Always. //hunter x reader//

Burning to be better.

Give me back my girlhood,

It was mine first.

✰✰✰

I've barely been sleeping these past few days, I'll lay in my bed staring at the walls or at the inside of my own eyelids. Surrounded by darkness, quietness, and the rambling noise of my own mind telling me I'm not good enough.  

It's been torturing my mind that thought, spreading slowly like a deadly diseases. Really it isn't a new thing, there hasn't been a day in my life where I've felt truly adequate in any way. But normally I've been able to dig a hole large enough to bury my endless thoughts a place I'll only ever go at my weakest. 

In my mind healing and moving on has always come hand in hand with ignorance. If i hide all the bad shit I can see the light and be the person I want to be. But as of recently the person I've made of myself doesn't feel like enough, I could hide my incompetence with being fun and flirty and people liked me for it. 

But now my heart wants something more than mere fake friendships and short lasted relationships. I want to be strong and powerful and I want something powerful, something real and lasting.

I don't want to be weak.

And I've tried a lot of different things from buying equipment to help myself in battle to training and studying glyph magic but as of now there just isn't a book large enough for me to understand it. But I've promised myself that I won't stop trying no matter what happens.

So here I am, in the front yard 2:15 am while everybody else is fast asleep reading a book on glyph's magic which isn't telling me anything I already didn't know. 

I close the book and throw it on the floor.I get up from my small lawn chair and slowly open the front door making sure not to wake Hooty up. I slip of my night gown and slippers and drape my scarf around my neck, slip on a pair of boots and a large cloak. 

I've been taking the occasional stroll around the town for a few days now. Usually I just walk around the forest or roam around the deserted streets of the square.  But as of recently I've been visiting the night market. I haven't bought anything yet, but there are a few things that have caught my eye. From knifes hidden in hairpins and blades in rings there are all sorts of items I could use to protect myself.  And so I packed with me a few snails that I will just maybe use to get myself something new and shiny.

...

The streets are more crowded tonight than any other time I've been here, I dance through the array of shady looking individuals and make my way to a shop I've come to known, it lies at the corner of the market  tucked away behind curtains and shelves. The old lady running the stand can't speak but she points and occasionally writes notes to me that tell details about the weapon she's trying to sell me.

I lift a purple and blue curtain over my head and it drapes down my back as I walk into the small dark corner where her familiar smile awaits me. "Hello." I say as I walk over to her, she gives me a warm smile and I look down skimming the isles upon isles of different weapons.  And at the bottom row in the corner a place where few can or would even bother to look theres a small tray with small elixir bottles and a sign that reads. 'Power boosting potions' And a horrid idea enters my mind.

"Do you think these would work on me?" I ask the old woman.

She looks at me wonder going trough her eyes as she makes a not so convinced expression, after a bit she reaches for a pen and a note and begins writing down something. She passes me the note once she's finished.

'I'm not sure, they're my wife's' It reads.

"Can you find her?" I ask, and she walks away with her back hunched over her cane soon emerging with another woman. Her wife as I guess is just as old with pale blue skin, white hair and sinister red eyes.

"What is it." She asks me.

"Oh, Uhh. I was just wondering if these would work on me..?" I awkwardly ask gesturing to the tray.

She looks down then at me eyeing my ears once more before she simply frowns and shakes her head. "I doubt it." And she's gone just like that.  

The old woman eyes my saddened expression with empathy and makes a gesture for me to come her way. I do and she gives me a small hug patting my back and handing me a small note.

'You should go home, It's far too late for a young girl like you to be out here."

...

I stumble up the stairs and fall flat onto my hard mattress, I turn around and begin pulling off my boots and sliding off my scarf, but when I sit up to slide of my cloak there's something weighing down the corner reaching in I find that theres a small scroll stuffed into the pocket of it. I take it out and untie the thin silk ribbon tied around and it folds open with ease.

'Half-a-witch'

'The cursed one neither human or witch, only half of each. With strength greater than any other It's a blessing in disguise. But be warned it not only binds power to your heart it also binds the isles to you.'  

I read the whole thing word by word confusion seeping in more by every line, how the hell did I get this? 

I lay down and gloss over the scroll a few times more, a curse?  A cryptic one at that. I close it and inspect the outside of it a bit further, the scroll is neatly decorated with imprinted glyph's.

I close it and close my eyes, I get home from the night market and there's a creepy curse scroll thing suddenly in my pocket when I get home. That doesn't sound remotely safe, and y'know I'm not about to pull a Lilith on myself with this thing. I sigh and place the scroll onto my nightstand, I'll deal with that tomorrow. Maybe I'll go back to the market and ask about it.

I lay down and tuck myself in, letting my thoughts ramble on as they always do when I'm tired, but instead of going to my usual thoughts of Hunter, pity and worry my thoughts run free with the indication of a curse. One that could bind magic to my heart.

A/N 

In celebration of the finale I'm releasing this chapter today, even though it's a little short its crucially important to the story line that's now starting. 

ANNND omfggg can we talk about how handsome Hunter was in the time skip?!

BTW- This chapter takes place between separate tides and echoes of the past, the chapter for echoes of the past will be released later in this month