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There are days where Raine’s body aches due to age, the change in air pressure, and from sleeping wrong, and usually it’s solved with a potion to ease the aches and pains in their bones and joints, but this time it’s their scars that are hurting. Their cheeks felt like they were burning, and no amount of ice cubes, cold washcloths, or burn remedies can stop the feeling, so they’ve resorted to going upstairs to the bathroom where the healing patches are stored.
Eda had to stock up on them ever since the kids started getting the same burning, or itching, or numbing feeling in their scars left by Belos, or in King’s case, headaches or migraines from the crack in his skull. Elio's scars are on both of his hands and the pain started some time after turning everyone back into living beings, and now their hands shake every time they try to use stronger magic. Luz’s scars are less visible on some parts of her body, but it’s most noticeable on her right hand, and every time the scars start to hurt, her hand twitches lightly or violently, depending on how bad the pain is. Hunter… he’s had so many scars before the possession, he says that the new ones barely hurt. Sometimes they’re numb, but other times he says that his skin was being eaten away again, or the phantom pain where his sigil is would feel like his veins were about to burst. The crack in King’s skull would still give him migraines once in a while and it would make the tiny Titan fall to the ground in pain and cry. Bright lights or loud noises are often the cause of the headaches he gets, but they would start up on their own out of nowhere.
While Eda had a handful of healing patches already, having Elio, King, and Raine going through constant pain made her go out to get more since one patch isn’t going to be enough for each of them, and she made sure to get extras for Luz and Hunter because, although they don't live with her all the time, they’re her kids, too. She wants everyone to be as comfortable as possible, swearing she will commit crime to get them the stuff to soothe their pain, which she already did, but she said that she’ll do it again if she has to. Raine appreciates it, as do the kids.
As they make it to the top of the steps, Raine spots a healing patch on the ground in front of Luz’s room. Someone must’ve gotten some patches and dropped one. They walked up to the door and picked up the patch, and they could hear quiet sobs and hushed words from through the cracked door. Peering through, they find Luz on the bed with King laying in her lap, both wearing patches on their affected body parts. Luz was running her good hand through the fur on King’s back as the little Titan whimpered in pain, one paw gently holding his damaged skull and the other clutching onto Luz’s jacket. They hear Hunter and Elio's voices, presumably on the other side of the bed, as well as the sound of the cover being peeled off of a patch.
“How are you feeling?” Whispered Hunter, keeping his voice low for King.
“A little better. Though I wish my hands would stop shaking,” Elio sighed. “I’d help you, too.”
“It’s alright, I’ve got it. Just focus on getting better, okay?”
“Okay…”
So all four of them were getting nerve pain as well, thought Raine. Seems like today is a bad day for all of them. They sigh quietly and head to the bathroom to get a couple of healing patches for themself, applying the smallest ones to their face and the largest ones onto their arms, breathing out a sigh of relief as the effects soothed the burning pain with cool pulses of magic. They turned to the mirror and brought a hand onto their face, gingerly brushing their fingertips over the tear stain-shaped marks left from when the green sludge had poured out of their eyes. Their eyes were so sore after the adrenaline had worn off, and it would always feel like there was still some of that gunk behind their eyes. They would always wake up scratching at their eyes in a panic whenever they got that feeling, the phantom pressure making it feel like Belos was still in them, waiting to take over and make them hurt their loved ones. They were lucky to have Eda to calm them and reassure them that Belos wasn’t in their body.
One night, they had heard Hunter wake up screaming, ‘Get out! Get out!!’ and they and Eda had run into his and Luz’s shared room to find him scratching wildly at his arms and having his finger in a death grip as if he was trying to squeeze something out of it. It’s just like how Raine would feel when they would feel like something was shifting around under their skin, and it would freak them out. Their experience is nowhere near as traumatic as Hunter’s, but they both share a strong bond unlike anyone else in having been possessed by the former emperor. They wish they could bring him back so they could kill him again, for Hunter, for them, for everyone he’s hurt directly and indirectly. Not a single bit of him was left after he was stomped into a puddle that dissolved in the boiling rain. It was better that way.
Hurried footsteps dragged them out of their thoughts, and Hunter shoved the bathroom door open with haste. He let out a startled squeak when he saw Raine standing there, but he quickly recovered from his shock.
“King needs a painkiller,” he said as he began rummaging through the cabinets for a potion bottle of Eda’s strongest painkiller, “his migraine isn’t going away and it seems to be getting worse.”
“‘Worse’?” Raine echoed.
“He threw up.”
Oh. That’s definitely bad.
He pulls out a bottle and looks it over, then he stood up and rushed out of the bathroom without another word, taking the bottle with him. Raine followed after him, stopping in front of the closet door to find Luz cradling King on his back and Hunter coaxing him into opening his mouth so he could give him the painkiller. Elio was hovering over Luz’s shoulder with a scared look as they watched the eldest boy give the youngest the potion. The whimpers he was making were heartbreaking to hear.
King fought to not throw up again after he drank the potion, but he settled against Luz and she stroked his cheek fur with her thumb to comfort him. She looked up when she noticed Raine out of the corner of her eye and sighed softly. She looked exhausted.
The old witch gave her an empathetic smile and walked over to them, holding their hands out in front of Luz, “I can take him so you can get yourself cleaned up,” they whispered to her.
The human girl seemed hesitant to let her little Titan brother go, especially when he wants her comfort, but it wouldn’t be pleasant for him to lay there with his head close to the stain he left on her pant leg, and it was pretty gross, so she carefully passes him over into Raine’s arms, where he curled into them and buried his face into their chest. Luz got up and took a pair of pants with her to the bathroom, and Hunter took the top cover off and left to go downstairs to retrieve a mop and bucket to clean up whatever fell to the floor, leaving Raine, King, and Elio alone in the dark, quiet room.
The latter shuffled over to Raine and pressed themself against their arm, rubbing their still shaky hands together nervously. Raine smiled at them and mouthed, “He’ll be okay.”
Elio relaxed a bit, but he didn’t move away. He wanted to be as close to King as he could, to be there for him if needed.
Hunter returned with a bucket of water and a mop and cleaned up the vomit, and Luz came back to sit next to Raine, also pressing herself against their arm. Hunter soon joined them once he was done but sat back a ways to give King some breathing room. The little Titan was fast asleep, exhausted from the pain and nausea and the painkiller giving him relief from the migraine.
Moments passed, and Luz and Elio were beginning to slowly drift away. Raine woke them up and told them to move against the headboard so they could lean against it. They did, and Luz and Elio returned to their spots on Raine’s shoulders, closing their eyes immediately. Hunter got up to get a large quilted blanket and spread it over everyone before sitting down on the edge of the bed. Luz opened her eyes and reached her hands out to make grabby gestures at her brotherly friend, and he got up to move closer, Luz shuffling down so Hunter can sit down behind her and she leaned her back against his chest with her head on his shoulder, holding gently onto his arms that were wrapped around her waist, and closed her eyes again.
Raine leaned their head back against the headboard and let their eyes slide close. Their neck and back were going to be hurting after this, but oh well. They’re already comfortable and so are the kids. Maybe the effects of the healing patches will last long enough to make their old aching body tolerable once they wake up later.