Chapter Text
Amity doesn’t like to be late getting anywhere. She also doesn’t like to be early. The art of being right on time was one she had long-since mastered through careful honing of the anxious energy that lived in the pit of her stomach.
It was a bit silly to be anxious about arriving perfectly on time to game night, especially when other members of their friend group (cough cough Luz) were not the best at keeping track of time, but old habits die hard.
It’s Gus’s turn to host, which means they’ll likely be playing mostly human games with Luz and Hunter arguing over how strictly to adhere to the rules sheet and eventually end up watching those goofy sci-fi movies. Amity can’t find it in herself to be upset, even if she would rather watch The Good Witch Azura and play one of those epic strategy games that only she and Hunter really actually enjoy. It was nice to enjoy mundane, normal activities with her friends. Being a little bit bored sometimes was a welcome change of pace. She’s recently realized that she’s spent way too much of her life way too stressed out.
Amity knocks on Gus’s door at exactly 6:00, just like she does every game night. She hears the thunder of feet rushing down the stairs and moments later Gus is throwing open the door with a wide grin.
“Amity! Welcome, welcome. Come on in. You’re the first one here. Willow’s internship with the Palestrom Forest Conservation Center ran long but she’s on her way, and Luz just messaged that she’s headed through the portal now.”
Amity smiles and shrugs off her jacket, before pulling a tin out of her bag. “Sounds good. I brought cookies! Camila’s recipe.”
Somehow, Gus’s already excited eyes lit up more. “Sweet. Thanks, Amity. I’ll add them to the snack table.”
He takes the tin and dashes off to the living room. Amity hangs up her jacket on the back of a chair and follows him, looking around. Gus and his dad’s house had needed some rebuilding after all the destruction with the Collector and Belos, but Amity has never actually visited before everything went down, and to the untrained eye you can’t tell anything had ever been damaged. Photos of Gus and a few of him and his dad hang on the walls. The furniture is cozy and the lighting is warm. Gus’s human paraphernalia is scattered around and his various school and flyer derby awards are displayed proudly on shelves and above the fireplace. Amity really likes visiting Gus’s and Willow’s houses. They always felt so nice and lived in, unlike the mansion she’s grown up in. It's easier to get comfortable and relax with her friends.
“Hey, where’s Hunter?” she calls, not spotting the only one of their friends Gus hasn’t mentioned yet. Hunter usually stays with Gus after school on Friday night game nights. No sense in taking the portal all the way home just to turn around and come right back. Unlike her adopted brother, Luz still has to go to human school in Gravesfield so she would make the journey and then sleep over with the rest of them.
“Huh?” Gus looks up from the coffee table where he's adding her tin of cookies to the array of various snacks.
“Hunter?” Amity repeats.
Gus raises his eyebrows. “I don’t know what that means, Amity.”
“You don’t--”
She’s abruptly cut off when the front door bangs open. “Gus! I made it! And I brought a friend!”
Amity turns around at the sound of her girlfriend’s voice, delighted butterflies flitting through her like they always did when Luz was around. She figures the ‘friend’ in question would be Hunter, but nope, it’s Willow, still dressed in her lab coat with the PFCC logo emblazoned on it. Luz has her arm slung around Willow’s shoulders and they’re both smiling, cheeks and noses tinted pink from the chill outside.
“Perfect!” Gus jumps up. “Let’s get this party started!”
“Wait,” Amity says, wrapping an arm around Luz and trying not to blush too stupidly at the kiss that gets planted on her cheek. “We’re still missing one.”
Luz frowns at her. “You okay, batata?” She points at each of their friends and then herself in turn. “One, two, three, four. That’s all of us. We’re good to go, as long as Gus didn’t lose all the Monopoly money again.”
“Hunter?” she asks again, starting to feel like she’s going nuts.
“Hun--wha? Huh?” Luz looks genuinely bewildered. Amity stares at her, trying to figure out the joke, but Luz doesn’t break, doesn’t show any sign that she knows what Amity’s talking about. Which is impossible. Luz obviously knows who Hunter is. He lives in her house, for Titan’s sake.
“She keeps saying that,” Gus whispers loudly. “I don’t know what she’s talking about. Do either of you?”
Willow shakes her head, frowning too. “No idea.”
“You feeling okay, Ami?” Luz asks, pressing the back of her hand to Amity’s forehead. “You don’t feel feverish, but you do run cold. You think you might be coming down with a mold?”
“No,” she says slowly. The whole world feels off-kilter. She doesn’t understand what’s happening. “I’m fine. Let’s just… let’s just play.”
She lets Luz guide her to the carpet in Gus’s living room and tries to act like herself while Gus and Willow argue over who gets to be banker. Luz keeps shooting her worried glances out of the corner of her eyes, but doesn’t mention Hunter or molds again.
“Amity should be the banker,” Luz finally says. “She’s the best at it. No offence.”
“Ugh, gross. Don’t be all sappy right in front of us,” Gus says dramatically, but he slides the Monopoly money over to Amity anyway.
She starts passing out their starter money, working almost on instinct as her head spins. Oh Titan, she’s going crazy. The too-large gap between Willow and Gus haunts her for the rest of the evening. Amity ignores it as best she can.
That night, after everyone falls asleep in front of the crystal ball, Amity sneaks up to Gus’s room. She doesn’t like invading his personal space like this, but she has to investigate. She just has to find some rational explanation, because the alternative is that she’s lost her mind and somehow hallucinated a whole person and possibly the whole past year.
Hunter has to be real. Amity can’t be crazy. She’s smart, she’s organized, she’s thorough, and above all, she does not have hallucinations of former enemies turned pathetic nerdy friends.
Gus’s room is a mess. If she’d thought there was a lot of human stuff downstairs, the living room had nothing on Gus’s room. The shelves and dresser are lined with junk from the Human Realm. Which is especially odd considering they’d stayed in the Human Realm look enough for Gus to know that most of this was truly unimpressive junk that they could pull out of the Nocedas' trash can at any time.
She ignores the paperclips and DVDs, searching for pictures. Willow’s new photography hobby from the past summer had meant all of them had ended up with a collection of photos she’d gifted to them. Amity’s own collection is stored in a scrapbook under her pillow, but Gus she knows likes to have his things out on display so he can look at them whenever.
There! On the wall is a collage of posters and photos alike. Pictures of Gus and Willow grinning, and Gus and Luz laughing, and that one of Gus, Willow, Amity, and Vee from their day out towards the end of their stay in the Human Realm. And there’s what she’s looking for, what she needs to prove she isn’t crazy: flyer derby.
A truly exorbitant number of fisheye lens photos of Gus’s palisman, Emmilline, partially obscure most of the other pictures, but Amity catches sight of a blob of green and shifts a cross-eyed Emmilline out of the way to get a better look. And there they are: Gus, Willow, Skara, Viney, and --
And the rest of the photo is missing, the corner burnt away where Hunter should be. Amity scrambles. This can’t be the only proof. Gus has to have another photo. She rustles through the other photos, desperate to find what she’s looking for.
Our First Tournament! the caption reads. Skara and Viney are cheering and Willow is holding up a trophy and Gus is clearly on someone’s shoulders pumping his fists but Amity can’t make out who because this damn picture is burnt too!
Amity slides her thumb over the edge of the burnt paper. Some of the ash flicks off and colors the pad of her fingers.
“Where are you?” she asks the empty room. “Where did you go?”
None of the photos answer her, which is nice. If Amity is going crazy at least she’s not hallucinating talking photographs just yet.
Feeling nauseous and somewhat floaty, Amity quietly pockets the flyer derby tournament photo and creeps back downstairs. Her friends -- the ones in Gus’s living room at least -- are still sound asleep and, in Willow’s case, snoring. Amity wriggles back into her sleeping bag as silently as she can, watching in the dim light as one of Luz’s stray curls moves with each deep exhale.
Amity doesn’t sleep a wink.
Her investigation begins the next day. Luz has weekend plans with King and Eda, and Willow and Gus have flyer derby practice, so Amity has just enough free time to try to figure out if she’s going insane or if this is all some elaborate, cruel prank.
Step One: Find any evidence that Hunter exists and is a real person who heroically helped save the Boiling Isles and also once accidentally sewed a sweater he was working on to his own lap.
Step Two: Find some way to thoroughly punish whoever decided to make her feel and look like an idiot.
Obviously, the first place to look for Hunter is at his home, so Amity grabs Ghost and heads off for the human realm. After Belos and the Collector, they’d installed a permanent portal between the realms, and while it’s primarily used by Hunter and Luz who go back and forth on an almost daily basis, Amity and her other friends come and go freely. Amity even has a library card at the Gravesfield Public Library.
Amity knocks politely on her girlfriend’s front door and waits patiently. Camila opens up a moment later.
“Amity!” she smiles brightly and waves her inside. “Come in, mija! Come in! Luz isn’t here, but you’re always welcome.”
“Thank you, Camila.”
Despite living in this house for three months last year, now that she’s back at home, Amity always feels the urge to be on her best behavior at the Noceda house. She loves Camila, but she’s also Amity’s girlfriend’s mom, so Amity has to keep making a good impression. Camila is just about the nicest person Amity’s ever met, and Amity knows she would never really be upset with her, but old habits die hard.
“How are you?” Camila asks as she closes the door behind Amity. “Everything alright?”
“I’m good,” Amity lies. “I actually was hoping to speak with you, if that’s okay?”
“Sure, sweetheart. Want to have a seat in the kitchen with me? I was just making myself some lunch. Would you like anything?” Camila’s smile never wavers, and Amity feels warm, just like she always does when faced with the overwhelming kindness and generosity of the Nocedas.
“I’m alright, thank you,” Amity says, having a seat at the kitchen table. Camila passes her a glass of water anyway. From her lap, Ghost swipes at the glass until Amity pats her on the head to soothe her until she settles down to nap.
“So what’s up?” Camila asks, sitting down across from Amity. There are still seven place settings squished together at the table, complete with a few mismatched chairs. That’s a good sign. If Hunter weren’t real, there would only be six places. Probably.
“Um,” Amity fidgets somewhat nervously. It feels awkward. How are you supposed to ask someone you respect so much if her son is a real person? “Can I ask first -- who else is home?”
“Just me right now,” Camila answers.
“Right. Right.” Amity coughs. “Where is everyone else?”
“Well, Luz is in the Demon Realm. It’s Saturday, so she’s with Eda and King. Hopefully not getting herself into too much trouble! And Vee is at a friend’s house working on a school project.”
Amity nods. And waits. Camila doesn’t continue. “Anyone else?” she chances, feeling awkward.
Camila’s brow furrows slightly in confusion. “No, it’s just the three of us. Is everything alright, Amity?”
Amity plasters on her best everything-is-fine smile and nods. “Yes, sorry. My brain is just still warming up. I didn’t sleep much last night.”
“Ah.” Camila nods understandingly. “Slumber parties will do that to you!”
“Right. Yes. Actually, I’m sorry, but I think I left my sweater in the basement last time I was here. Do you mind if I go look for it?”
Camila blinks, a little surprised by Amity’s sudden change in conversation. “Sure thing, sweetheart. I’m going to make you a sandwich. A growing girl needs to eat!”
“Thank you, Camila!” she calls as she heads for the basement stairs. “You’re too nice.”
“Nonsense!”
Amity nearly trips in her haste to get down the stairs. The basement looks the same as it did last time she was down here, which was actually quite a while ago. When they visit the Human Realm, they tend to spend most of their time in the living room. The basement is Hunter’s room, so Amity doesn’t spend much time there. It’s mostly the space they shun Gus and Hunter to when they start to get too nerdy for even the rest of their group.
She nearly sobs with relief when she sees the twin bed in the corner of the room. The bed is made up with the careful neatness of someone who’d spent years as a soldier in the Emperor’s Coven, the red quilt tucked tight and the pillows stacked. The Cosmic Frontier poster is still up on the wall, pinned right next to a drawing Luz made of all of them. Hunter doesn’t have any photographs hanging up; Amity knows he doesn’t particularly like the way he looks in photos, but she’s pretty sure the polaroid of him and Flapjack from that first flyer derby game used to be around here somewhere. She doesn’t see it now.
She pulls open the closet door, feeling guilty for invading Hunter’s privacy but not guilty enough to not do it. Half the closet is still storage, including a bunch of Camila’s old Cosmic Frontier merchandise, but there are clothes hanging on the left and extra sheets and blankets folded on the shelf. Hunter’s horrible, ugly crocs are on the floor, but his sneakers are missing. A few shirts and sweaters are hanging up, but many of the hangers are empty.
The pit in Amity’s stomach grows. Luz had once worriedly whispered that she was pretty sure Hunter kept a go-bag in his closet. She’d been upset that Hunter still didn’t feel fully comfortable with them, but didn’t want to bring it up with Hunter. Amity can’t see a bag like that anywhere in the closet, which means it’s probably with Hunter.
Wherever he is. Wherever he is. Because he does exist!
It’s just that nobody except Amity remembers him… Not his best friends, not his sister, not even Camila.
Amity has hit a wall. A big, fat brick wall. And she’s hit it hard.
Hunter has been missing for a week now, and Amity has made no progress in finding him. The problem is Hunter. He can teleport, has like a decade of scout survivalist training, and he’s just stupid and crazy enough to hide somewhere he can’t be found.
He’s also stupid and crazy enough to do something rash and dangerous. Thankfully, it seems like years and years of training as the Golden Guard have made him instinctively talented enough to offset his truly abysmally low levels of self-preservation. Still, Hunter is mildly self-deprecating on his best days, so she can’t help but worry.
Titan, he’s had a hard enough time realizing that his friends deeply care for him and don’t expect him to give or do anything in return. Amity understands; this has been an internal battle for herself as well. This recent development cannot be helping his self-esteem.
Images of Hunter face-first in the shallow grave he’d dug for himself at Eclipse Lake flash into her mind against her will. She shakes the thought away quickly. No, no. He’s come a loooong way from digging his own grave. She has to believe that. She has to operate on the assumption that he’s alive and just hiding somewhere, because she’s pretty sure the alternative might kill her.
“Okay,” she says, pacing her room. Ghost meows and begins to follow her back and forth, tail swishing. “Okay, think logically, Amity.”
“Meow.” Ghost weaves between her legs, but Amity steps around her deftly. They’ve had a lot of practice with this. Dimly, Amity registers that her palisman is saying something, but she’s concentrating on working through her problem.
“He’s not at home, he’s not with Darius and Eberwolf, he’s not hiding out at Hexside again.”
“Meow.”
“He has survival skills, and I know scouts are supposed to be able to survive in the wilderness for like weeks, and one time he told Luz that if Vee was uncomfortable with having the Golden Guard live in her house, he could just camp out in the woods.”
“Meow.”
“So he’s probably hiding out in the woods somewhere!” She turns to Ghost with a smile and her palisman smiles back, then headbutts her shin.
With a heavy sigh, Amity flops backwards onto the foot of her bed. “Ugh, but that really doesn’t narrow it down at all. There are hundreds of acres of woods outside Bonesboro alone. And that’s assuming he stayed close to home and didn’t, like, flee to the Knee or something.”
Ghost jumps up onto her stomach and begins helpfully making biscuits. She doesn’t seem particularly worried, which does nothing to comfort Amity. Ghost, she’d realized, somehow also has no idea who Hunter is, so she’s not really offering any helpful advice. But she does understand that Amity is upset, and she’s doing her best to alleviate her stress. Ghost is so great at that. Amity loves her so much.
But Ghost forgetting Hunter raises another important question -- does Waffles remember Hunter? And if she doesn’t, where is she? And can Hunter really bear to lose another palisman? Waffles is still so young… Amity hopes against hope that she’s alright, wherever she is. She really hopes she’s with Hunter. If Hunter is actually, truly alone out there, Amity is really worried about what he might do. He makes really, really terrible decisions when he doesn’t have his people there to tell him he’s being an idiot.
“I gotta find him fast, Ghost,” she mumbles, scratching Ghost behind the ears.
“Meow,” Ghost says, and this time Amity has the sense to actually process what she’s saying. "Spell?"
Amity frowns at the ceiling. “There are locator spells, but I don’t know any of them off the top of my head. And I know they vary depending on if the person you’re trying to locate is a witch or a demon, and Hunter technically is neither of those… And there’s practically no research on grimwalkers so I have no idea if there would even be a spell for locating grimwalkers, but maybe he’s close enough to being biologically a witch that one of those would work. Or maybe there’s one that would work on a human? Would that be closer to a grimwalker or would a witch be? Or--”
“Meow.” Ghost cuts her rambling off with a firm heatbutt. "Hush. Less talking, more trying! Amity can figure it out!"
“Well, even if I can’t figure it out, I have to at least try. Thanks, Ghost.”
She moves to sit up and head to the library, but Ghost has decided now is apparently the time to take a nap on Amity’s neck.
“Okay, five minutes,” Amity caves, as a thank you to her palisman for pulling her out of yet another spiral.
When they’d stayed in the Human Realm, there had been a brief period of time where Gus got really into making woven friendship bracelets. In his excitement and desperation for a distraction, he had roped Hunter into his hobby, too. Neither boy had been the next friendship bracelet making prodigy, but Gus had been significantly better at it than Hunter. Still, that didn’t stop Hunter from valiantly giving his best effort, and both boys had presented the rest of the group with handmade string bracelets at lunch one day. Gus’s bracelets were much neater, but Amity could really see all the painstaking effort Hunter had put into carefully tying each knot.
Amity’s bracelet is woven strings of pink, purple, and black. The pattern had been messed up and restarted in more than a few places, and the length of the bracelet was too big for Amity to comfortably wear without it slipping off. She had waved off his apologies and made use of the bracelet as a bookmark instead. Honestly, it was more practical that way, and Hunter had seemed satisfied with the results.
She had gone and dug the makeshift bookmark out of her latest read -- a fantasy romance book from the Human Realm that Amity, Luz, and Willow were all reading for the mini book club they’d started. Now, she holds the bracelet in a shaking hand over the bubbling bowl in her lap.
In the largest bowl she could find in the kitchen cabinets, the potion Amity is brewing swirls and gurgles. It’s turned a gnarly green-gray color, which the book says is correct but is really off-putting anyway, and just needs one final ingredient: an object with significant emotional or sentimental ties to the spell’s target.
Titan, she hopes this works. She needs this to work. With everything else seemingly having disappeared, this bracelet is the last tie she has to Hunter other than her own memories. She’d decided on using a spell to locate witches, and she just has to pray that it will work on a grimwalker. All that’s left to do is add the sentimental item and stir counterclockwise thirteen times.
It’s just… the potion will destroy the item. When she does this, the bracelet Hunter took his time and effort to carefully craft for her will be gone. And that’s a price she’s willing to pay if the spell works and she gets Hunter himself back. If it doesn’t work, she will have lost the only thing he’s ever gifted her and she won’t have anything else to try again with. Plus, it feels wrong, destroying a gift one of her friends made especially for her.
“I’m sorry, Hunter,” she says, closing her eyes. Still, her fingers won’t seem to unclench. Her hand trembles harder. “I can do this. It’s fine. It’ll work. I can--”
Her eyes fly open as Ghost, apparently tired of Amity’s stalling, bonks herself into her outstretched arm, knocking the bracelet into the bowl.
“Ghost!” she admonishes, then regrets it immediately as the bubbling turns into a roil and the disgusting sludge-colored liquid suddenly flashes and turns a brilliant gold. “Oh. Thanks.” She grabs the spoon and stirs, counting carefully.
The moment she completes the thirteenth stir, the bubbling suddenly stops and the surface of the liquid goes so still and flat it looks like a golden mirror. Amity leans over the bowl carefully, silently praying to the Titan that it doesn’t suddenly explode and burn off her eyebrows. She has learned before that she can’t pull off that look.
Slowly but surely, the liquid begins to swirl, until the patterns start to separate and twist until an image forms in the surface. Hunter sits against some sort of stone wall, gazing at something in his lap. It’s a small lump of misshapen wood, Hunter’s carving knife abandoned on the ground next to him. He looks alright. He’s alive, at least, although there’s dirt on his cheek and his clothes are rumpled. It looks like he hasn’t brushed his hair in a while, and it’s getting too long again. Amity knows he hates it when it’s touching his neck. But at the very least, he doesn’t look too malnourished, and based on the flickering lighting, it seems he has a fire going wherever he is to protect from the chill.
What worries her the most is the look on his face. He looks blank, empty. He’s not frowning, he’s not scowling, there are no tear tracks on his face. No, he just looks numb. He’s back to the way he used to be, right after Belos and the Collector and Flapjack: alive but not living, surviving but not feeling. It’s like he’s been stripped of all his Golden Guard cockiness and his Hunter endearing nerdiness.
“Damn,” Amity mutters, although she’s not sure what else she was expecting. What would she be like, if she were in his place? If all her friends and family, everyone she loves, suddenly forgot about her? She’s only just recently built this family for herself, and Hunter’s had even less time knowing what it’s like to be cared about and cared for. Just the thought of losing everyone and everything like that makes her heart ache fiercely, then makes her stomach flip like she’s got a stomach mold.
Okay, yeah. Maybe Hunter is still somehow alive is actually the best case scenario right now.
With a shake of her head, Amity tears herself away from the image. She still has to finish the spell, so she can actually locate Hunter and hopefully knock some sense back into him. Amity carefully draws a spell circle, and a tiny abomination grows from a puddle of goo in her other hand. She tips her hand over, dropping the abomination into the potion. Immediately, the image disappears as the abomination seems to suck up all the gold, leaving behind clear water with a miniature abomination floating in it. Amity fishes it out of the water, and immediately the little thing tugs on her sleeve and points behind her, trying to guide her to her target.
It worked! Amity is on her feet in seconds, ignoring how her knees ache from kneeling on the floor for so long.
“Okay, okay,” she grins as the abomination figure gestures insistently at the stairs. She takes them two at a time and summons Ghost in the process. Her palisman bounds over to her and then transforms into staff form, ready for the trip.
Amity pulls the door open and very nearly bowls her girlfriend right over.
“Luz!” she cries, stopping suddenly. In a rush, she tucks the abomination into her coat pocket and ignores the way it pokes at her side grumpily.
Luz looks just as shocked as she is, her hand raised in a fist to knock on the door Amity has just thrown open, but she recovers quickly.
“Hey, Ami,” Luz smiles nervously. Uh oh. Something is wrong. Why is something else going wrong?
“Hi, batata!” Amity swoops forward to give her girlfriend a quick peck on the cheek. “Everything okay? Sorry I just about ran you over!”
Luz waves her off. “I was actually coming over to check on you. You’ve been acting… odd. Willow said you blew off your after school workout to go to the library. And I know you love the library! But you’ve seemed more… obsessive than usual. So I just wanted to check and make sure everything’s okay?” She shifts nervously, watching Amity closely.
Amity blinks. Oh, Titan, sometimes she still forgets what it’s like to have friends who care about you and worry about you and know your habits -- bad and good.
“I’m fine, Luz,” she says, plastering on a smile that hopefully doesn’t look as unnatural as it feels. “I’m just… working on a new project with my dad.” Sure, that works. That sounds good. “And I guess I’ve just gotten really into it. I didn’t mean to blow Willow off or make any of you worry…”
Luz relaxes and Amity instantly feels guilty for deceiving her girlfriend. They had long since sworn not to keep secrets from each other, but Amity doesn’t know how to explain what’s actually going on without causing Luz to freak out. Or worse, not believe her and think she’s going crazy. She’ll explain everything. Later. Once everyone is back where they should be.
Luz’s smile is sweeter than anything she deserves. Amity is so, so lucky. “It’s alright, Ami. Titan knows I understand what it’s like to get fixated on a project! I’m glad you and your dad are spending some more time together.”
“Thanks, Luz.” She pulls her girlfriend into a hug. It’s warm and comforting and Amity wishes she could stay here forever. The abomination figure angrily kicks her in the hip.
“Hey,” she chances as she reluctantly pulls back. “Do you ever… Do you ever feel like something is missing?”
The change of topic throws Luz for only a moment, then she’s right back to beaming at Amity. “I don’t think so. Life is pretty much the best it’s ever been right now. I have the coolest friends ever, the coolest basilisk sister and little Titan brother ever, the coolest moms ever, and the coolest girlfriend ever. What could be better than that?”
“Forget I asked,” Amity says. Something bitter clenches at her heart. “I’m just being silly today, I guess.”
The locator abomination leads her and Ghost to a cave in the middle of the forest to the north of Bonesboro. The trees here are tall and densely packed, forcing Amity to slow their flight and weave carefully amongst the leaves and branches. The moment they touch down in front of the rocky cliff face, the abomination melts away back into goop, the spell done and gone. Amity returns it to the pouch on her hip.
Ghost, now returned to her cat form, sniffs the air for a moment, and then darts off into the cave, not bothering to wait for Amity.
“Ghost!” she calls, running after her palisman, stumbling over the twigs and leaves littering the forest floor. Clearly Hunter did not want his tracks to be uncovered.
She ducks into the cave after Ghost and suddenly she can smell the campfire, and a moment later she can see the warm light bouncing off the rock. She follows the scent and the light around a bend and there --
Hunter is staring, bewildered, at the cat that’s apparently crawled into his lap and made herself at home. His hands are hovering over Ghost’s back awkwardly.
“Ghost!” Amity pants, catching her breath. The cold air makes her lungs sting. “Don’t be rude.”
“Smells good. Smells like friend.”
Amity shrugs. “That’s because he is a friend.”
It’s weird. Ghost doesn’t even remember Hunter, but she did always like him. In fact, all the palismen tended to love Hunter. She’s hypothesized that it had something to do with him being a grimwalker.
Now, Hunter finally looks up, his open-mouthed, bewildered stare moving from Ghost to Amity. He looks a wreck, like he hasn't slept all week. The dark bags under his eyes are back with a vengeance.
“Amity?” he whispers, and she almost doesn’t hear it, he’s so quiet. Like if he talks too loud she’ll simply vanish into thin air.
And because Amity is still adjusting to being a good friend and she’s more than a little awkward at times, she marches herself over and plops down against the cave wall next to Hunter.
“Hey,” she says back, voice barely louder than his.
“Do you…” Hunter fidgets, but his gaze never leaves her face. Amity fights the urge to squirm under his scrutiny. “Do you know who I am?”
“Yes,” she nods. “Hunter,” she adds, to reassure him.
“Do the-- Does anyone else?”
She pulls her knees up and rests her chin atop them, opting to stare at the far wall and watch the firelight flicker on the crevices and outcroppings in the rock.
“No. I’m the only one. But I never forgot you, I don’t think.”
“Oh.”
“Yeah, I thought I was going crazy.”
“Oh,” he repeats. “I’m sorry.”
She glares at the wall. “You should be. I don’t understand what’s happening. Why do none of our friends remember you? Why are you hiding in the woods? I’m about ninety-nine percent sure you did something really stupid.”
“I did a lot of stupid,” Hunter mumbles. “As the Golden Guard.”
Amity rounds on him, teeth clenched and fists clenching into the fabric of her tights. “Are you saying this was some ridiculous guilt-ridden self-sabotage attempt?”
Hunter’s eyes go wide. “No! I-- I wouldn’t…” He sighs. “I was cursed. This witch found me, and she said I had to pay for my crimes. From before.”
“And she made everyone forget you?”
Hunter scrubs a hand over his face. “She said… She said I didn’t deserve to be happy. Or loved. After everything I did. She said that I’d be erased from the minds of everyone who I’d tricked myself into thinking loved me.”
Amity goes cold. “First of all, she’s wrong. You didn’t have any choice in what Belos made you do. And you didn’t ‘trick’ yourself into thinking people love you. They love you, Hunter.”
He doesn’t respond. When she dares to glance back at his face, he’s pale, that empty look back in his eyes, his jaw clenched too tight. Clearly, he doesn’t believe her. Amity wants to punch something. She wants to throttle this evil witch.
Finally, when the silence has stretched long enough to become unbearable, Amity sighs. “We’ll figure this out. We’ll find some way to break the curse.”
Hunter shifts uncomfortably. Rhythmically, his fists clench and release and clench and release. Ghost headbutts his chest, but somehow he ignores her. “It’s just… I saw them, after it happened. They looked so happy without me bringing them down. They’re better off not knowing me, Amity, and you should just forget me too.”
Okay, now Amity is pissed. A distant part of herself who is really working on unpacking her feelings and becoming more emotionally mature screams that her anger is misplaced, but it’s really hard to hear that rational voice with the blood roaring in her ears.
“How dare you?” she hisses, and she’s on her feet before she even realizes it. “They’re your friends, your family. They are not happier without you, and you don’t get to unilaterally decide what’s best for them! For any of us!”
“I say all the wrong things!” Hunter yells back, getting to his own feet after carefully dumping Ghost on the ground. “I can’t be normal! I know I’m exhausting--”
“You’re not exhausting! You’re not a burden! You’re our friend and-- and--” She stomps her foot angrily. “You don’t get to take that away from us!”
“Amity, you of all people should know that they’re too nice for their own good. They’re too forgiving of everything I’ve done.”
“I don’t understand,” she says. Breathing is hard all of a sudden, and why does the world look blurry? “You said everyone who loves you forgot you.”
“Yeah. Everyone I tricked myself into thinking might love me.”
“Then why didn’t I forget?”
He freezes, eyes wide. His mouth drops open slightly, but no sound comes out. Amity blinks, and the blurriness gets worse. Hunter turns into a vaguely boy-shaped smudge.
“I love you,” she breathes. Wetness rolls down her cheeks and oh, that’s why it’s so hard to see. She scrubs at her tears with the back of her fist. “You’re one of my best friends and I love you. Why didn’t I forget you too?”
“You hate me,” Hunter says. “We fought, I threatened Luz. You don’t like me, Amity.”
“Of course I do!” she sobs. It’s embarrassing, but she can’t seem to stop blubbering, all the stress and loneliness bubbling out at once. There’s been a hole in her heart, and now the missing piece is standing in front of her and he just doesn’t get it. “You’re my friend and I love you.”
“Oh.”
“I’m not mad about Eclipse Lake anymore. I haven’t been in a long time. I thought you knew that.”
“I mean… I knew we weren't enemies anymore. We had a shared goal, and then shared friends…”
“I watched you die!” she snaps. “I cried over you.”
“I didn’t know that.”
“How could you?” she laughs hysterically, throwing her hands up. “You were dead!”
He winces and rubs at his chest. “I’m sorry. I didn’t know. Look, Amity, I really care about you too. You’re one of the most important people in my life, and you’re kind and tough and smart… I just never thought…”
“You’ve never been very good at thinking.”
Now he laughs, and Amity swears there are tears in his eyes too. His hands are shaking, and for a moment she’s scared he might be beginning to panic. She might be beginning to panic, too.
And then she’s doing something she wouldn’t normally do, something that maybe isn’t the best idea right now, but she can’t stop herself. Everything that’s been feeling so wrong is crashing over like a boiling tidal wave, and if she doesn’t grab hold of something, she might drown. Amity closes the gap between them in three long strides and throws her arms around her friend’s shoulders. Hunter goes stiff for just a moment, but then she feels his arms reach up and hug her back. Amazingly, he clings to her just as hard as she clings to him.
“I’m sorry,” he whispers again. He’s tall enough that his chin rests on the top of her head, bumping her as he talks. Amity’s tears soak into the collar of his shirt. “I was an idiot. I… I love you too. You’re my friend, Amity. I’m sorry I didn’t give you the credit you deserve. I should have known you didn’t hate me.”
“Maybe it’s for the best you’re such an idiot,” Amity mumbles into his shoulder. “Because I still get to remember. And I’m going to help fix this. I won’t rest until everyone else who loves you remembers.”