I’m still thinking about Hunter having the realization that he cares for Darius as if he were his dad because he misses him in the same way the others are missing their parents and I ended up writing this in a frenzy.
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“I want to see my dad,” Gus murmurs, brokenly, before bursting into tears once more and, judging by the sharp intake of breath coming from Willow, he’s not the only one who wants to. Hunter doesn’t speak, but he tightens his hold on both of them.
For the second time in a week -in only a week! That must be a record somewhere, he thinks, only slightly hysterical- the only thing he wants to do is go home. But he couldn’t go home before and he sure can’t now. Not that there’s a home for him anymore though, there hasn’t been in a while. Did he ever have a home to begin with?
The castle was his place of residence his whole life, but he’s slowly coming to understand that it takes more than that to make a place a home. A home shouldn’t make you feel so lonely and afraid all the time. Right now he couldn’t feel less alone, with his friends -and isn’t that strange too? To be able to call someone else a friend?- all pressed against him on a human couch, in a human house, scratched and tired, alive and breathing, but it does little to soothe the gigantic feeling of defeat sitting on his chest.
“Do you think they’re okay?” Amity asks quietly and Hunter knows she’s thinking of her father kissing her forehead before they left him just like all the others. Like the Owl Lady and Raine and Eberwolf and…
And Darius.
And suddenly he’s feeling every bit the child the Coven Heads always said he was. He remembers the man, silent and unmoving on the floor. Wrong. Wrong. Because Darius is not one to keep quiet, he states his opinions loudly and proudly. He is not one to remain still, he gesticulates energetically, and yet not one movement of his ever seems wasted. He tried so, so hard to wake him, desperate to see if he was gonna be alright because he couldn’t imagine life without Darius, but there was only so much time they could spare before going to rescue Luz and… and…
And his eyes sting and suddenly his cheeks are wet.
“I want Darius” he whispers, his voice trembling with tears. He’s certain the others hear him, but there’s nothing to say to that, nothing that will help anyway, in the same way that there was not a good answer to Amity’s question nor a soft comfort to Gus’s plea, because none of them know what is happening on the Boiling Isles and they went through hell and back together, there’s no point in lying. Moreover, they won’t lie to each other.
But Hunter remembers a kind hand on his head, he remembers a scroll, the first gift he was freely given without having to earn it or deserve it in some way, he remembers sewing lessons with gentle scoldings that left him feeling warmer than any time his unc-Belos grabbed his shoulder in faked concern, he remembers bickering and the surprise at the certainty that one wrong word wouldn’t get him hurt this time, and he thinks that maybe that’s what a home would feel like.
He knows he starts shaking because Willow’s hand feels a little bit firmer on his back, Gus rearranges himself to be a little bit closer to him and Luz grabs his right hand with her free one. It doesn’t matter to them that he’s crying because they all are. Only the sound of the rain accompanies the soft sniffles of kids who lost everything. And despite it all, Hunter is grateful that for once he is not alone.
