"As long as there are heroes in this world, I will be here to Protect you."-
☆≼What is there to worry about? We can't all be heroes,≽ Coyote said, languishing somewhere within Harland. He found Harland's weakness a waste of time for the both of them.
Harland, however, was haunted by visions of memories, fragments he'd suppressed unknowingly. He looked down at his hands, opening his palms, as if letting something fall free. A lock was affixed to his gauntlet, on the top, where the garnet usually decorated its surface. It was a blue lock, glowing faintly.
His eyes cast down, he tried not to remember how much it hurt. And when he looked at his shadow, and it was gleaming brightly, he felt hope. If someone, anyone, believed in him, surely he could find the will to keep on believing.
☆≼We're not together so you can mope endlessly,≽ Coyote scoffed, urging him into action.
Harland pressed both palms against his face and then prepared to head out to shower. Maybe if he was clean, he could approach the problem better. The memory fragments of Auberon plunging off the roof repeated over and over again, jumping: did Auberon die? Did he save him?
Another memory, rising unbidden, answered that question: Auberon's funeral, his tight-lipped mother as she rose to meet him and reprimand him. Harland turning away, and leaving. He had been disbelieved, discarded, loathed. He had led to the death of the only person he'd thought could handle his world. None of them had the strength to deal with what he saw daily. And yet now here he was, surrounded with other Hunters, far stronger than he was. He admired them.
He knew he could be the hero. He knew it. He just needed to believe in himself, right? For once.
"Coyote?" Harland began, looking himself straight in the eyes and prodding the sheriff's badge stomach piercing jewelry that Coyote desummoned into, "Would ye kindly shut the hell up?"
