to do better tomorrow.
Amity Blight wakes them a couple hours later when she comes to use the toilet. Raine’s back aches fiercely, they have indents on their face from their glasses, and Hunter’s hair is mostly still long. Except for the right side, which looks like it’s been hacked off with a pair of hedge trimmers. Perhaps a bread knife.