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sergeantsporks · 1 year

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I think your still taking these so, writing request:

Hunter just casually truma dumping, thinking his experience is normal, and the adults are horrified.

CW: Referenced child abuse

“Hey, Hunter!”

Hunter looked up from his checklist at Camila’s call. “Oh. Hi. Enjoying the party?”

Camila chuckled, squeezing between two demons to get to him. “Excuse me—pardon. You look great, I love the eyeball hat.” She stopped next to him. “My first demon realm party! I think they’re finally getting used to having another human around!”

“I made the guest list.”

“Oh.”

“Not that they don’t want you here!” Hunter followed up quickly, “I mean. Helped save the isles and all that. Local hero.”

“Stop, you’ll make me blush.” Camila puffed a strand of hair out of her face. “You did a great job planning, sweetheart. Everyone looks like they’re having fun! I’d say this ‘yay we rebuilt Hexside’ opening party is a success.”

Hunter flushed, looking down at his checklist. “Thanks. I did a lot of research, and Darius helped with a few of the details. But I still have to make sure everything runs smoothly. Party’s not over yet, and a lot of things could go wrong!”

“Ah, relax, kid.” Eda came around from behind him and handed Camila a cup of punch. “Enjoy your own party! Take a break, you did the hard part, and now it’s time to kick back! Here.” She held out another cup of punch, and Hunter fumbled with his clipboard, shifting it and his pen to one hand.

“Uh—thaaaaaaanksssssss…” Hunter sighed, shaking his head. “Alright, okay, nice try. You’re not going to get me that easy, Eda.”

“Get you what now?”

Hunter pushed the cup back towards her. “Very funny. Give it up.”

“Give what up?”

“I know it’s poison. Good joke, good try, but I have a party to run, and I’m not going to fall for it.”

“What? I’m not trying to poison you, I’m trying to hydrate you, nerd.”

Hunter chuckled. “Okay, sure. You drink it, then.”

Eda rolled her eyes, downed the punch, then ate the cup. “There. No punch for you.”

“Eda,” Camila scolded.

“What? The owl beast likes eating weird things!”

“Birds can’t eat plastic!”

“Most birds don’t have teeth inside their stomach, either.”

Hunter eyed Eda. “Your commitment is admirable. Please get an antidote soon.”

“For the—okay, maybe I’m tempted now, but why would I want to poison you?!”

“Geeze, you don’t get out much, huh? When was the last time you went to a party?”

“I—” Eda sputtered, “What?!”

Bump glided over. “What’s the problem, here?”

“Eda drank poison and is still denying it,” Hunter told him, “When she collapses, please take her to the healing homeroom.

“WHAT?!”

Hunter tapped his pen against his lips. “Don’t worry, the party will go on as normal, I planned for a poisoning.”

“You did what?!”

Hunter chuckled. “This isn’t my first party. Although I’m usually the one who ends up poisoned somehow. This is a nice change.”

“Hunter?” Camila asked in a strangled whisper, “What do you mean?”

Hunter waved a hand. “Oh, you know the saying! It’s not a party ‘til someone gets poisoned!” He looked up at the adults, who were all just staring at him, facial expressions ranging from pity to downright horror. “What? Lilith used to say it all the time. Usually right after someone, usually me, got poisoned. Sure, it was probably meant for one of the coven heads and not me at the time, but I was probably the only one with any poison resistance training anyway, so that was for the best.” Hunter clicked his pen back and forth a couple of times. “Eda, I don’t know how much poison… resistance… you’ve…”

Click, click, click, click.

“Why are you all staring at me like that?”

Click, click, click, click, clickclickclickclickclick.

“Hunter,” Camila started gently.

Clickclickclickclickclickclick.

“’s not normal, is it.”

“Well, I’ve heard a similar saying!” Bump tried, “Granted, it was about crying, not poisoning, but…”

Hunter tossed the pen against the clipboard. “Of course it’s not normal. Of course not. Why can’t one thing be normal, why can’t I have ever done one normal thing in my life? Why is everything about my life wrong to everyone?!”

“Hey—” Eda held her hands up. “Hunter—”

“I get it, okay? I get that—that Belos—I got it, the hot and cold treatment wasn’t normal, getting told I was special but replaceable wasn’t normal, getting…” Hunter’s breath hitched in his chest, and he clutched at his head. “…getting hurt by him wasn’t normal,” he whispered, “I got all that. But why can’t any one thing I say ever be normal?!”

He looked up at the adults who were all just looking, they were all just staring at him, and it wasn’t just Bump, and Camila, and Eda, it was everyone. They’d all stopped dancing, or talking, or eating just to stare.

Hunter’s heart thudded in his chest, and he walked towards the door as quickly as he could without running, pushing past the people who kept staring at him, their eyes burning into his back.

The instant he made it to the hallway, he ran, bolting through the hallways and away from the gym. He pushed through a set of doors and hopped up onto a stage, stomping over to the wings, behind the curtain, where it was dark and quiet. Hunter slid down the wall, landing with a whump on the ground.

Why can’t something just be normal?

Why can’t you just be normal?

Why do you always make everyone uncomfortable?!

“Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut,” he whispered into the darkness, “Maybe Belos was right about that.”

Footsteps echoed down the hallway—the clicks of Eda’s heels, the tap of Camila’s flats, and a heavier thump.

“This seems… more your kind of situation,” Camila’s voice murmured.

Hunter heard the sound of a clap. “Yeah, stuff from the coven we don’t understand is your wheelhouse.”

The door to the auditorium creaked open—apparently no one had oiled the hinges in all of the repairs—and those heavy thumps came towards the stage.

“Go away!” Hunter called, “Eda said it, the party will be fine, even if I’m not there.”

“Who cares about the party?” Darius snorted, leaning against the wall next to Hunter, “Well. You do. But I’m not here for the party.”

“You should go anyway. Just leave me here, I did all that work for it and then I was the one who nearly ruined it.”

“You didn’t ruin it. Even if you did, what’s the point of throwing a party if you don’t get to dramatically ruin it?” Darius waved a hand. “I’ve had a couple of parties… but that’s beside the point.”

Hunter curled his knees to his chest. “I didn’t do anything normal. Ever. And it’s not even just like—like I just missed out on experiences, it’s like I did the opposite of things that are normal.”

“Mmm. That’s not true. You had a teenage rebellion. That’s normal.”

“I mean before. Before I went to the human realm, before I met Luz, nothing I did was normal. Nothing at all. Even the parties, parties are normal things, but the ones I went to… what was normal at those gatherings aren’t normal party things.”

Darius let out a long sigh. “Poisonings at those parties wasn’t normal, either.”

“What?”

“They weren’t normal.”

“But Lilith always said—”

“Lilith didn’t say that because it was normal, Lilith said that so she could appear calm and in control. Lilith said that to keep the party from going sour and tarnishing her reputation. Lilith investigated each case thoroughly and obsessively afterwards, and she always found the culprit.”

“But they were normal to me, Darius!” Hunter stood, grabbing Darius’ arms, as if that would make him understand. “They were normal to me, and that’s the problem! It was normal to me to get poisoned on the regular, it was normal to not have any friends, it was normal to get up at five in the morning, it was normal, all of it was normal! It was normal for Belos to lash out, it was normal for Belos to hit me, it was normal!” He let go of Darius’ arms, sinking back down to the floor and hugging himself. “And now it’s not.”

Darius let out a long sigh, then finally dropped down next to Hunter, one knee up, and his arm resting on that knee. “I had a normal childhood.”

“Good for you?”

“Thanks. I had a normal childhood. And then from the moment I met your predecessor, nothing else was normal. It’s not normal for your mentor to disappear mysteriously. It’s not normal to become a coven head at age twenty. It’s not normal to find out that your emperor is planning on exterminating his entire realm, or at least I don’t think it is. It wasn’t normal for some kid to be running around the coven in a high rank position. It isn’t normal for me to ignore that. It’s not normal for a god-child to burst out of nowhere and turn the isles into his playplace. None of my adulthood has been normal.” Darius waved a hand at the air in front of him. “Camila’s child disappeared to another dimension, and then she traveled to another realm herself to fight a dictator and a god child! That’s not normal! And Eda—actually, I don’t think Eda’s had a single normal day in her entire life.”

Darius settled back again. “My point is, the isles haven’t exactly been ‘normal.’ Not for a while. No one’s had a perfectly normal life. Not you. Not me. Not anyone.”

“Then why does everyone act like it’s the worst thing to happen?!”

Darius drew a hand over his face with a long sigh. “It’s not because it’s not normal, Hunter, it’s… it’s because you got hurt, and you don’t seem to think that you did. And they—we—get worried that you’ll be hurt again, and that you won’t realize it, because you think it’s just normal. And that’s why they look at you like that. We want to make sure you know it wasn’t normal, because we don’t want it to happen to you again. Does that make sense?”

Hunter sighed. “I guess.”

“We’re not leaving this auditorium until you’re sure.”

“It’s because they care,” Hunter grumbled, “I know. I know it’s because they care.”

“You don’t sound too happy about it. If they make you uncomfortable when they do that, you just have to tell them. They’ll understand, they won’t be angry.”

“Mhm.”

Darius got up, dusting his cape off. “I see that I have my exhausted my ‘get in touch with your feelings’ limit for the day, and you’re just agreeing so that you can leave this conversation, so I suppose that means said conversation is over.”

“It’s not you, it’s…”

“You know it in your head, but you don’t really feel it, of course, of course.” Darius snapped his fingers, and Hunter’s clipboard appeared in a bubble of abomination. “I will take over making sure the party runs smoothly. You go enjoy it. Titan knows you should get some fun out of it after all that planning and stressing. Really. I swear you are like one of those human sharks, if you stop moving you die.”

Hunter scrambled to his feet. “Are you sure?”

Darius waved a hand. “Yes, yes, yes. I just walk around and check things off this list? Excellent. Now go. Oh, and Hunter?”

“Yes?”

“No one will get poisoned on my watch.”

#toh #the owl house #toh fanfiction #referenced child abuse #my writing #writing requests #dadrius #darius deamonne #toh hunter #camila noceda #eda clawthorne

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