Thrown Notebooks
Hunter was sick of keeping secrets. He hated the feeling of guilt he would get in his stomach when he thought about them. But if he didn’t keep his secrets then all his new friends… new family… they would hate his guts. And if they hated him there would be no reason for them to keep him around anymore.
He knew that as the Golden Guard, as a grimwalker, he was made to be disposable. He had spent his whole life feeling the opposite, thinking that he was too special to Belos to ever be unwanted. He felt special to his friends too… but feeling special doesn’t equal being wanted.
To make up for all of his secrets, Hunter worked as hard as he could to find a way for his friends to get back to the Demon Realm. He just hoped that his best was good enough. He stayed up later than everyone else and woke up earlier just to research and experiment. His exhaustion was so bad that everyone was starting to worry.
It was halfway through their second month in the Human Realm when Willow decided to take matters into her own hands and confront him about it. It was early Saturday morning, so early that not even Ms. Camilla was awake yet, and Willow had woken up for the fourth time that night and decided that it was late enough for her to not need any extra sleep. She groggily shuffled her way downstairs, deciding to spend a peaceful morning with tea in silence, not even having put her glasses on. She bee-lined to the kitchen, eager to try a new flavor of tea the Noceda’s had gotten while shopping yesterday. She was so engrossed in the making of the tea — turn the water on to boil, pick out a cute mug with some Human Realm animal called a “hamster” on it, drizzle honey at the bottom of said mug, add the tea bag and now-boiling-water, stir — that she didn’t realize she wasn’t the only person awake at this hour. Until she heard a THUMP and a muffled grunt coming from the living room. All thoughts of a peaceful morning fled from the girl’s mind as she rushed to see what was wrong.
Hunter wasn’t used to not getting results. Research was what he was good at. Even when his world was flipped on it’s head, when he learned that the person he trusted most in the world was a manipulative liar, that he was a lackluster copy of someone long past, that the entire time he thought he was fighting for the good of the people he was actually speeding them towards their downfall… even then he still got results. He learned what grimwalkers were. He learned how to wield Flapjack better. He learned about the C.A.T.s and was the one who connected them with his friends. All that he has ever done since he came into existence was train, and analyze, and research, and he always got results. Why was it different now?
He was sitting in the Noceda’s living room surrounded by Human Realm science books and notebooks filled with crossed out words. Every time he thought he learned something useful it lead straight to a dead-end. He had just researched space and a wild theory was building in his mind. Each galaxy had the possibility of holding thousands of solar systems, and there was an estimated amount of two trillion galaxies in the universe. The amount of planets that existed was practically infinite, and any amount of those planets had the ability to hold and cultivate multiple life forms. Hunter was beginning believe that the Demon and Human Realms weren’t different dimensions, just different planets in different solar systems, possibly in different galaxies. Humans have already accomplished space travel, so surely there was a chance they could travel to the Boiling Isles via spacecraft rather than portal door.
Hunter has spent the last two weeks building this theory and seeing if it’s possible. Two weeks wasting time. Even if they learned which planet, in which solar system, in which galaxy, the Demon Realm is, earth doesn’t have the technology to go to even all the planets in it’s own solar system. Even if it did, it would probably take them well past their lifetimes to make it home, if they were even allowed use of a spaceship. It was impossible.
Tears spilled onto the paper in front of him. He had told everyone that he would only talk about his research if he thought it would have any serious merit, so that they wouldn’t get their hopes up in case it fell through. He was so foolish! He was supposed to be the realist of the group. He knew that there was a possibility that they would never go back to the Demon Realm, knew that getting their hopes up would eventually lead to them getting hurt, but while he was protecting everyone else from disappointment he had laid himself bare to the world. He had gotten his hopes up. He had been planning to tell everyone about his research today.
Fool.
Fool!
Fool!
He didn’t even have anything — anyone — waiting for him back in the Boiling Isles. All the people that possibly cared about him were living under the same roof with him right now. They were the only reason he was fighting so hard to get back. If he was being honest with himself, he wasn’t even sure he would join them back in the Demon Realm. He had nothing left for him there, and the idea of having a fresh start somewhere where nobody could trace him back to the evils of Belos was dizzying. Not only could he become a normal teenager to those around him, he could maybe learn more about the Caleb he was supposed to be modeled after. Luz had told him enough times that he was his own person that he had started to believe her, but there was this strange concept in his mind of Caleb being a father to him. It’s how he coped with looking in the mirror and seeing a different person. Parents passed down genes, one look at Gus and his Father was a testament to that, so if Caleb was his father it wouldn’t be weird to look like him! Hunter had been having stray thoughts of seeing if he could even track down descendants of Wittebane relatives… his relatives.
But before he could start tracking down his hypothetical family he had to make sure that his friends got back to their very not-hypothetical family. And that led back to the research, his false hope, and his now crushed spirit.
He picked up all the notebooks he had filled with his theories, and hypotheses, and hopes. They were useless now. Just like him. He threw them hard across the room with a sorrowful grunt. He didn’t register how loudly they hit the wall, or the quick footsteps that rushed over from the kitchen, he just curled in on himself and shook with silent sobs.
Willow faltered slightly at the sight before her. Hunter was pressed into a little ball, hands yanking at his hair as his shoulders shook. Even though her throat was slightly constricted she still made her way over to comfort her friend. She gently pried his hands out of his hair and held them tightly in hers. She then used their joined hands to lift his chin up so she could look into his eyes. He continued to breath jaggedly and seemed confused to see her there. “Hey.… Do you remember the breathing exercise that Gus taught you? In, two, three, four. Out, two, three, four. Good, just like that! I’ll keep breathing with you until you calm down, okay?” He jerked his head in a nod. After a minute of them breathing together Hunter seemed to calm down. “Now. We can talk about it if you want, or we could just sit here until you’re completely okay. What is not going to happen is you brushing me off, or me leaving you alone.”
“I just- I just really thought this would work out! I spent so long learning about all these things about the Human Realm, all this knowledge that they have that we just… don’t. Humans have traveled so far! Their longing for knowledge outside of their reach is so strong that they take great lengths to travel and reach it. I thought ‘surely… surely a species that has already traveled so far has a way to get to the Demon Realm.’ But they don’t. I spent so much time looking for something that simply doesn’t exist, when I could have been trying to just find ways to bring back the portal door like the rest of you have been doing.” His hands involuntarily jerked to start tugging at his hair, but Willow kept them firmly tucked in her grasp.
She felt the need to do something extra to comfort him. He had gotten used to physical affection surprisingly fast after leaving the Emperor’s Coven, he had even started initiating it almost every chance he got. But if she wanted to prevent him from his harmful habit of pulling out his hair, then her options were limited. Finally she decided to press her forehead against his. She felt him shift slightly as he took another deep breath before he pushed his head back towards her, adding a gentle pressure. She softly tapped his nose with her own.
“You can’t keep being this hard on yourself. Philip Wittebane spent years, and years, and years, to try and develop the first portal. Luz spent months making one that barely worked properly. And both of them had had the proper supplies, which are seemingly impossible for us to get in this Realm. We’re all really worried about what might be going on back home. But we all know that it will take more than a handful of weeks to get back. We just have to have faith in our friends and family that are still there, that they can handle themselves and will be alright whenever we are finally able to get back.” She squeezed his hands tightly. “Another thing that we all know… is that none of us can do this by ourselves, and if we overwork ourselves then we’ll never be able to get anything done. So stop isolating yourself and not getting enough sleep!”
Hunter nodded in a silent promise to do better. They stayed like that for a while, being each other’s support. They were so close that even without her glasses she could see him in sharp focus. And Titan…
Has he always been this handsome? She felt the bump in his nose. In the corner of her eye she saw the jagged scar that crawled up his cheek. It’s so much a part of him that she sometimes forgets it’s there, and whenever she remembers it she gets a burning desire to know how it got there. But he seemed uncomfortable with the subject and she would never dream of prying it out of him. The thing that currently had her attention were his eyes. Beautiful burgundy eyes that held so much intelligence, kindness, and sass. She never understood the saying “eyes are the windows into the soul,” until this exact moment. She felt that she could see every part of him through his eyes.
Hunter cleared his throat, snapping her out of her intense examination of his face. “Are you all right, Willow? You look flushed.”
Embarrassed of being caught fawning over him, she quickly stood and dragged him into the kitchen, blabbering about how she had just made tea and how she thinks it would do wonders to settle his mind down enough to sleep. In her rush to distract him, she hadn’t noticed that the boy’s face was equally red.