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“Flapjack, give it back!” Hunter yelled at his palisman as the book took off with his book he got from the human realm about dinosaurs.
It had been several weeks since Hunter and his friends got back from their three month stay at the human realm, and the only reason they managed to get back was because King had made a deal with the collector to make up for his father trapping the collector. It was a whole mess that Hunter wasn’t too concerned about as he was now home and under the care of Eda.
Being with Eda has to be the safest he’s felt in a long time.
“C’mon Flapjack! Give me my book back!” Hunter continued to yell, thankful he was the only one home (unless you count Hooty, but the bird? Tube? Thing was currently chasing flies in the forest) as Luz was in the human realm visiting her mother and Vee for the weekend, King was with the Collector and Eda was having a date with Raine, so Hunter was alone in the Owl House.
So Hunter did what every 16 year old did. He lounged on the sofa with a new book Luz’s mother had given him and took off his gloves so he could turn the pages easier as there was no one to judge or pity his scars apart from himself.
But Flapjack had other plans for Hunter as it wanted Hunter to play chase with it, so the palisman tugged at the book until it had picked it up and started to fly around the living room with it.
We are now back where we started, with Hunter chasing his palisman around the living room, trying to grab his book back (that was definitely three times the weight of Flapjack). But even if Hunter tried to sound annoyed at his palisman, he was smiling and laughing as the two ran around the lower level of the house.
But that smile and laughter soon turned to fear and panicked breaths as Hunter attempted to launch himself at Flapjack to grab either the bird or the book, but all he managed to achieve was the crash into a small table that held an ancient looking vase.
Time seemed to slow down as Hunter watched the vase fall off the table and onto the wooden floor below it, causing the vase into many big and small pieces.
“No no no no no no.” Hunter’s breathing had picked up in pace as he scrambled over to the shattered piece of the vase and started to pick them up and attempt to put them together in hopes they would magically glue themselves together and he wouldn’t be punished or kicked out for this.
“Stupid stupid Hunter. She lets you live with her and in return you break things. Stupid, worthless, usele- AH!” His self-deprecation was cut off when he accidentally crushed one of the larger pieces in his hand, causing it to shatter and cut open his hand, blood immediately rushed down his palm and dyed the sleeve of his yellow jumper red (great another of The Owl Lady’s things that he's ruined).
That's when the panic caught up to him and his vision started to go blurry and his breath became quicker and shallow. Despite Flapjack’s best efforts to calm him, Hunter curled up on himself, rocked himself back and forward and pulled his hair hard to try and ground himself.
But nothing was working, he just continued to cry, rock himself and yank his hair, the cut on his left hand ended up dying his hair red and the running blood dripped down onto his head and he just ended up looking like a mess.
He had screwed everything up. Again!
The Owl Lady was going to realize how much of a screw up he was. How worthless he was. How he didn’t deserve to be the last Grimwalker alive, that he should have been killed by Belos years ago.
Eda flew back to her home with a huge smile on her face, the date with Raine had gone so well and they had even asked her if she was willing to go on another date sometime in the future again. She of course said yes and gave the bard a kiss before hopping onto her staff and flew back home, leaving her partner flustered at the doorstep of their home.
As she flew back to the Owl House, she saw Hooty’s body buried in the ground and his voice far off in the forest yelling at different bugs. She rolled her eyes and sighed at the house demon’s antics.
“Hunter I’m…home.” Her cheer voice had died out when she saw her kid curled up on the floor, shattered ceramic and drops of the blood surrounding him. She saw Flapjack tweet and chirp at him to pull him out of whatever state he was in but to no avail as the kid continued to pull harshly at his hair and breathing so irregularly that she was so sure that he would pass out.
"Owlbert, go grab the medical supplies and a few plant glyphs." She told her palisman quietly so as to not make Hunter panic anymore.
Eda then slowly and quietly walked over to her kid and sat just in front of him, making sure she wasn’t sitting on any pieces of broken vase.
“Hey sunshine, can you hear me?” Eda made sure to keep her voice calm and gentle, but didn’t seem to work as Hunter’s breathing picked up and he started to mumble “I’m sorry Uncle” over and over again like it would keep him safe.
“Your uncle isn’t here kiddo. He isn’t going to hurt you I promise.” Eda wanted nothing more than to pull her kid into a tight hug, but she knew that Hunter wasn’t in the right state of mind to be touched without thinking he was going to be punished.
Hunter kept on repeating “I’m sorry Uncle” but it eventually dissolved into a mess of sobs and shallow breathing.
“Hey kid, can you look at me?” Eda asked, making sure to not show any other emotion in her voice apart from gentleness and care. Hunter looked up at her, his eyes red and puffy from crying, the left side of his head was covered in smeared blood from his hand.
He looked so scared.
“Alright sunshine. Are you able to tell me five things you see?” Eda asked, repeating a grounding technique she had heard Camila had used on Luz when she got overwhelmed, she just hoped it would work on Hunter.
“Um, y-you. Blo-b-blood. Umm, fla-flapjack, um” Hunter breathed in a shaky breath before continuing, “the bro-brok-broken vase, umm I don’t, I don’t know so-sorry.” Eda heard his breath speed up again. “Hey, hey Sunshine, it’s alright. Now can you name four things you feel?”
It took several moments of trying to calm his shaky breathing before Hunter managed to answer. “My so-socks, dried blood, umm, Fl-Flapjack on my k-knee.” Flapjack chirped happily and rubbed its head against Hunter’s right cheek. “Brok-broken bits of v-vase in the cut.” Hunter said that last thing so quietly Eda wasn’t even sure she heard it correctly. She repressed a grimace at the thought of having to take out small bits of broken vase out of Hunter’s hand.
“Good job kiddo. Can you now tell me three things you hear?” Hunter took a bit longer to respond, possibly trying to listen out for things he can hear. “Breathing, Flapjack. Belos.” Hunter seemed almost ashamed to admit that he could hear Belos, but if Eda had to guess, Hunter might just be hearing the things Belos said to him in the past when he was stuck in that flashback earlier.
“Ok, now these last two are a bit hard so don’t feel bad if you aren’t able to answer them. Can you name two things you can smell?” Hunter once again paused before answering Eda. “Blood again. Umm, I don’t know.” Eda could see Hunter slowly curl himself and release his hair from his grip as he started to calm down more.
“And that’s ok you don’t know. As I said, these last are usually hard for people to answer. Now the last one kiddo. One thing you can taste?”
“Blood from biting on my cheek.” Hunter answers, his breathing now as normal as it can be with reused stonesleeper lungs.
“How are you feeling now, sunshine?” Eda asked, moving herself closer to her kid, making sure to not make any sudden movements so she doesn’t accidentally trigger another panic attack or flashback. Hunter only shrugged.
Eda smiled and offered her hand out to Hunter. “C’mon kid, let's get you to the couch to fix up that hand of yours.” Hunter hesitated before putting his right hand into Eda’s and letting her pull him off the ground, making sure to be careful of the shattered vase around him.
“What about the mess?” He asked, as Eda guided him over to the couch and sat him down. Owlbert hopped up onto the couch with the first aid kit in his mouth along with a few pre-drawn plant glyphs.
Eda opened the first aid kit and pulled out tweezers, bandages, healing potions and wipes. Taking Hunter’s bleeding hand and facing the palm upwards.
“If the pain starts to get too much just tell me and I’ll stop until you’re ready. Alright sunshine?” Hunter nodded, his uninjured hand stroking Flapjack's head.
She opened the pack of wipes and rolled down the sleeve of Hunter’s sweater, and started to clean up the dried blood that hadn’t been soaked into the fabric. She then slowly made her way to his hand where he flinched when she carefully dabbed the wipe around the cut. She stopped when he flinched and look at him, and only continuing when Hunter nodded, letting out a shaky breath.
Eda knew that Hunter’s hands were extremely sensitive to touch and textures that he deemed “wrong” and she knew that the wipe was one of those “wrong” textures. So she made sure to be quick as she saw his uninjured hand start to flap and shake around by his side.
“You can flap your right hand if you need to sunshine, I’m not going to judge you.” That simple sentence was all Hunter needed to start flapping his right hand more than he was, he also started to make the small grunts that Eda knew was him trying to stop himself from getting overwhelmed by the texture.
“I know baby, I know kiddo. Just need to clean up the blood before I can start fixing up your hand. I’ll get it done as quickly as I can.” Eda started to work faster than she was, but at the same time still worked slowly in order to not cause Hunter any pain. And soon enough she had cleaned off all the dried blood so she could get started on taking out any bits of broken vase that was sticking out of Hunter’s skin.
“Hey, hey honey, don’t chew your hand. It’ll only hurt you.” Eda gently took hold of Hunter’s right hand and slowly pulled it away from his mouth.
“Flapjack, can you go and get Hunter’s chew toy from his room?” The palisman chirped and flew up the stairs and came down moments later with a dinosaur chew toy that Luz had brought Hunter when they discovered he’d chew his hand or lips when he was either extremely stressed or excited. So when the palisman came back with the chew toy and dropped it into Hunter’s lap, he immediately put it into his mouth and started to chew it, his right hand holding onto the part that wasn’t in his mouth in order to make sure he didn’t drop it.
Eda smiled fondly at her kid, and reached for the tweezers, once again telling Hunter that if he needed her to stop, just tell her or tap her on the arm. Eda then got to work, slowly pulling out the small bits of ceramic out of the kid’s hand, making sure to pause after each one and to look at Hunter’s face to see if there was any sign of him going into a panic attack or flashback.
It took several minutes for Eda to get all the broken ceramic pieces out of Hunter’s palm (as she had to stop many times to remind the kid that he was in the Owl House and not back at the emperors coven), but eventually she got all the pieces out and she’d wrapped them up in the bloodied wipe. She then took the healing potions, plant glyphs and the bandages and put them onto her lap. She unwrapped the bandages until she deemed enough would be able to wrap around Hunters hand, she then poured the healing potion onto the bandage, letting it be soaked into before place three of the glyphs along the strip of bandage and activated them to make the magic of the glyph be soaked into the healing potion.
Eda still found it odd that Hunter needed plant magic mixed with healing magic in order to heal any wounds, but it made sense considering he was made from Palistrom wood. She then moved her hand from under Hunter’s hand and started to carefully wrap the plant and healing magic soaked bandage around the cut, making sure to cover all of the injuries on her kid’s hand. Soon enough the kid’s left hand was covered in the bandage and she let his hand fall into his lap.
As soon as she let his hand go he started to flap and shake the hand around to, as Hunter once put it, “to get rid of the horrible texture”. And she let him do that, she didn’t stare at him, but she watched with kind eyes waiting for him to be ready to talk to her. After a few minutes, his hand flapping ceased to only his right hand tapping his thigh and the chew toy was no longer in his mouth.
“Sorry about your vase. I was chasing Flapjack around the house and I ran into the table.” He explained, not looking up from his lap.
“It’s fine kid, it’s just a vase, nothing for you to worry about.” Eda told him, packing up the first aid kit and got Owlbert to put the wrapped up wipe with the ceramic pieces into the bin. “Besides, you kids breaking things in my house is nothing I’m not used to. I cannot count the number of times King broke stuff when that little bugger was growing up.” Eda heard Hunter chuckle sadly at the fondness in her voice.
“C’mon here kid.” She opened her arms when she noticed him tear up again, and he let himself fall into her arms. She shifted herself so the both of them were comfortable and she rubbed circles on his back when she heard his breathing pick up again.
“It’s okay sunshine. You’re okay.” She told Hunter, holding her child close. Telling herself that she would clean up the broken vase later, after all, it was just a vase and her child was more important than that.