Chapter Text
The summer after Normal’s tenth birthday, the Oak-Swallows-Gracias’ start spending the season in a cabin in the forests far north of San Dimas. Normal whines and cries and complains the whole drive, because he hates the summer already but he’d rather spend it at home with his friends. His parents insist that he’ll love it, and Hero spends most of the time trying to shut him up by force.
He’s still teary-eyed by the time they arrive, and even if the cabin does look pretty nice, he’s not happy about it at all. He has to share a room with Hero, and he barely leaves it the first few days, wallowing in his own misery.
“At least they aren’t making you go hunting,” Hero complains a week in, fiddling with the zipper of her camo jacket with mounting anxiety.
Indeed, Normal can be grateful for that if nothing else. Hero leaves with Lark and their parents, and Normal is left alone. He hates being alone, which is why he was so upset about being up here in this stupid forest in the first place, but at least he didn’t have to trap himself in his room anymore to make a point (not that anyone seemed to care about the point he was trying to make in the first place).
He doesn’t necessarily mean to wander far when he first steps out of the cabin, but as soon as the cabin is out of sight, lost in the foliage, and he intends to head back, his eyes catch on a bird. Feathers dark and dull, there’s not really anything all that interesting about it, but he’s fascinated by it all the same, in a way he can’t really explain.
He does what any logical 10 year old would do when confronted by something new and interesting, and he chases it. He just wants to get a good look at it, but he only catches glimpses of feathers before it disappears out of sight once more. By the time he’s lost track of it completely, he realizes the sun is setting and he has no idea where he is.
Once more, he does as 10 year olds are wont to do, and starts crying, loud, heaving sobs and wails as he calls out for mom and dad and Lark and even Hero.
Hero is, indeed, the one to find him, once the sun has fully set and his throat has gone hoarse. She scolds him for the entirety of their walk back, not offering him a chance to explain himself- not that he really had a good explanation in the first place- but her vice grip on his hand reads more as worried then angry. She takes off the compass around her neck, and instructs him on how to use it and general navigational skills in between rants about how he shouldn’t have gone out alone in the first place.
Everything Hero said is repeated three times over by his parents and Lark, with varying degrees of aggression. With his throat as sore as it is, he can’t even complain that they were the ones who left him alone in the first place.
They try to take him hunting with them the next time they go out, but Normal and Hero wordlessly team up to make the hunt as insufferable as possible for their parents, between Normal’s chattering and Hero’s loud hushing. Needless to say, they don’t take him with them after that. Instead, they leave someone behind, and with some convincing, that person consistently ends up being Hero.
Most of the time, she kicks Normal out of their shared room to watch episodes of anime she downloaded onto her laptop. After he pointedly ‘sneaks’ out of the house a few times, she reluctantly moves her anime marathons to the living room where she can watch the front door, and even more reluctantly allows Normal to join her. He doesn’t really like anime- it’s hard to read the subtitles and focus on what’s actually happening at the same time- but Hero makes them popcorn and lets him lean against her side.
It takes full month for Normal to convince Hero to go out into the forest with him, and while they have fun exploring together, he doesn’t see that bird again for the rest of the summer.
The next summer, Normal is allowed to go out in the forest by himself again, as long as he stays close and carries some basic survival gear and is back before the sun begins to set. He’s not necessarily happy about this- he misses Hero’s company, but he makes a new friend fairly quickly, in the form of an adolescent magpie. Its feathers are still a dull shade of black compared to the adult’s iridescence, and its eyes, strangely, are a vivid shade of green, even if Normal’s pretty sure they’re supposed to be blue-grey at that age.
For most of the season, it perches in the trees above him, bouncing from branch to branch and watching his every move keenly. Normal talks to it like he would a friend, and offers it berries and food scraps, unsure of what it would actually want to eat. It’s a long while before it starts snatching pieces of food from his hand and even longer before it eats within reach of him, but by the end of the summer it perches on his leg for hours on end, preening its feathers and bobbing its head as Normal talks, almost like it’s nodding along to his stories.
On the last day before they leave, Normal desperately tries to find the magpie to say goodbye. It’s nowhere to be seen, and Hero ends up having to drag him back to the cabin so he can get some sleep before they leave first thing in the morning. He tries to explain, but, as usual, she’s unsympathetic, and, if Normal’s not mistaken, a little jealous that Normal made a cool bird friend and she did not.
He sleeps poorly and sulks between naps on the drive home. When he unpacks his bags a few days later, however, he finds a dull, dark feather in the back of his notebook, alongside a pressed white flower that he doesn’t recognize. When he tries to show it off to Hero, she’s quick to inform him that it’s pretty poisonous and he probably shouldn’t be touching it.
He returns to his room, and carefully tucks the flower into a picture frame. He lays the feather out on the shelf in front of it, and keeps them both in pride of place on the shelf above his dresser.
The next summer, it takes half a month to find the magpie again, still not grown into its adult plumage and eyes as bright as ever. It’s a bit aloof at first, remaining stubbornly out of reach and seeming to glare at Normal whenever he talks too loud, but it warms back up to him fairly quickly after that.
Having learned his lesson last time, he’s sure to tell the magpie goodbye every time they part.
“I don’t know when I’ll see you again,” Normal says, “so in case I have to leave before I do, um- goodbye!”
He waves, and the magpie, perhaps predictably, just tilts its head at him, uncomprehending.
Throughout the summer, the magpie gets more affectionate, perching on Normal’s shoulder and letting him run his knuckles along the feathers of its head and neck and the space between its wings. Sometimes it’ll even run its cheek along Normal’s, making contented noises that almost sound like purrs. It still answers any attempts to grab or hold it with unhappy noises and a very sharp beak, but its something Normal only really tries once.
It still doesn’t give Normal an opportunity for the dramatic goodbye the day before he leaves for the summer, but his little departing messages every time he leaves makes him feel better about it. Still, he presses his head longingly to the window and is disappointed when he doesn’t see it by the time the forest is out of sight in the rear view mirror.
The next summer, Normal spends his days wandering the forest in search of the magpie. A month in, he starts losing hope, and that’s when he finds something- someone- far more unexpected.
There’s a child sitting on the rocks across the river from him, dressed in flowing pale green fabric. They must be around Normal’s age, with pale skin and dark hair. They meet Normal’s eyes, and Normal could swear he recognizes them.
“Oh! Oh, hi!” Normal says, trying to map out a way across the river to them.
The stranger watches him, unflinching, unimpressed.
“I didn’t know there was anyone else out here!” Normal continues, moving a bit further up stream and jumping onto a large rock, slick with water.
He stumbles a little, but quickly regains his balance. The stranger continues to watch, motionless except for their eyes following his every movement.
“Is there another cabin out here? I feel like I’ve looked around a lot, but I’ve never seen anything like that!”
Normal steps onto a smaller rock, just barely big enough for both his feet. His balance tilts too far forward, and he’s forced to leap to the next rock before he’s ready. The momentum carries him too far, and he slips on the far end of the stone. Trying to avoid hitting his tailbone, he throws his weight to the side and lands in the water. It’s not that deep, only up to his neck when he’s laying down, propped up on his elbow, but it’s cold and he wasn’t expecting it and the stranger across the river is laughing.
They’re laughing. Normal always thought people comparing laughter to the ringing of bells was stupid, and he still does, but he gets it a bit more now. It’s a really nice sound. He can’t help but join in, sitting up and shaking the water from his hair. Once he pushes it back out of his eyes to look at the stranger again, he finds them gone, leaving him soaking wet and laughing to himself.
He sees them again after that, always on the other side of the river, always watching him silently and disappearing before he can make his way over to them. He tries to jump across the river rocks a few more times, but even when he successfully manages to cross, he has to keep his eyes on the rocks ahead of him and the stranger is always gone by the time he looks up.
“I can stay over here if you’d prefer,” Normal shouts, sitting down on a rock on his side of the river as the stranger watches him with a cocked head. “I just thought it would be easier if we didn’t have to yell.”
The stranger blinks slowly, and then shrugs their shoulders. A hint of a smirk tugs at the corner of their lips.
“So, are you from around here?” Normal asks loudly, and the stranger nods after a moment of hesitation. “That’s cool, I just stay here during the summer! I wonder why we’ve never met before…”
Most of their conversations continue like that, with Normal shouting and the stranger staying quiet, nodding or shaking their head when asked yes or no questions. Just like the magpie, they’re gone by the end of the summer, without a proper goodbye.
When Normal returns to the forest the next year, he seeks out the river and finds the stranger on the same side as he is, sitting upon a stone with their back turned and legs folded, feet in the water. They tilt their head back towards Normal, just enough for him to know they heard his approach.
“Hi! You’re over here now!”
“So I am,” the stranger says softly.
Normal wasn’t expecting them to talk, much less in that voice. It’s nasally and normal, seemingly ill-fitting of someone so… otherworldly.
He likes it a lot, actually.
“And you can talk! That’s great!” Normal says, sitting down on a rock beside them.
Their eyes remained fixed on the other side of the river, but Normal can’t stop staring at them. Now that they’re closer, he can see that their eyes are a startlingly bright shade of green. He can also see a light smattering of freckles across their cheeks. Their features are soft and lids hooded in a way that suggests Asian descent, and much more pressingly, Normal realizes, they’re really, really pretty.
“I had no desire to yell,” they say, and Normal forces himself to close his mouth, because even if they hadn’t noticed, the slack-jawed staring was probably not a good look.
“Then you could have come over here,” Normal says, a bit belatedly. “Or let me come over to you.”
“I could have,” they agree, turning to Normal and meeting his eyes. A small smirk tugs at the corner of their lips, and Normal’s heart flutters.
They see each other more often than not that summer. Even though they’ll occasionally interject, Normal does most of the talking, rambling on and on about school and his friends and anything else he can think of. His companion listens patiently, nodding along and occasionally interjecting with a dry, indecipherable sense of humor that Normal quickly comes to enjoy.
He enjoys them a lot in general, as it turns out. When he’s not rambling, he’s trying- and largely failing- to impress them.
“Oh, hey!” Normal exclaims as the two of them idly wander the length of the river. A tree trunk has fallen across it, spanning from one side to the other. “Bridge! Do you think I can cross it?”
They smile, faintly amused.
“I would like to see you try,” they say, which doesn’t answer his question, but only makes him want to try it more.
“Easy! I took a gymnastics class over winter break last year- cause I’m gonna be the school mascot, you know- and we had to do like, a ton of balance beams!”
He leaves out the fact that those were always what he had the hardest time with, stepping up onto the tree with his hands in his pockets. Throwing them out to help with his balance would look totally lame, he resolves, and starts walking the length of the tree. It’s harder to balance on than the beams, considering it’s shape, but it’s steady enough beneath his weight and by the time he’s about halfway through, he decides his confidence hasn’t been at all misplaced, as it turns out.
“See, no problem!” He exclaims, spinning around to face back towards his companion.
They raise an eyebrow, almost looking impressed, and the implied praise has him pushing it even further. Hands still in his pockets, he takes a step backwards, intending to finish the rest of the walk backwards, so he can see how totally impressed they are once he reaches the other side.
It lasts all of two steps before his foot slips. His arms fly out of his pockets, pinwheeling uselessly as he tries to throw his weight in the other direction, only succeeding in scraping his leg against the bark of the tree before he’s falling into the river below.
It’s not a far drop, but the water is deep enough that he doesn’t hit the bottom immediately, and his open mouth is flooded with river water. He has no idea how deep it is, and he finds himself struggling to keep his head above the current as he tries to get his bearings.
His friend is yelling something, but he can’t hear it over the roar of the river and his own heartbeat. He’s going to die in front of them because he wanted to show off and it’ll be so, so embarrassing.
Something grabs the back of his shirt, tugging him up to his feet, which he can stand on, because the water only comes up to his mid-torso. The ground is silty, anchoring him in place against the current, as he coughs up water and tries to catch his breath. He grabs his friends shoulders and leans his head against their chest.
“You could not cross it,” they say once Normal can breath again, and he wheezes out a laugh.
Most attempts to impress them go like that, with Normal slipping into the river or breaking branches beneath his weight or stumbling over his own feet. They’re quick to laugh and tease him, but just as quick to come to his aid.
They’re strangely eloquent, speaking circles around every question Normal asks with enough skill that he doesn’t even realize they’ve been evaded until he’s home, trying to tell his parents about someone he doesn’t know anything about, as it turns out.
He doesn’t press. It took them a whole summer to start talking to him at all, and he doesn’t want to scare them off. By the end of the summer, he realizes he never even got their name.
That’s quickly rectified the next summer, when Normal finds them again within a week of his stay. They’re standing in a clearing, turned towards him as if they’d been awaiting his arrival all along.
“Hi! I missed you!” Normal says, waving enthusiastically. They look a bit put-out for a moment, before shaking their head, almost imperceptibly.
“May I have your name?” They ask, swaying slightly as they shift from one foot to the other. It’s more like leaves rustled by the wind then Normal’s own idle movement, bouncing on the balls of his feet.
“Oh! It’s Normal!” He greets cheerfully, holding out a hand. “Normally Ly’Oak-Swallows-Garcia!”
The stranger smiles, and for a moment it seems like their lips pull too far at the corners, but Normal shakes it off.
“What about you?”
“You can call my Ivy, if you wish,” they purr, reaching out to the poison ivy coiling around the trunk of a nearby tree instead of Normal’s hand.
Normal opens his mouth to warn them against touching it, but is quickly distracted by the way the tendrils seem to arch towards their fingertips. Normal watches, more awed than afraid, as the vine begins to climb up their arm, weaving its way up it like a snake.
“I… shouldn’t have given you my name,” Normal says faintly.
“No,” Ivy agrees, grinning now. Their teeth are far too sharp. “You shouldn’t have.”
Lark had warned him about the fae, of course, but he warned him about everything. With time, as each dangerous situation Lark warned against failed to present itself, it became easier and easier to ignore the warnings completely. Now, though…
Normal takes a step back, and grabs the hem of his shirt. He catches a glimpse of Ivy’s startled expression before he’s pulling it off over his head.
“What are you-“ Ivy starts, only to sigh as they watch him turn it inside out and put it back on. “An inside out teeshirt isn’t going to do much to protect you when I have your name, Normally.”
Normal didn’t know if he was shuddering because of the power the fae had over him, or if it was just their tone of voice. The poison ivy resting around their shoulders like a scarf, the flash of sharp teeth, the unnatural glint in their eyes… none of it was dissuading Normal’s attraction to them, to say the least.
“What will you do with it?” Normal asks, hesitantly, “with me?”
“It’s no fun if I ruin the surprise,” Ivy laughs, leaning forward to touch their finger briefly to the tip of Normal’s nose.
“Are we still friends?” Normal asks, watching their finger retreat. Their nails are curved into claws. Had they been all along?
Ivy blinks, looking caught off-guard for just a moment.
“We never were. I was hiding my nature from you all along. A friendship built on lies is hardly a friendship at all, wouldn’t you agree?”
Normal frowns, trying to push past the hurt and think about things logically.
“If you wanted my name, why didn’t you ask for it when we first met?” Normal asks, and Ivy’s eyes narrow. “If you just wanted power over me, why… why wait for this long?”
“You must know that my kind enjoy games. Playing with our food, you might say,” Ivy says cooly.
“Are you going to eat me?” Normal asks, stepping forward.
Ivy steps back. The leaves around their neck rustle, as if disturbed by some otherwise-imperceptible breeze. Their nose wrinkles in disgust, an endearingly human expression on an otherworldly face.
“You’ve spent too long marinating in your own bodily fluids to make an appealing meal for anyone of discerning taste,” Ivy huffs.
“Then what do you want from me?” Normal steps closer. Ivy steps away, back hitting the tree.
“Think of it as insurance,” Ivy says, though their eyes dart away. “You’ll be of some use to me eventually, won’t you?”
“I hope so,” Normal says, earnestly. “You didn’t have to take my name, though.“
“You expect me to believe you’ll do good for one of my kind out of the goodness of your heart?” Ivy scoffs, claws digging into the bark of the tree as they continue to avoid eye contact.
“Yeah,” Normal says, but he doesn’t move any closer. A bit of the tension leaves Ivy’s shoulders at that. “Or, I guess I don’t expect it as much as I hope for it? Even if you don’t think we were friends… well, it gets lonely here. I like spending time with you.”
Ivy meets his eyes, their own narrowed.
“Then you are a fool,” Ivy says, and they disappear into the bark.
He doesn’t see Ivy for the rest of the summer after that, no matter how much he searches for them.
The next summer, his search continues as if it hadn’t stopped.
“Quit shouting,” Ivy hisses, only a few weeks into his stay.
They’re sitting on the branches of a pine tree, their typical dress replaced by flowing pants and a loose sleeveless shirt. Normal spends an embarrassing amount of time staring at their shoulders.
“I missed you,” Normal says, before he can think better of it.
Ivy’s face flushes, even as they narrow their eyes.
“You are very, very stupid,” Ivy resolves, gracefully rising to their feet upon the branch.
As Normal glances down at their feet to try to understand how they can keep their balance, he realizes they aren’t really feet at all, or at least not human ones. Instead, they’re dark and glossy, with sharp talons wrapped all the way around the branch.
“-broken the rules of interacting with my kind?” Ivy is saying once Normal remembers to listen. “You’ve bragged about our encounters, you’ve taken my gifts and thanked me for them, you’ve apologized, you gave me your name without second thought! If I asked anything of you, Normally, there would be very little you could do to resist, do you understand that?”
They drop down in front of Normal, and he can almost swear that he hears the flutter of wings slowing their descent despite the fact that they don’t have any. Normal watches in awe as their talons shift once more into something human. He looks up at Ivy now that they’re right in front of him, meeting their bright green eyes.
Something very belatedly clicks into place.
“Were you the magpie?” Normal asks, immediately forgetting the topic at hand.
“Was I the- yes, Normally, yes, I was,” they say with an exasperated emphasis. “I had thought you had already pieced together that particular puzzle, but I suppose it’s my own fault for granting you undue credit.”
They put a hand on Normal’s shoulder, gripping the fabric and worrying it between their thumb and forefinger. They meet Normal’s eyes with an expression of distaste.
“As little as it did for you, at least turning your shirt inside out did something. Now you’ve left yourself completely vulnerable to me…”
Their claws dig into Normal’s shoulder, just shy of painful. A wide smirk reveals needle-sharp teeth, bright eyes crinkling at the corners. Normal knows he’s supposed to be intimidated, but-
“You’re so pretty,” he breathes, unable to stop himself.
Ivy’s eyes go wide, grip tightening briefly- which hurts a bit, Normal will admit- before they flinch back. A warm blush crawls over their cheeks to the tips of their pointed ears.
“What are you talking about?” They hiss, breaking eye contact in favor of glaring down at the ground.
Purple blooms push out of the leaf litter and unfurl, revealing bright orange stigmas. Ivy does not seem pleased by the sight, trying and failing to stomp them back out of sight.
“Oh, sorry, you were- wait, am I not supposed to apologize? Never mind, uh-“ Normal bounces a little, looking back up at Ivy’s flushed face. “You were threatening me, I think?”
“I-“ Ivy barks out a laugh, before quickly shaking their head. “You ruined it. What’s wrong with you?”
“Nothings wrong with me!” Normal insists, face flushing. “I’m right! You’re really pretty!”
“And you’re really stupid,” Ivy says, sending one last baleful glance towards the flowers before swiftly stepping away and out of sight.
Luckily, Ivy stops avoiding them for the rest of the summer after that, appearing in the trees beside him or stalking along behind him for what Normal can only assume is a long while before he notices them.
“Your sister stopped coming when she was your age,” Ivy says, increasing their pace just slightly to catch up with Normal now that they’ve been spotted. “Why are you still here?”
“I thought the answer would be pretty obvious,” Normal explains, watching Ivy’s empty hand sway at their side. “I came here to see you. You didn’t let me say goodbye last summer.”
“Well,” Ivy says, following Normal’s gaze and then quickly looking away. “I- that was intentional. You’d cry.”
“Yeah,” Normal chuckles, rubbing the back of his neck with a hand he’d much rather use to take Ivy’s. “I’m kind of a gross crier, but I guess you’ve probably seen me cry a lot, huh? You’d always run away as soon as I started sniffling. I thought you just got scared off by the loud noises.”
“Hardly. I was granting you privacy,” Ivy scoffs, tips of their ears flushing a bit.
“Privacy…?” Normal frowns, wondering for the first time whether he should be hurt by the fact that Ivy never once tried to console him. “When someone cries, you usually try to comfort them…”
Ivy looks back at Normal, tilting their head slightly.
“It’s a sign of vulnerability, it’s only polite to look away.”
Any thought of being offended leaves Normal very quickly at that.
“Oh… that’s- that’s not how it works for humans,” Normal says, gently. “That’s really sad, actually.”
“Ah.” Ivy turns away. “Well, forgive me, it’s been a very long time since I’ve been human.”
Normal stumbles over his own feet as he turns to Ivy, snatching the hand at their side before he can think better of it.
“You were human!?”
“Born to human parents, yes,” Ivy admits, looking at their intertwined hands oddly, though they don’t try to pull away. “I was abandoned near this forest when I was but a babe, and the King of Fairies took interest in having a child… an interest that was swiftly abandoned, of course, capricious sort that he is.”
“Oh… Ivy, I’m sorry-“
“Herman,” they correct. “Hermie, if you’d prefer.”
“What?” Normal breathes, and it comes out as a laugh. “Your real name is Herman? You’re some beautiful, magical, otherworldly shapeshifting fairy and you have a grandpa name?”
Ivy- Hermie- laughs, seemingly surprised by the noise even as it comes from their own mouth.
“I have my own name,” Hermie insists, trying to sound offended despite the way they’re smiling. “Your perceptions of it are of little concern to me.”
“Hermie…“ Normal says slowly, and Hermie shudders a bit, even if they try to hide it. “Sorry, would it be better if I kept calling you Ivy?”
“I gave you a name to call me by,” Hermie says. “You will use it, won’t you?”
“Of course, Hermie!” Normal grins, shaking out his free hand. “Gosh, that’s so cool! You gave me your name! You like me after all!”
“Yes, despite my best efforts, you’ve grown on me… like some manner of fungus,” Hermie laughs fondly, squeezing his hand.
Hermie lets him say goodbye that summer, even as he sobs and sniffles through it. They even let him hug them, their own hands placed awkwardly on his shoulders as he squeezes them tight. When Normal promises to come back next year, there’s a pensive sort of sadness to their smile as they nod.
Usually, there’s days on end where Normal doesn’t see Hermie, and he’s forced to wander the forest alone, missing them all the while. The summer after he turns 17, however, Hermie spends nearly every day with him, lingering just beyond the cabin. The first couple of times he asks about it, Hermie dodges around the question with their typical ease. It’s not until the last month of his summer break that he finally gets his answer.
Hermie sits in a clearing, Normal’s head resting in their lap as they carefully weave small flowers into his hair.
“I suppose it’s only fair that I warn you,” they say, as calmly as they say anything else, “I won’t be back next summer, or any after that.”
“What?” Normal asks, sitting up and shaking the flowers from his hair. Hermie huffs, their hard work undone. He turns to look at them, but they’re as unreadable as ever.
“Come next summer, I’ll be dead,” they say simply, gathering the flowers that had fallen in their hands. They look down at them, brows furrowing just slightly. “It won’t be long now… not too long at all.”
“What…? Hermie, I-“ Normal’s breath catches in his throat, the final words coming out as a huff, “you’re gonna die!?”
“As will you, at some point,” Hermie says calmly.
He dumps the flowers- browned and withered now- into Normal’s lap.
“No- well, yeah, I mean- but what?” Normal wheezes, shaking out his hands nervously for lack of anything better to do with them. “You- how? Why are you so calm about this?”
“I’ve known this was coming for the past seven years,” Hermie admits. “The realm of my people… it isn’t unpleasant, but to keep it so, sacrifices must be made… it was never anything personal, merely bad luck that I was chosen.”
“Seven…” Normal trails off, and then shakes his head and redirects his attention to Hermie. “Hermie, how old are you?”
“… seventeen, this summer.”
“Oh, we’re the same age!” Normal says pleasantly, before quickly shaking his head. “No! I mean- you’ve known you were going to die since you were ten? You’ve known about it the entire time we’ve been together and you’re only telling me now!?”
“Why would I tell you?” Hermie hisses. “You can’t do anything about it- I mean, you could, but- but it doesn’t matter. I’ve accepted it. Not out of any self-sacrificing ‘for the greater good’ nonsense, of course, but it doesn’t matter. I shan’t be missed.”
“Uh, yes- you absolutely sha- what’s the- shall! You absolutely shall be!” Normal insists, bouncing on his feet and shaking out his hands to resist the urge to grab Hermie. “I would miss you! I do miss you, all year when I’m not here!”
“You have friends,” Hermie says, folding their arms and looking away. The tips of their clawed fingers dig into their flesh. “You’ll forget me soon enough, and be better for it.”
“No!” Normal insists, prying Hermie’s hands from their own arms. “You said there was a way I could help you!” He laced their fingers together, not flinching away when Hermie’s claws dig into his flesh instead. “Let me help you!”
“It’s dangerous,” Hermie hisses, digging their claws in deeper, just shy of breaking skin. “I could get you killed.”
“And if I don’t do anything, I’d be killing you!” Normal insists, not releasing their hands. “Tell me what I can do!”
“Normal-“
“Herman, tell me what I can do!” Normal demands.
Hermie stills, eyes going wide and hands going slack. There’s a flicker of something that almost looks like betrayal, before they sing in a softly melodic tone,
“The night is Halloween, my dear,
And the morn is Hallowday,
If you truly wish to free me,
Listen close to what I say;
“My kind will walk your realm that eve,
All matched in clothes of white,
Among them I‘ll be hard to find,
Unless you drop your sight,
“Look carefully ‘long the ground,
By my feet you’ll see white flowers bloomed,
Take my hand and pull me free,
So I may finally be exhumed.”
As they finish the verse, Hermie’s eyes flutter back open.
“Oh, oh wow! You had a whole little song prepared?” Normal laughs nervously. “That’s- ok, Halloween, white flowers, take your hand…?”
Hermie nods stiffly. His usual idle swaying has gone completely still, leaving Normal feeling distinctly as though he’s done something wrong.
“Listen- Hermie, I’m sorry for using your name like that, but I-“
“I was not afraid of dying, Normally,” he says, voice strained. “ You were afraid of losing me. This ‘rescue’ was a selfish pursuit, do not think yourself a hero.”
“Well, sorry for not wanting my best friend to die!” Normal scoffs, releasing their hands.
There’s pin-pricks of blood where Hermie’s claws dug in, and he wipes it away from one hand with the thumb of the other, only succeeding in leaving a red smear along the back of his hand.
“I knew humans to be cruel, but are they truly such an insufferable lot that I’m the best the world has to offer as far as companions go?” Hermie says shakily, brows furrowed as they stare down at the blood smeared across Normal’s hands.
“Hermie, you aren’t… you’re not a last resort, you’re not the best of the worst or- or something, I really, genuinely care about you, a whole lot.”
A confession sits on the tip of Normal’s tongue, but the moment is already so fragile. He can’t burden Hermie with his feelings now, and truly, he has no reason to think they’ll be anything but a burden.
“For the best, I suppose,” Hermie scoffs, tearing their eyes away from Normal’s hands, “because if you go through with this, you will be stuck with me.”
Normal meets their eyes, mouth falling open in surprise.
“Wait, what? What do you mean ‘stuck with you’?”
“You’ll be breaking my ties to the realm of the fae. I will be human once more, and I have only the faintest idea of what that entails. Do you intend to leave me here?” They gesture around at the surrounding forest. There’s a flicker of panic in their tone, as if they truly believe that Normal would do so. “If I remain in the forest, the King will have me killed. I have nowhere else to call home, no family to turn to nor understanding of humanity to rely on, if you leave me-“
“I won’t!” Normal says quickly, barely resisting the urge to take Hermie’s hands again. “I’m not going to leave you, Hermie-“
“You will! Do you think my parents had the intention to abandon me when I was first born? Do you think the King took me in just to tire of me? You’ve stayed by my side for this long, but only for months at a time! You’ll bore of me, you’ll grow to hate me, you’ll wish you left me to die because you’re too much of a coward to kill me yourself-!”
“Hermie!” Normal takes their shoulders and pulls them into a hug. “That’s not- that isn’t true. I’m not going to get sick of you, I won’t hate you, I’m never going to wish you were dead, and I- I know you don’t believe me right now, but we’ll work on it. You’ll believe me some day, I promise.”
“You shouldn’t make promises,” Hermie says, but their voice is soft and fragile. They bury their face in Normal’s shoulder, and Normal refrains from commenting on the way they begin to tremble with tears.