Trans Hunter 8D. Well. Not Hunter anymore...
Luz and the others were woken up in the middle of the night, the hallway light filling their room like daylight.
"There's something I need to say."
Gus stood in the background, flashing an encouraging thumbs up, keeping one hand behind his back to summon the spell when needed.
Luz sat up, a little bleary but always willing to be there for her newest sibling. Vee looked a little less excited, Willow was immediately and lovingly attentive, and Amity was still mostly asleep.
"Go ahead."
"I am not Caleb Wittebane. I am not The Golden Guard and I am not Hunter. Those are the names he chose for me, the person he forced me to be. I am not his brother or his nephew or his perfect child soldier. I am not any of those things and I will never be any of those things ever again."
"What… What do you want us to call you?" Luz asked cautiously.
"Evelyn. The one name I know he'd hate the most."
Gus summoned an illusion, several bonus versions of him waving the trans flag, just like he had when Luz had come out as bi to her mom.
Willow beamed, "The name suits you."
"I figure you can call me Eve, or Evie as a nickname. But, knowing where I come from, who I come from, I think I want to be Evelyn."
Luz smiled as well. "Do you want us to use she/her pronouns for you?"
"Yes, please." Eve broke into a smile now, feeling relieved.
Vee gave Evie a thumbs up, though she'd already known about it. They'd had the "Gender identity and how it relates to being used by Belos" conversation a few weeks ago.
"Thank you for telling us," Luz said, elbowing Amity.
"Mm-hm," Amity echoed sleepily.
"Now I have two sisters," Luz added, glancing between Vee and Eve, who both grinned at that.
"Have you told mom yet?" Luz added as an afterthought.
"Oh, yeah. She was like the second person I told."
"Good."
"She called me her daughter," Eve added, looking both overwhelmed and overjoyed.
"I don't know why but I didn't expect everyone to y'know... Accept me, at least not this fast. So I really appreciate it."
"Aw, Evie, we'll always accept you," Willow promised.
Eve blushed and looked away. The gender bridge had been hard enough to cross, she'd deal with her feelings for Willow when she got there.
"Willow's right. We're your friends. We will always have your back."
Evelyn couldn't take much more of the ooey gooey feelings stuff or she'd break down crying. She was already swiping at her eyes.
"Well, it's late, we should probably be getting back to bed."
"Good night, Eve," Luz said.
"Night, sis," Vee said.
"Sweet dreams," Willow added.
Amity had already fallen back asleep.
"You did good," Gus whispered as they headed back to the basement.
"You think so?"
"Yeah. I'm proud of you."
"Thanks. I know everything's changing, but I hope I can still be like a brother to you." Evelyn stumbled a little on that word.
"Hey. Leave the brother stuff to me. I'm more than happy to have a sister."
Eve wrapped an arm around Gus and Gus good-naturedly mussed up her hair.
Evelyn didn't know what her namesake would think, but she felt very, very grateful to have found this family.
I will write the Vee and Eve talk about gender story this one just exploded out of me while I was neglecting my NaNoWriMo WIP. I am still neglecting my NaNoWriMo WIP.