Chapter Text
The hunter walked the chilled Yharnam streets with the same careful tread they had grown used to. It might have been unnecessary, now that the town was free of the Paleblood Moon’s presence, but old habits did not quell easily. When they are so deeply ingrained into one’s sense of safety and well-being… it could be hard to let them go. To accept that perhaps they were no longer a necessity.
Especially when the hunter was used to seeing these streets in quick, blood-spattered flashes as they ran. Eyeing the darkness for what it could be hiding, arms swinging as they cut their way through the hoards of beastly huntsmen.
Now Yharnam was bustling with people. Clear-eyed, uninfected people.
There were no longer monsters terrorizing the town, and there never would be again. There would be no more suffering under the scourge, no more harrowing Moon phases to trigger an accursed night of fear.
No more reasons for hunters to exist…
Somehow, that was perhaps the hardest thing for them to accept. Without the hunt, they were left purposeless - and that was what made them sick to their stomach. The hunter knew that they should be happy. They should feel free and liberated and grateful that it was now all over!
But they only ever felt empty. Like a stagnating pool, left behind as the stream changed paths. While everything around them grew and shined and brightened, they stayed stuck behind in their festering puddle.
It was so hard to feel like a hero, like a true accomplishment had been achieved.
Some days it was even harder to feel like a person.
The memories of the Nightmare and the Hunt were so distant in their memory, tucked away like creatures hiding beneath riverbed stones, yet it still haunted them. Clung to them like a well-worn coat. Or another layer of flesh; perhaps that was the better analogy. After all, a coat could be shucked and hung up on a rack. Forgotten for a time, once it had found its proper place.
The Hunt always lingered. No matter how many times they washed their hands, their body, their face, it clutched to them.
(It was so damned hard to just keep existing – why did they have to suffer still? Had they not done their time? Had they not accomplished what no other hunter had before? All they wanted now was to stop having to survive and be allowed to live – and even that was denied, kept from them by their own mind, their own hateful existence, a marring on this otherwise healthy world—)
There was nothing that could get rid of the ominous feeling that lived inside their chest, but there were a few ways that they could alleviate it on rare good days. Being around other people as they were now certainly helped, even if those people were the uncaring, scowling Yharnamites. Being remembered helped. Even if it was something so small that it was almost unnoticeable. Someone giving them a second glance. Or a confused tilt of the head.
It was rare when someone would look at them for a bit longer than necessary. Usually wary eyes would scan the hunter's face, trying to place where they had seen the hunter before giving up and moving on. Rarer still were the people whose eyes lit up with recognition when they saw the hunter.
But there were a few, and the hunter made an effort to remain a constant in their lives...
The Oedon Chapel’s dweller, who had cried when the hunter had returned and had all but collapsed into his gangly-armed hug.
A little girl with the bright white bow, who would offer the hunter an even brighter smile and a wave whenever she crossed by them in the street.
The crow who, despite her solitary nature, always seemed pleased to see them once more.
Precious pieces of a life that – after so many endless nights – passed the hunter by here in the waking world. Little touchstones that had kept the hunter calm when the dark crept in too closely and the Moon still hung unnaturally large in that accursed night sky.
All of them were still so important to the hunter now... Each had served as a reason to keep going, to keep pushing towards a better tomorrow for everyone; towards dragging this city out of the nightmare it had built for itself. Even after the hunt had ended, they were all still reasons the hunter could make themselves get out of bed every morning.
Yet out of everyone, there was always one person they found themselves returning to over and over again.
His door was a very familiar sight for the hunter; it was the very same door that they now stood in front of. It had been a place he had visited many times during the hunt, one of the lanterns being located so close to the front of the building and the helpful advice of the man inside bringing the hunter back to him time and time again.
Now the hunter always returned just for the pleasant company.
(It was so, so nice to sit down and have a cup of tea with someone who remembered the hunt yet only spoke about benign things with them. Conversation topics like the weather or what the local shops were stocking worked as lovely distractions from the horrid memories that often wracked the hunter’s mind. Even if said memories would often crop up during those conversations, trying to derail them with vile thoughts and empty visions of what the hunter had done—)
They raised their closed fist and knocked on the thick wood. In the moments that they stood waiting for an answer, they slipped their hat from their head, holding it in their hands. It was a gesture steeped in awkwardness – even after so many visits and long conversations, they felt uncomfortable when asking to be invited into his home.
The door opened with a slight creak and the hunter glanced up.
The owner of the house stood in the doorway, his frown brightening after seeing who was standing on his doorstep. A teasing remark about expecting one of the locals floated through the hunter’s mind, but he ignored it in favor of looking the man over.
He looked… better than he had at the hunter’s last visit. Healthier certainly, with a little more meat on his bones, so to say. His hair was neater too – still a bit wild, but not the pitiful, ratty mess that it had been during the hunt. Perhaps most importantly, he was still on his own two feet. Something that the hunter knew he appreciated, after being confined to a chair for so many cycles.
“Aurore,” the man rasped with an easy grin. “It is good to see you again – and so soon.”
The hunter smiled, and a sense of peace quelled the nerves that clawed at their innards. “Hello, Gilbert.”