Disclaimer: I don't own The Owl House!
Title: Stop Blubbering You Literal Baby
Summary: Kiki assists Hunter in cleaning his face after a bad run-in with Belos as a child. Calling it comforting is a bit of a stretch.
...
"This will sting," Kikimora says, tipping rubbing alcohol onto a cloth.
Hunter, small and scared and bleeding from the face, clutches his cheek with a trembling lip. "Worse than this?"
She slaps the hands away with a tsk. "Less than an infection will. Show some bravery."
The boy's ears couldn't be lower if they were against his neck. Breath hissed through his teeth as she began wiping the dripping blood away. Belos had been quite specific on Hunter not being allowed any healing magic; but Kikimora had a few human tricks up her sleeve, and had accumulated various things of her own over the years. Contraband is only contraband if it's in the open market, after all.
Kikimora had one hell of a poker face by now, and she did a fairly good job not showing the sheer boiling rage she felt. She told herself it was because it was a waste of good tools. It was a waste of rubbing alcohol to clean the cut. A waste of a perfectly clean staff to slice it into a young child's cheek. A waste of a boy to destroy him from the inside out.
But these aren't things for Kikimora to say, so she simply caps the bottle and goes to the bandages. Humans had this technique nowadays, Kikimora had read, for stitching skin together. Something about aiding the process. But doing that would be too obvious, would negate the Emperor's wishes, and Kikimora quite liked being alive.
"What did you do?" she asks, voice coming out harsher than intended. Angry, she told herself. You're angry. Absolutely furious. There's no worry there. He's just a little boy.
(What kind of Emperor attacks a child, something inside Kikimora whispers. She stifles it. The kind that speaks to the Titan, that's who.)
(Who knows? Maybe the Titan is a cruel creation all of its own. The rain boils its bones, and perhaps it commands fellow blood from its citizens. Kikimora isn't talented enough to know.)
"I- I dunno," he admits, eyes watering. "I showed him a photo. Of- of someone who looked like me. He said..." Hunter sucks in a breath and tries to still his quaking hands, and Kikimora remembers once again, against her wishes, that he is a child of maybe five. "He said he could fix that."
Kikimora hummed to show she'd heard. She had a solid guess what that was all about. "The Emperor doesn't like to revisit the past."
"Does he..." Hunter grabs her clawed hand, and Kikimora feels herself recoil. The texture of flesh was odd to her. "Do you think he hates me?"
If only, Kikimora thinks, not even out of spite. The world would be a better place if Belos wasn't fixated on arguably the least powerful person on the Boiling Isles. The least capable person of defending themselves.
But explaining why not being loved by the only adult figure you've ever known may be an improvement is, frankly, above her paygrade, so Kikimora sighs, pats his shoulder, and says, "Of course not. He could never stop loving you."
It feels like a curse as it comes out of her, like tar leaving her teeth. Maybe it is.
"Promise?" He holds up a pinkie finger. Still a child. Still thinking pinkie promises will be binding. It'd be cute, if Kikimora didn't know it was just a matter of time.
Kiki sighs again, but decides to indulge him, curling her claw around it. It only feels fair after dooming him to this. "I promise, little guard."
Author's Note: I like to think Kiki and Hunter had a semi-decent relationship when he was little. Then when he got older and became more present in Belos' life and vying for more, it was this mutual schism bc they both feared Belos choosing one and killing the other. Basically. she was the epitome of the 'oh this is okay' as a baby but when he got bigger it was an oh SHI-.
-Mandaree1