Lana Arwen Lazar had been crouched over Hunter Lefkowitz for the past ten minutes, hands pressed against his head. He'd twitched a few times, and muttered something slurred and incomprehensible, but he hadn't fully woken up.
And Lana didn't know if he ever would.
She hadn't given much thought to Hunter before this. He was one of the older kids in the FAYZ, she knew – he was fourteen, and probably close to his fifteenth birthday – but the most she'd heard of him was when Sam and Astrid were talking in low voices about his powers. A microwave, Sam had described it.
A hand touched her shoulder and she jerked away. "I'm a little busy," she snapped. "Find Dahra to help you with a boo-boo."
"Hey, Dahra just wants to know if you want help getting him to the hospital," Howard Bassem said. "Don't know when it became my job to do this, bu-"
"We're fine here. Go feed your friend's alcohol addiction," Lana said, and she heard a mutter and the sound of Howard slinking away. Lana wiped sweat from her eyes with the back of her hand and concentrated on Hunter again. She could feel his head healing underneath her fingers, sort of – it was going a lot slower than she would have liked, and something nagging at the back of her head told her that if she would have been here sooner, she would be able to do more. There was something wrong with him – brain damage, if the fact that one side of his face was sagging quite a bit more than the other had anything to say about it.
She didn't know how much she could do with brain damage.
"Lana." Sam this time, torn away from comforting Astrid. "Is it working?"
"I don't know," Lana said, glaring at Hunter's prone body as if that would help heal him. "He's not dead, if that's what you're asking."
"Um… Lana, there are…"
"Other people, I know," Lana said. "Astrid. Pete. Kids who went up against the Coates kids. But he was about to die. I had to get to him first."
"I know, I know, I just… can you take a break on him? I mean, if he's not going to die… and there are some kids that got really messed up… we can take him to the hospital, and then you can work on him later."
Lana sighed and stood up, knees popping. "Fine, Sam. Fine."
…
Hunter woke up to a haze of color and sound. He wasn't sure what was going on, where he was, what had exactly happened. He tried to push himself up, to see what was going on, but his body wouldn't cooperate with the thoughts he could string together.
He gave up and tried to remember something. His head hurt. He blinked slowly and tried to remember why. Freak… killed… who?
He couldn't remember.
His eyes focused in on someone standing over him. She put her hands on his head, where it hurt the most, and the hurt started to leave. His eyes widened a little. He tried to move his hand again, and this time it worked, he thought.
Some else rushed past him, paused, and glanced at the one who was healing him. "Did he wet himself again?"
"I… don't… know," the Healer said. She was staring so intently at Hunter that he couldn't help but stare back. "Everything in here stinks, he's not going to make much of a difference. It doesn't matter. I'm going to heal him."
"Right," the other girl said, sighing. "Well, when you're done, we've got a few more bad ones."
Hunter watched her as she kept her hands on his head for another few minutes, and then she was gone and he let himself sleep.
…
Lana was done with the rest of them. Everyone that had a life-threatening injury - or, at least, an injury that couldn't be fixed by Dahra and a makeshift bandage – was taken care of. The only one left was Hunter Lefkowitz, who had woken up some time ago and had managed to push himself into a sitting position.
She walked over to him and crouched down beside him, putting a few hands on his forehead. She kept her voice even. "Do you know who you are?"
He frowned. "Hunter," he said. Intelligible, if a little slurred and messy.
"Right," Lana said. "Do you know who I am?"
There was another pause. She could practically see him thinking. "Healer," he said. Lana managed a wry smile.
"Well, that's all everyone seems to call me, so close enough," she said. Relief broke over Hunter's face, and she focused on healing him. "Do you know what happened?"
The pause was longer this time, though eventually he nodded. His face was doubtful, but he answered. "I… killed a boy?" he wondered. "And… and then they…"
He froze, all of the blood draining from his face, and stared at his hands.
"Because," he whispered. "Because I-"
"Calm down," Lana said. He ignored her. "Hey. Hunter. Calm down. Whatever happened, it's over now. Now you're going to get better and focus on the future, whatever that might be."
Hunter looked at her almost reverentially – not that people looking at her like that was anything new, it had started with Cookie and only grown – and nodded. He looked doubtful, and confused, but she didn't think that he'd flip out any time soon. So she concentrated on healing him as best as he could.
…
Hunter knew that he was supposed to take the deer to Albert. He could eat enough to keep himself working, but that meant a bird when he was hungry, not a deer. But he had been out near Lana The Healer's house when he'd caught the deer, and he'd butchered it there, and he thought that maybe she'd want some.
And maybe she could heal him some more. He remembered that before, back before he'd been Hunter The Hunter, she'd helped him. Now he could hunt. Maybe she could help him more now, so that he could be smart again.
He even cooked the meat for her, with fire, and then he bundled the rest of it up and tossed it up in a tree so that the coyotes didn't get at it. He remembered to mark the tree so that he knew when he passed it again that he had a deer up there.
He was never quite sure how he should approach where Lana lived, simply because of the sheer size of it. Usually he ended up standing under her balcony until she noticed him. He was standing for a while before she noticed him this time. She was outside smoking.
"Oh, Hunter," she said. Ash fell in flecks toward him. "Come up."
He did, though the maze of hallways and rooms kind of confused him.
Once he was up there, he stood awkwardly. She looked at him expectantly.
He handed the piece of deer to her. She took it, eyebrow quirking up. "For me? It's kind of a lot, isn't it?"
Seeing his face, she continued.
"It's nice to have a little extra. I can share with Patrick. But you didn't just come with food, right?"
Hunter swallowed and pointed at his head.
She sobered immediately and nodded, putting the meat down on a table. "I'll try," she said. "It's been a while, and maybe it'll get a little better. We've made a lot of progress already, haven't we?"
Hunter wasn't sure, but he nodded anyway.
"Sit down."
Hunter glanced around for something to sit on, and ended up sitting on the bed. Lana pressed her hands against his head, and apart from a slight tugging and a little bit of connection, he felt nothing. Nothing was different. He probably still couldn't smile right, and he still couldn't remember everything.
She was looking at him like she knew that it hadn't worked. She grabbed a piece of paper and handed it to him. "Can you read it?"
Once glance and he shook his head. He knew that he used to be able to read things a lot more complicated than whatever this was – he remembered thick books for school, and shiny magazines full of pictures for fun, but now this…
Lana sighed. "I thought so," she said. Hunter stood up. He should go back and work on getting the rest of that deer to Albert. Maybe he'd catch a few birds on the way back, too. "Hey, stay a little. Have some deer."
Hunter, feeling more out of place by the second, shook his head and backed up. "I need to hunt," he said. He cracked his half-smile. He always thought it was funny and nice that his name was Hunter and he was the Hunter. "Good-bye, Healer."
She said something as he left, but he didn't catch it. He felt a little bad about not hearing her, but he kept going anyway. Albert would be happy with the rest of that deer, and so would the rest of the kids. He needed to get it back to them as soon as he could.
Hunter is my absolute favorite character and for some reason I had never written anything about him before now. Also, Lana's probably my third favorite, and I thought that the two of them could use some love.
Now we can all pretend that the bugs didn't happen.