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fairyficRating: G
Fandom: The Owl House
Characters: Hunter, Luz Noceda, Flapjack, Amity Blight (mentioned), Emperor Belos (mentioned)
Relationships: Hunter & Luz Noceda
Words: 1,765
Content Warnings: Past child abuse
Tropes: Age Regression/Inner Child Therapy, Nonbinary Character (Hunter), Character with PTSD (Hunter), Flashbacks, Abuse Recovery & Aftermath, Hurt/Comfort
Summary: Hunter breaks a lamp, and quickly finds themselves returning to a childhood that nobody would call happy or safe. Luckily, Luz is there to take up the mantel of honorary big sister.
I use they/them for Hunter in this, because nonbinary Hunter makes me happy. That is all :]
Luz scrolled through her phone enthusiastically, on her knees alone in her room. She didn’t want to keep Hunter waiting in the living room too long, after all; especially not after jumping up in the middle of discussing magic theory and exclaiming that she needed to get something, before stumbling off to her room in the owl house to grab her phone. She had neglected to mention it in her rush, but she had suddenly remembered that there was a video of a bird palisman on Penstagram that she had waited to show them until they were there in person. She could have sent it to their account, of course, but seeing their reaction in real time was-
“NO-!”
Luz practically jumped out of her skin when she heard Hunter’s panicked voice breaking the silence she had been sitting in, and then flinched when the sound that followed immediately afterwards was the crash of something meeting the floor and shattering. (A sound that she was, unfortunately, very familiar with.) Sucking air in through her teeth, she stood up, pushing her phone in her pocket for now before lightly jogging back to the living room. If hadn’t been distinctly Hunter’s voice that had reacted, she would probably be running under the presumption that King had bumped into something and broken it, but, because it was Hunter, she felt like she could trust that he could wait an extra few seconds for her arrival.
As such, Luz found herself gasping from shock and worry upon entering the living room and finding Hunter down on the floor, desperately and shakily grabbing up shards of glass with one of their bare hands and collecting all of the pieces in the other, with Flapjack flying near their head with clear concern. Luz nearly tripped over herself rushing over to them, and, after plopping down next to them, lightly smacked Hunter’s hand away from the glass. “No!” she exclaimed, before squinting her eyes at Hunter and pointing to the glass they had been collecting in their hand. “Drop it.”
Hunter somehow seemed… Confused. They searched Luz’s face with wide eyes, their expression distraught. Flapjack went to rest on Hunter’s shoulder, looking back at Luz, as well.
Firmer, as if scolding a dog, Luz repeated, “Drop iiiit…!”
This time, Hunter did as they were told, literally dropping the glass from what Luz had to assume was the lamp onto the floor. As soon as they did that, Luz grabbed the hand that had been holding the glass, then whined when she saw what she had been worried about; blood.
Moving to inspect their other hand, too, Luz began muttering, “Hunter, what got into you?? Don’t tell me that the Emperor’s Coven didn’t teach you to not touch broken glass. You knew I was just in the other room! Why didn’t you-?”
Before she could ask her next question, Hunter’s hand was pulled back. Luz looked up to Hunter with a slightly exasperated expression, ready to demand their hand back, had even taken the breath to do it… Before stopping.
Hunter had placed both hands over their head, and curled into a tight ball, shaking from what Luz could only assume was fear. In the moments in between Luz speaking, she also heard their breathing shaking, as if they were struggling with it. Flapjack had, at some point, hopped onto the floor, and was now pushing his head into Hunter’s side, as if trying to get their attention.
Luz, meanwhile, bit her bottom lip in the silence, internally scolding herself, before closing her eyes and taking a calming breath. “Más se consigue lamiendo que mordiendo, Noceda,” she reminded herself under her breath, before again opening her eyes, and hesitantly leaning closer to Hunter. “Hey, bud…”
Hunter made a noise in response. “Nghh…”
Luz lifted a hand to touch Hunter’s shoulder, then pulled it back a bit, hesitating. “… Could I touch you?”
Hunter squeaked, curling up tighter and bringing their arms down to cover their face, as if protecting it.
Luz let her hand fall completely, before tapping a finger on the ground, thinking. Eventually, she ended with, “Are you able to speak?”
After a moment of various noises that Luz assumed was Hunter trying to speak, they shook their head, but didn’t lift it from their knees.
“Do you know who you are?”
They nodded.
“Do you know who I am?”
Another nod.
“Do you know what year it is?”
What Luz had intended to be just another yes-or-no grounding question was actually met with a proper answer. Hunter moved their arms to show Luz their hands, still hiding in their knees, before telling her the answer with their fingers; holding up a number for each of the four in a year.
“Oh!” Luz grinned at this newfound method of communication. “Do you know how old I am?”
Hunter held up ten fingers, then four. Ten plus four. Fourteen.
“Do you know how old you are?”
This time, Hunter hesitated; even peering over their knees to look at Luz, unintentionally revealing to her that they had been silently crying, as she had feared. Luz’s shoulder fell at that realization, and she felt so guilty that she didn’t notice at first that Hunter had answered her.
When she did, they were holding up three fingers.
Luz blinked a few times. “Uhh…” She hadn’t actually expected Hunter to get any of the questions wrong. They were meant to be easy questions for grounding, not-
Her head perked up as she realized something. “OH!”
Hunter squeaked, then curled back up, hiding their face again, making Luz gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, rubbing her own knuckles with her thumb nervously. “I didn’t mean to scare you…”
She let her eyes drift to the ground, feeling more guilty than ever because of what she had to ask next.
“You… You feel like I’m going to hurt you for breaking the lamp, don’t you…?”
Hunter nodded slowly. Now that Luz knew to look for it, she noticed their body shift like they were stifling a sob.
Her heart sank until it rested in the pit of her belly.
“Well, I’m not,” she responded, using the most soothing tone she knew. “You’re safe right now, okay? It’s just me. Nobody is going to hurt you, and I’m not mad.”
Hunter peered over their knees a second time, more hesitantly than before.
“Unc’ah?”
Luz had to look away from them, blinking the tears away, before sighing and looking back at them. “No. Uncle’s not here. And he’s never going to hurt you again. We’ve made sure of that.”
Hunter’s ears drooped, and they appeared distrusting, shifting in place.
“I know that you probably feel like he’s here,” Luz continued, keeping her voice gentle and patient, “But he’s not. It’s just your memories of him. I promise you. Nobody is going to touch you or hurt you. There’s only me here. And I’d never do anything to hurt you. Do you believe that?”
Hunter still appeared distrusting for a moment, before slowly letting their knees down with a sniffle. Before either of them could react, Flapjack hopped into their lap, chirping to get their attention. Finally noticing the little bird for the first time since they had regressed, Hunter gasped in delight, a grin finally making its way onto their face.
Luz reflected that smile back, before standing up. “C’mon, princex. We’ve gotta get you away from all of this scary glass and patch you up.”
After being encouraged by Flapjack fluttering over and landing on Luz’s shoulder, Hunter held out a hand to be helped up, which Luz happily accepted.
Luz had learned about regression from Amity’s tendency to do so, and she found herself incredibly thankful that she had someone explain the ins and outs of regression; especially involuntary regression due to flashbacks; before she had been put on the spot as she had. Otherwise, she worried that she probably would have only made it worse. (Even Hunter, as she would come to learn later, didn’t know that what kept happening to them was something common that had a name, so they both would have been lost.)
Some of Amity’s regression gear being kept at the owl house was also a definite upside to this. After cleaning up and bandaging Hunter, and then sweeping up the remains of the lamp, Luz and Hunter had made a very cozy blanket fort in the living room using the blankets and stuffed animals she had stored. Inside of said pillow fort, Hunter had been kept thoroughly entertained and comforted with Amity’s various regression activities all day. (After, of course, Luz made sure to call her and ask permission.)
After Hunter had finally tuckered themselves out with activity books, puzzles and coloring, however, they still brought one last thing to her; a storybook.
Luz perked up, accepting the thin book into her hands before looking at Hunter. “Do youuu… Want me to read this to you?”
Hunter nodded with a grin, and Flapjack chirped on their shoulder as an extra affirmation. They still hadn’t spoken yet, beyond the one word they had managed earlier, but that was just fine with Luz. She wasn’t going to ask them to try to speak and risk asking too much of them.
Luz giggled, then patted the spot next to her. “Come on, then, have a lay down!”
Hunter was careful to indicate to Flapjack that he needed to fly before they flopped over, resting their head on Luz’s thigh. Flapjack settled next to the pair of them easily, almost seeming as if he was waiting for Luz, too.
As promised, Luz opened the storybook, before pausing, and looking back down at Hunter to ask a question. Said question, however, was forgotten instantly when she saw that they had gone to close their eyes and suck their thumb quietly. Hunter opened their eyes a little bit at feeling Luz’s eyes on them, making a questioning noise, which made Luz giggle, flapping one hand a few times. “Sorry, sorry~!” She reached down to pet Hunter’s hair, which made their eyes drift shut again. “You’re just such a cute little one.”
With that out of the way, Luz cleared her throat dramatically as she flipped to the first page, and began reading out loud.
“A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang: ‘I’ll like you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.’”
The Spanish phrase Luz uses (más se consigue lamiendo que mordiendo) can literally be translated to 'more is achieved by licking than by biting'. An English equivalent to this phrase would be 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar'! In other words, it means that you can accomplish more if you're gentle and kind, as opposed to being hostile.
Um... That's all! This was very self-indulgent, but I hope some people enjoy this, hehe
Fandom: The Owl House
Characters: Hunter, Luz Noceda, Flapjack, Amity Blight (mentioned), Emperor Belos (mentioned)
Relationships: Hunter & Luz Noceda
Words: 1,765
Content Warnings: Past child abuse
Tropes: Age Regression/Inner Child Therapy, Nonbinary Character (Hunter), Character with PTSD (Hunter), Flashbacks, Abuse Recovery & Aftermath, Hurt/Comfort
Summary: Hunter breaks a lamp, and quickly finds themselves returning to a childhood that nobody would call happy or safe. Luckily, Luz is there to take up the mantel of honorary big sister.
I use they/them for Hunter in this, because nonbinary Hunter makes me happy. That is all :]
Luz scrolled through her phone enthusiastically, on her knees alone in her room. She didn’t want to keep Hunter waiting in the living room too long, after all; especially not after jumping up in the middle of discussing magic theory and exclaiming that she needed to get something, before stumbling off to her room in the owl house to grab her phone. She had neglected to mention it in her rush, but she had suddenly remembered that there was a video of a bird palisman on Penstagram that she had waited to show them until they were there in person. She could have sent it to their account, of course, but seeing their reaction in real time was-
“NO-!”
Luz practically jumped out of her skin when she heard Hunter’s panicked voice breaking the silence she had been sitting in, and then flinched when the sound that followed immediately afterwards was the crash of something meeting the floor and shattering. (A sound that she was, unfortunately, very familiar with.) Sucking air in through her teeth, she stood up, pushing her phone in her pocket for now before lightly jogging back to the living room. If hadn’t been distinctly Hunter’s voice that had reacted, she would probably be running under the presumption that King had bumped into something and broken it, but, because it was Hunter, she felt like she could trust that he could wait an extra few seconds for her arrival.
As such, Luz found herself gasping from shock and worry upon entering the living room and finding Hunter down on the floor, desperately and shakily grabbing up shards of glass with one of their bare hands and collecting all of the pieces in the other, with Flapjack flying near their head with clear concern. Luz nearly tripped over herself rushing over to them, and, after plopping down next to them, lightly smacked Hunter’s hand away from the glass. “No!” she exclaimed, before squinting her eyes at Hunter and pointing to the glass they had been collecting in their hand. “Drop it.”
Hunter somehow seemed… Confused. They searched Luz’s face with wide eyes, their expression distraught. Flapjack went to rest on Hunter’s shoulder, looking back at Luz, as well.
Firmer, as if scolding a dog, Luz repeated, “Drop iiiit…!”
This time, Hunter did as they were told, literally dropping the glass from what Luz had to assume was the lamp onto the floor. As soon as they did that, Luz grabbed the hand that had been holding the glass, then whined when she saw what she had been worried about; blood.
Moving to inspect their other hand, too, Luz began muttering, “Hunter, what got into you?? Don’t tell me that the Emperor’s Coven didn’t teach you to not touch broken glass. You knew I was just in the other room! Why didn’t you-?”
Before she could ask her next question, Hunter’s hand was pulled back. Luz looked up to Hunter with a slightly exasperated expression, ready to demand their hand back, had even taken the breath to do it… Before stopping.
Hunter had placed both hands over their head, and curled into a tight ball, shaking from what Luz could only assume was fear. In the moments in between Luz speaking, she also heard their breathing shaking, as if they were struggling with it. Flapjack had, at some point, hopped onto the floor, and was now pushing his head into Hunter’s side, as if trying to get their attention.
Luz, meanwhile, bit her bottom lip in the silence, internally scolding herself, before closing her eyes and taking a calming breath. “Más se consigue lamiendo que mordiendo, Noceda,” she reminded herself under her breath, before again opening her eyes, and hesitantly leaning closer to Hunter. “Hey, bud…”
Hunter made a noise in response. “Nghh…”
Luz lifted a hand to touch Hunter’s shoulder, then pulled it back a bit, hesitating. “… Could I touch you?”
Hunter squeaked, curling up tighter and bringing their arms down to cover their face, as if protecting it.
Luz let her hand fall completely, before tapping a finger on the ground, thinking. Eventually, she ended with, “Are you able to speak?”
After a moment of various noises that Luz assumed was Hunter trying to speak, they shook their head, but didn’t lift it from their knees.
“Do you know who you are?”
They nodded.
“Do you know who I am?”
Another nod.
“Do you know what year it is?”
What Luz had intended to be just another yes-or-no grounding question was actually met with a proper answer. Hunter moved their arms to show Luz their hands, still hiding in their knees, before telling her the answer with their fingers; holding up a number for each of the four in a year.
“Oh!” Luz grinned at this newfound method of communication. “Do you know how old I am?”
Hunter held up ten fingers, then four. Ten plus four. Fourteen.
“Do you know how old you are?”
This time, Hunter hesitated; even peering over their knees to look at Luz, unintentionally revealing to her that they had been silently crying, as she had feared. Luz’s shoulder fell at that realization, and she felt so guilty that she didn’t notice at first that Hunter had answered her.
When she did, they were holding up three fingers.
Luz blinked a few times. “Uhh…” She hadn’t actually expected Hunter to get any of the questions wrong. They were meant to be easy questions for grounding, not-
Her head perked up as she realized something. “OH!”
Hunter squeaked, then curled back up, hiding their face again, making Luz gasp. “Oh, I’m sorry!” she said, rubbing her own knuckles with her thumb nervously. “I didn’t mean to scare you…”
She let her eyes drift to the ground, feeling more guilty than ever because of what she had to ask next.
“You… You feel like I’m going to hurt you for breaking the lamp, don’t you…?”
Hunter nodded slowly. Now that Luz knew to look for it, she noticed their body shift like they were stifling a sob.
Her heart sank until it rested in the pit of her belly.
“Well, I’m not,” she responded, using the most soothing tone she knew. “You’re safe right now, okay? It’s just me. Nobody is going to hurt you, and I’m not mad.”
Hunter peered over their knees a second time, more hesitantly than before.
“Unc’ah?”
Luz had to look away from them, blinking the tears away, before sighing and looking back at them. “No. Uncle’s not here. And he’s never going to hurt you again. We’ve made sure of that.”
Hunter’s ears drooped, and they appeared distrusting, shifting in place.
“I know that you probably feel like he’s here,” Luz continued, keeping her voice gentle and patient, “But he’s not. It’s just your memories of him. I promise you. Nobody is going to touch you or hurt you. There’s only me here. And I’d never do anything to hurt you. Do you believe that?”
Hunter still appeared distrusting for a moment, before slowly letting their knees down with a sniffle. Before either of them could react, Flapjack hopped into their lap, chirping to get their attention. Finally noticing the little bird for the first time since they had regressed, Hunter gasped in delight, a grin finally making its way onto their face.
Luz reflected that smile back, before standing up. “C’mon, princex. We’ve gotta get you away from all of this scary glass and patch you up.”
After being encouraged by Flapjack fluttering over and landing on Luz’s shoulder, Hunter held out a hand to be helped up, which Luz happily accepted.
Luz had learned about regression from Amity’s tendency to do so, and she found herself incredibly thankful that she had someone explain the ins and outs of regression; especially involuntary regression due to flashbacks; before she had been put on the spot as she had. Otherwise, she worried that she probably would have only made it worse. (Even Hunter, as she would come to learn later, didn’t know that what kept happening to them was something common that had a name, so they both would have been lost.)
Some of Amity’s regression gear being kept at the owl house was also a definite upside to this. After cleaning up and bandaging Hunter, and then sweeping up the remains of the lamp, Luz and Hunter had made a very cozy blanket fort in the living room using the blankets and stuffed animals she had stored. Inside of said pillow fort, Hunter had been kept thoroughly entertained and comforted with Amity’s various regression activities all day. (After, of course, Luz made sure to call her and ask permission.)
After Hunter had finally tuckered themselves out with activity books, puzzles and coloring, however, they still brought one last thing to her; a storybook.
Luz perked up, accepting the thin book into her hands before looking at Hunter. “Do youuu… Want me to read this to you?”
Hunter nodded with a grin, and Flapjack chirped on their shoulder as an extra affirmation. They still hadn’t spoken yet, beyond the one word they had managed earlier, but that was just fine with Luz. She wasn’t going to ask them to try to speak and risk asking too much of them.
Luz giggled, then patted the spot next to her. “Come on, then, have a lay down!”
Hunter was careful to indicate to Flapjack that he needed to fly before they flopped over, resting their head on Luz’s thigh. Flapjack settled next to the pair of them easily, almost seeming as if he was waiting for Luz, too.
As promised, Luz opened the storybook, before pausing, and looking back down at Hunter to ask a question. Said question, however, was forgotten instantly when she saw that they had gone to close their eyes and suck their thumb quietly. Hunter opened their eyes a little bit at feeling Luz’s eyes on them, making a questioning noise, which made Luz giggle, flapping one hand a few times. “Sorry, sorry~!” She reached down to pet Hunter’s hair, which made their eyes drift shut again. “You’re just such a cute little one.”
With that out of the way, Luz cleared her throat dramatically as she flipped to the first page, and began reading out loud.
“A mother held her new baby and very slowly rocked him back and forth, back and forth, back and forth. And while she held him, she sang: ‘I’ll like you forever, I’ll love you for always, as long as I’m living, my baby you’ll be.’”
The Spanish phrase Luz uses (más se consigue lamiendo que mordiendo) can literally be translated to 'more is achieved by licking than by biting'. An English equivalent to this phrase would be 'you catch more flies with honey than vinegar'! In other words, it means that you can accomplish more if you're gentle and kind, as opposed to being hostile.
Um... That's all! This was very self-indulgent, but I hope some people enjoy this, hehe
Tags:
- character:main:hunter,
- character:main:luz noceda,
- character:side:amity blight,
- character:side:emperor belos,
- fandom:the owl house,
- length:1k to 3k,
- length:oneshot,
- rating:general audiences,
- tropes:abuse recovery & aftermath,
- tropes:age regress/inner child therapy,
- tropes:character with ptsd,
- tropes:character with ptsd:hunter,
- tropes:flashbacks,
- tropes:hurt/comfort,
- tropes:nonbinary character,
- tropes:nonbinary character:hunter,
- type:fanfiction,
- year:2022
