Like Real People Do (GOLDRIC)

10

Edric wakes up from the dead to his sisters asleep at his bedside. He doesn't know where he is for a second, the contours of the room are all wrong and unfamiliar, painted with the orange glow of a lamp. His body aches like he's been in a coma for years, and sitting up takes a lot of effort, like he's been doing ab-crunches in his sleep. His heart sharply jumps at the thought of the possibility of how long he's been here.

The memory of his dream returns to him in small lapses, a young boy and an older boy, frozen in time. Drowning in it. A vast ocean.

He looks around the room distantly, for someone else. The face he'd been missing in his dream. And then he remembers the events all at once; the Illusionist covenhead, the battle... It takes effort to think about it. There are other students sleeping in the beds near him. No one he is looking for.

He wonders how furious mother is, now, all her children being missing for... How long has it been? The windows are dark, but getting lighter. The air has that purity to it, air restored from the night's chaos. It's morning.

When his sisters wake, they catch him up on whatever information Hunter told all of them about the upcoming days. The day of unity. Belos.

Edric swallows bile, heart racing with fear. He wonders if this is how Hunter has felt all his life, as if everyday was Hunter's day of unity, as if everyday he faced some new form of doom. He thinks of the scar on his cheek, the gold wings of the Emperor's coven tattoo peeking out of bandages on his wrist.

When he looks up at his Amity and Emira's expressions, he works up a wry smile, a thing too frayed with fear and pain to really be considered a smile, but just enough to be considered one of Edric's. It does little to soothe Edric or his sisters, but he finds comfort in the familiarity.

///

The school becomes more of a war camp. It reminds Hunter of... bad memories, but he stays anyway. Gus had offered him a bed at his own house, but Hunter declined without considering it. It just wasn't an option.

He was glad to be on the right side of things, this time. There were many things to remind him he wasn't back in the Emperor's castle, like the amount of children without masks or scars or fear. Laughter.

But every once in a while he catches something in his peripherals that he forgets to dismiss; a tall white banner, a glowing red staff.

"Hunter," He tells a teacher who asks his name. He smiles in return, and he sees his Uncle's teeth.

It takes him ten whole minutes of deep breathing to keep his breakfast down.

He mostly keeps to himself in his place in the auditorium, except for when they ask for advice in plans and Covenhead secrets. Only Willow and Gus really visit him outside of that, everyone else is too afraid of him. The feeling is mutual.

The 'meetings' of war are mostly wild theories and ideas on how to take down Belos, but Hunter sits there in silence and resists the urge to inform them that none of it will work. Because Belos is larger and more powerful than any of them, in a manner of speaking. He twists reality around you, shakes the ground out from your very feet, forces you to grovel until he decides to generously spare you a shrivel of mercy.

Belos eclipses everything.

And that was his power wasn't it? To lie to Hunter over and over, about their family, his entire life. Until everything he knew broke into dust, and Hunter had nothing. Was nothing.

Belos had shown him, that in all ways that mattered, Hunter was nothing.

If only Hunter could have seen that from the beginning. It would have made things so much easier.