Reprogrammed (Hunter Angst)

Deja Vu

When Eberwolf scratched at his door to alert him that it was lunch time, Hunter felt vastly relieved. In the hour and a half that it had taken to cook the food, he had spent most of it spacing out, thinking about every event that had led up to this very moment.

... There was a lot to process. He temporarily swept all of these thoughts away in favor of enjoying his first legitimately good meal in a long time. It wasn't anything fancy, noodles with spicy cream sauce, but anything was a top tier meal to Hunter as long as it wasn't psyche ward food. The fact that he wasn't on such a high dose of medication anymore also greatly added to his appetite.

Darius was pleased to see Hunter wolfing the food down. He was slightly less happy to watch Eberwolf literally eat food like a wild animal. Despite this, he was happy to have people at his table that could enjoy his food and company. He felt nervous over the fact that Hunter had been discharged and released, but he was also grateful that his kid was home, and eating.

What a fatherly thing to think, Darius realized.

Initially, the plan was to box up any leftovers and do the dishes, but by the time the Coven Head looked up from his own half-eaten plate of noodles, Hunter and Eberwolf had chomped through all of the food, and Hunter had done the dishes. The teenager had been gone for just long enough that his caretaker had nearly forgotten just how quick and efficient Hunter could be. The Emperor's Coven had done extraordinarily well to teach him the meaning of time management. That was yet another thing that Darius would have to slowly train out of all of them.

The truth of the matter was that every person living in Darius's house, including Darius himself, was an ex-soldier. All of them had spent an extraordinary amount of time in the Emperor's Coven, slaving towards the lie of a brighter future for years. Hunter had spent his whole life living a lie that he wholeheartedly believed was the ultimate truth. What a huge mind-shattering revelation that must have been for the kid; to realize that his whole life had been a lie.

No wonder he was struggling so much.

Shortly after finishing lunch, Hunter excused himself back upstairs to "continue unpacking". He hadn't even started. The food, which was delicious, sat strangely in his stomach. No longer did he feel that all-consuming nausea. Instead, that feeling was replaced with an odd kind of shame. The more he allowed himself to think, the more he began to over think.

So much time, money, energy, and headspace wasted on his desperate need for attention. The revelation sounded eerily familiar, like something that Belos's rotting skull would tell him. A cautionary glance around his room revealed that he was alone. The Sertraline had been warping his perception, causing him to hallucinate his dead uncle... But now that there were no exterior voices from his past to remind him of his shortcomings, he was stuck with his own internal chastising.

How long will it take until I won't have these thoughts anymore? I thought that when I cut down on my medication it would help, but here I am, just as miserable as always. The disappointment dripping from his own thoughts made him frown deeply.

Perhaps a distraction was in order. After digging around inside of his nightstand for a moment, he was pleased to find Camila's iPod and a tangled pair of earbuds. Listening to music would  help, surely. So, the teenager popped in his headphones, turned on one of his favorite albums, and finally set about unpacking.

It was slow work, trying to put everything back in its place. The psyche ward had taken the shoelaces off of all of his shoes, despite the fact that he'd only ever gotten the opportunity to wear one of his three pairs. It took a lot of time and energy to re-lace them, and fix up other objects that had been modified to fit the requirements of the inpatient program.