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When the world is saved, everything is joyous, at least for a moment. Celebrations ring out across the Titan, paused only for moments of deep, painful mourning. And then time passes; nights begin to add up, growing longer, and the sun seems a little dimmer in the sky. The dust settles.
The dust settles and it becomes very obvious that many people are not okay. Eda tries, but life with one arm is a lot to adapt to even when things are normal, and she finds herself struggling not to fall again into the dark embrace of apple blood. She’s a mother now, after all, not just a roommate or mentor, and she’s trying so hard to make things work with Raine again. She has to be on her best behavior. She has to be okay.
It’s hard to be okay. The nights grow long and cold and, in the shadow of the Titan’s raised arm, watching shards of people’s homes fall into the sea below, it feels sometimes like the world really did end after all.
Raine isn’t okay, either. All too often, they can be found falling into fits of panic about whether they’re acting like themself, whether the people around them are safe—safe from their own hands, their own words. After being possessed by Philip Wittebane, Raine is terrified of hurting others. Raine is terrified of themself.
None of the kids are doing well. On top of the sheer amount of pain he witnessed, King is slowly coming to terms with being the only surviving member of his species. The pain of genocide is one he doesn’t know how to contend with. Before Belos, the Isles had never even entertained such a concept before. Witches and demons survive as a people, but King has only himself. It’s lonely.
Forced to attend therapy after one of her dissociative episodes almost got her run over in the street, Luz started taking a type of ‘human elixir’: an antidepressant pill that helps when it helps and makes everything so much worse when it doesn't. Taking it on time is hard. Her ADHD remains untreated and being removed from Hexside to attend Gravesfield High again makes her feel like a hole is being drilled into her skull. Despite it all, she feels almost numb. The memory of dying is always on her mind.
Though they’ve always been reliant on each other, Willow and Gus have separation anxiety worse than any of the adults in their lives have ever seen. They refuse to leave each other's side—or their parents’ sides either, clingier than when they were bat-eared witchlets. Perry is forced to start staying in the Park family’s home and do the greater part of his reporting from their home. He wants to be out helping, digging graves and rebuilding homes with the rest of his peers, telling their small world about the hope that blankets their dismal new lives, but he can’t. Gus needs him. Holding his son and the girl he’s come to see as a second child are more important. Love fills those four walls, but no one in the house is happy.
Between the trauma of the Day of Unity’s months-long agony and her parents’ divorce leaving her without parental support, Amity is a bossy ball of stress. She leans back on her bullying roots only to panic as soon as the words are out of her mouth, crying and apologizing, unable to breathe. She isolates. Her friends don’t know yet, but Odalia and Alador both are thinking of moving to different Titans, far from the violence they caused—and farther from each other.
Vee is taking it all in stride, but only because she’s forced herself into the role of adult, caring for everyone and neglecting herself. She cooks when Camila is tired from work, she reminds Luz to take her medicine on time, she even attends school looking like her sister when Luz can’t manage to get out of bed. She is everyone’s therapist, everyone’s confidant, but nobody knows how she is feeling. She strains under the pressure she puts herself under with a smile.
And Hunter—
When Hunter attempts suicide, Eda wakes to Darius screaming outside her door.
Already awake and nursing a cup of tea that doesn’t take the edge off in the slightest, Eda throws herself out of her chair and tightens her night robe around herself. It’s difficult with one hand, because they sure didn’t make this thing with amputees in mind, but she manages to avoid flashing Darius and Eberwolf—and Hooty, who stares down at Hunter’s unusually pale face in silent worry.
The boy is muscly, even if he’s horribly underfed, with boxy shoulders and a frame that tells her that he’ll have a gut like her dad one day if he starts getting the nutrition he needs. Cold and sick in Darius’ arms, however, he looks… small. Impossibly small.
“I think it’s poison,” Darius tells her, his voice so ragged that she almost doesn’t recognize it. “It is poison. He took it. I didn’t know I had to—it’s just a usual Abomination ingredient—” Eber bites Darius’ leg, forcing him back into the present. “Agh! Edalyn, I can’t take him to a healer, they don’t know what he fucking is, and neither do I! Please, I need you to—”
Eda doesn’t let him finish. She pulls him inside, modesty forgotten, and runs to her potion ingredients for an antidote while Darius and Eber get Hunter laid down on his side.
Luckily, the poison Hunter had downed—the oil of a plant called snakeshade—has an extremely simple-to-brew antidote. He lives. When he’s done vomiting, he screams every awful thing in the book at all three of them. He’s very angry at them for saving his life, but the way his face turns red in rage is so much better than the bloodless pallor he’d had when he was dying on her couch. Eda doesn’t take his anger to heart. All her heart has room for now is happiness that he’s alive. While he’s still gnashing his teeth, baring his strange, human-like blunted fangs and glaring with small, shaking pupils, she takes him into her arms and cries.
“I’m glad you’re okay, kid,” she chokes into his shoulder.
Hunter’s fury dies pretty fast. He sobs like he’s been saving every tear for that moment.
It’s a horrible sound. Necessary and healthy, but horrible. Darius and Eber hold him too. Hooty wraps himself around them all, protecting them. Hooty has been more protective than ever as of late. Eda has a feeling this event will only make that worse.
After downing a potion to fight dehydration, Hunter sleeps in Luz’ room for the night, a bucket on the floor in case he needs to hurl. Eda wants to keep an eye on him, but mostly she wants to keep an eye on Darius. Eber seems okay, she thinks—she doesn’t know them very well. Darius, though, is a fucking wreck.
When Hunter is sound asleep, Darius breaks. He sobs into his hands.
“It’s my fault. I did that to him.”
Eber chitters, burying their face against his arm. Eda is on his other side, hunched over on the couch, their legs touching.
“It’s not your fault,” she says, her voice as firm and honest as it is when Luz is crying those very same words. “Hunter is a smart kid. If he thought he needed to do that, he was going to find a way.”
Darius glares at her, his face tear-stricken. “And who do you think made him believe that? Who do you think watched while he was abused in that fucking castle and did nothing! Worse than nothing! I mocked him. I told him he deserved it.”
Eda looks away. Raine has had similar feelings of regret regarding their resident grimwalker. Lilith, too, though she’s much less willing to say so. A proud woman, her sister. As wonderful as Lily can often be, she is also secretive and arrogant and mean. “You’re there for him now,” Eda insists, so carefully gentle that she almost sounds angry. “It’s never too late to change, Darius. If it hurts, then tell him you’re sorry. Tell him you need him to be alive, so you can make it up to him.”
Darius looks unconvinced for a moment, but then his face relaxes, and he stares at the ground thoughtfully. Eber puts their paw on his shoulder, patient and supportive, and Darius takes it in his hands seemingly subconsciously, running his thumbs through their fur. “You’re right.” He nods. “I’ll tell him. I’ll—I’ll make it up to him. I’ll be everything I should have been. Everything Belos wasn’t.”
Eda awkwardly rubs his shoulder. “There you go,” she cheers softly. “And now we know he's hurting enough to do that. Now we know and we can help.”
And they do. They set Hunter up with Steve’s therapist, but only after he agrees to go, and they get him a sketchbook to draw his pain into and a sewing machine to put his mind anywhere other than the things he’s been through and some practice dummies to beat the shit out of when he needs to hurt something and the best thing to hurt sounds like himself. Darius doesn’t have an Emperor’s Coven paycheck anymore, but he is still the best in the entire Isles at autobiological Abomination magic, so he, Eber, and Hunter aren’t hurting for snails. Hunter seems to enjoy taking advantage of this, collecting as many books as possible: all of the Cosmic Frontier novels, as many tomes on wild magic as he can find, that book that King and Luz co-wrote, way too many edgy young adult novels, a handful of frankly pornographic graphic novels that Eda can’t believe Darius let him buy, and even the Good Witch Azura series so he can bond with Luz and Amity over it. When Eda comes to visit and Hunter excitedly shows off the Deamonne residence to her, it almost looks more like a library than a place where people sleep.
Hunter grins all the way through dinner, eating his fill of food and drinking his spiced beast blood (nonalcoholic) like it’s the best thing he’s ever had. When Darius sighs and rubs the beast blood mustache off his lip with their fancy dark table napkins, Hunter stares at him like he hung the moon.
Despite all of this, though, Hunter isn’t getting much better. He gets new scars on his shoulders and thighs every other day, it seems, and so many of his clothes go through the wash caked in his blood. He goes through bandages faster than he goes through socks. He sneaks out without telling anyone, worrying Darius nearly to ill health, and gets angry at anyone who tells him that they need to know that he’s safe.
The days grow longer again and pollen fills the air, sending the Isles into beautiful, crimson hues. Luz is laughing again, running around like she hasn’t done in months. King is starting to smile like he used to, relearning his love for demonology. Willow is back to school and sports and Gus is throwing himself into the future of human-wixen relations. Now an independant, Amity lives closer to the Owl House, still in Bonesborough, and she’s been as sweet as firebee honey for weeks. Vee is seeing Luz’ therapist now, and has fun with the other kids instead of joining the adults in the kitchen.
But Hunter is still struggling. Hunter isn’t getting better.
When Darius catches Hunter trying to break into his Abomination ingredients again, he’s at a loss for what to do.
It’s a week after Hunter got caught and they’re all at the lake, enjoying the springtime weather, basking in the scents of life and the vibrant colors of the grass and leaves. The kids all splash around in the water, laughing together. Ed and Em pick Amity up to toss into the water as she shouts in surprise. Willow laughs and tells them they’ll have to go through her to get to Amity, splashing water at them in big waves. It turns into a huge splash war, with Vee throwing herself into the water to send huge waves flying at everyone, Luz laughing out loud as she tries to protect her eyes from the salty spray. Gus illusions a huge white flag to wave from side to side, shouting, “Peace! Make peace! Love is the answer!” as he sits on Hunter’s shoulders, the boy beneath him just watching it all with a grin.
Her head resting on Raine’s shoulder, her hand stroking King’s sleeping back as he rests in her lap, Eda watches the kids play. The adults are talking about much less fun topics than water fights, however.
“She’s been doing a lot better,” Gilbert says, voice quiet. “But last night, after our show was over, I got up to go to bed and she started crying and begging me not to go.” He swallows, his eyes watering behind his rectangular glasses. “We’ve always been a very close-knit family, being just us and our Willow, but she’s never been like this before. I don’t know how to help…”
Camila squeezes his hand and stares at him so kindly and determinedly that Eda’s chest aches. It’s obvious where Luz gets her unending reservoir of love from. “You are helping, Gil,” she says resolutely. “You and Harvey are so strong and so is your little girl. And… I can relate, even if it’s different. Luz became so distant after her father died. She’s been distant like that again, barely eating, barely engaging in her hobbies. It helps her, I think, that we have so much love and support now, but…”
Darius nods. “She and Hunter have so much in common.” His tone would be amused, if he didn’t sound so sardonic.
Camila laughs, but the sound is just as tired as Darius’. “Aren’t they just? How is he doing? He doesn’t come by much anymore…”
Silence passes heavily. Eda debates whether or not to share what happened and save Darius from the pain of having to decide for himself. But then, Eber grumbles out, “Hurts.”
Darius’ face crumbles. “Hurts,” he agrees. “Twice now he’s been caught with poison. I stopped him before he could take it this time, but—”
“This time?!” Perry gasps. He stares out at Hunter beyond his glasses, concern on his face. Something dawns there, realization making his face go slack. “That’s why there was blood in the sink when he… Oh, Hunter.”
Alador, returned to the Titan on a routine visit to see his children post-move, meets Darius’ eyes almost sheepishly. “Snakeshade?” Darius looks surprised, but Alador just looks at the ground and shrugs, shame on his face. “I…may have caught Amity looking, when we were working on Abominations together. I, uh, made sure to hide it somewhere safe after that.”
“Good.” Darius says, with feeling. “Good.”
Alador almost smiles.
Eda looks down at King in her lap. He looks tired. He used to look so peaceful when he slept. Now he just looks exhausted. And small wonder, too; all those nightmares about the Titan Trappers have been keeping him awake every night. And now he’s so tired that he can’t even go out and play with the other kids.
“...What do we do?” she asks.
“We love them.” Camila says it like it’s easy. No—she says it like it’s hard and she’s going to do it anyways. She says it the exact same way Luz used to, plucky and determined and so incredibly full of love.
It makes Eda smile. She can feel Raine smiling too.
“Then that’s what we’ll do.” Harvey leans against his husband and sighs, staring out at the swimming kids with an unreadable expression. “We’ll be there. No matter what.”
The conversation grows a little happier after that. They talk about Gus’ accomplishments with turning Hexside’s Human Appreciation Society into a full-on diplomatic endeavor. They talk about the way Edric and Emira are throwing themselves into their previously unexplored passions and how happier they both seem because of it, even with the stresses of being newly independent witches with a little sister to keep an eye on. They talk about Luz’ growing skills with her staff, about Amity and Willow’s growing friendship, about Vee’s date next weekend, about Hunter’s ever-growing appetite… And they talk about themselves, too, though Eda struggles to think of what to say. Three decades of self-isolation are hard to kick, after all.
It’s nice to hear about everyone else, though. Alador is enjoying no longer being a Blight and has found a great job on a neighboring Titan. Raine loves their new job at Hexside, grateful to be teaching kids again. Perry admits that he wants to start dating again, but isn’t sure if it’s the right time, especially with his jobs as a father and a reporter are more important than ever. Camila has pictures of the funny Human Realm animals she treats at work to show everyone. In this covenless age, Harvey and Gilbert are thinking about finally starting the little sports-themed restaurant they always dreamed of.
Darius, like Eda, doesn’t share anything personal. But when he takes her hand in his and squeezes her fingers briefly, she knows. Things are hard and ugly and the kids will live with scars uncountable. Still, the sun shines down on the Titan. They have many tomorrows to weather the pains that will echo through their communities for decades yet.
The kids are going to be alright. And so will they.