Was it a moment? Hunter wondered often. Did it only take a moment – one moment – to dedicate his heart?
“You’re good at doing what you told,” Darius had said to him once, matter-of-fact, without malice. Somehow that was worse, to be told within reason that you were the sum of someone else’s parts. And in an effort to prove himself, there she was.
Willow Park. He knew her first as the eager captain of a future team, looking for the best and brightest. She had seen best and brightest in him, and made sure to never let him go.
At first, he needed that. He didn’t know it yet, but he sorely needed the faith she had placed in him without even thinking twice: a chance he needn’t have earned, only fulfilled.
It was the same for everyone in the Emerald Entrails, in hindsight. They were all overlooked, misjudged, and seeking to prove themselves in some way; Willow – the Captain – had seen the best and brightest in them too. With her there were no chances.
Willow Park never did anything in halves.
“I didn’t know how to say it yet. But –”
“You mean a lot to me too.”
And it was so Augustinian of him, so devoted of him, so goddamn faithful of him, to always reach for her and be by her side. For his loyal heart, this was no difficult feat; it was merely a testament to everything that came before and everything she promised in the after.
He looks at her, now, with her cropped hair and her still bright eyes. She is the best he’s been looking for, all of his life.
“For love of thy love I do it.” - lifted from St. Augustine’s Confessions