Work Text:
Willow sat in an empty Plant Track classroom at the end of the school day, blowing off some steam by taking care of a small potted tree. She worked at it with a pair of clippers, trimming off dead leaves.
Amity walked by the classroom on her way out of the building. She had stayed after school to get extra help from a teacher, but she had gotten out earlier than she’d told her parents she would. She froze when she saw Willow. Beating down any sense that she still had, she entered the classroom and sat quietly next to Willow.
Willow stopped working, shoulders stiffening visibly. Of all of the people that could have joined her right now, it had to be her . She gritted her teeth. “Amity.”
Amity flinched at the coldness in Willow’s voice. “Hi.”
Willow turned to face Amity, a tired look in her eyes. “What do you want?”
“I don’t need anything. I’m just-”
“You only come here when you want something,” Willow said, raising an eyebrow. “What do you want?”
Amity huffed. “Fine. I want to apologize.”
“You’ve done that a lot lately.”
“I know, but you haven’t forgiven me yet.”
Willow’s eyes widened. Did she really just say that? She scoffed, turning back to her plant. “That’s not how it works, Amity.”
Amity had a baffled look on her face. Her eyebrows were scrunched, and she was looking at the table in front of her, eyes flicking back and forth between nothing.
Willow sighed. “I’m really not sure how it works in that little world of yours, but sorry doesn’t really fix anything. It’s just words.”
“I-” Amity caught herself before she could say what she was about to say. “I don't know what to do, Willow. I don't know what you want.”
Willow looked at Amity, a tear threatening to fall. “You want to know what I want?” she asked solemnly. Amity nodded. Willow took a breath and started to speak, her voice trembling. The tear started sliding down her cheek.
“I want my childhood back. I want those years where you bullied me to go away. I want to make the younger me feel happier. You did a lot of damage, Amity. I lost seven years of my life to torment, and two words won't fix it.” Willow paused and took a breath in and out, before continuing, her voice shaking more and tears continuing to fall.
“Out of sight, out of mind. That was my motto for seven whole years. Seven years of putting up a front and making everyone think I was fine when I wasn't. I wasn’t fine, Amity. I needed a friend, and I had none until Gus showed up a couple years ago. I needed you . I needed you to tell me it was all going to be okay and that this was all some sort of sick joke. I needed you even when you were the one that caused all of the hurt. I needed you but you were only making things worse for me.”
Amity reached for Willow’s shoulder. “Willow, I-”
Willow pushed her hand away. “Don’t say it.” She clenched her hands into fists and opened them again. “I'm not getting those seven years of my life back, Amity. Sorry isn’t going to change that. As much as we might want to change the past, we can't. I guess forgiveness works in almost the same way.”
“What do you mean?”
“You can't just expect someone to forgive you immediately. People aren’t abominations; you can’t expect them to do what you want them to. You have to let them do it on their own, as much as it hurts to see them upset with you. You have to wait.
“Forgiveness isn’t just words. It’s not just work. You can work to make it better but it might not change the way the person you hurt feels about it. Forgiveness takes patience more than anything ,” Willow explained. She took a deep breath and composed herself before standing up. “Since you’re already here, I could use your help repotting this tree.”
She gave Amity a larger pot than the tree was already in and a bag of dirt before hefting the large plant into her own arms. She walked to an empty area of dirt floor in the classroom and set it down, Amity following suit with the pot and dirt. Willow hesitated before starting to repot. “I have another analogy.” Amity looked at Willow but stayed silent. Willow took that as a signal to continue as she started breaking up the dirt around the roots of the tree.
“You could say this kind of thing, friendship and forgiveness, is also like a plant, in a way. If you don’t do anything to nurture it for long enough, it’ll wither up and die. Sometimes you can save it by watering it at the last second, but it doesn’t work. It dies, and no amount of water will make it turn green again.
“If you’re lucky, though, it’ll come back, but not all of the way. It loses a lot of the leaves, maybe even part of the stem. It’s smaller, but it’s still alive. It’ll keep growing, maybe even to the size it was before or larger, but it’ll never grow back the part that was lost.
“Sometimes you overwater it,” Willow emphasized, making a point to look right at Amity’s face. Amity flushed, looking away. Willow smirked. “You have to leave it for a bit and let it drain or evaporate. If you don’t, it starts to wilt. Everything depends on what the plant wants, and paying attention and watching is important.”
Amity didn’t say anything. Willow sighed and took her hands. “We were little kids, and you weren't old enough to stand up to your parents. That's not the part that hurts. What hurts is that you never bothered to try even as we got older and you got stronger. It’s like what you were faking was becoming real. You weren’t Amity anymore.”
Amity furrowed her brow, searching Willow’s face. “But I was me. I’m still me.”
“You didn’t show it. Even if you were, you had this shell. This armor that you never took off. You left it on for so long it was like you didn’t know what you looked like. You didn’t know who you were.”
Willow sighed and took Amity’s hands, rubbing her thumbs across her knuckles and leaving streaks of dirt. “I haven’t forgiven you yet. I’m not ready, and I think it’ll take a while before I am. I’m tired of being mad, though. I want to be friends again, I really do, but I’m not there yet.”
Amity exhaled and stood up, dusting the dirt off of her knees. “Okay.” She turned to leave, but before she could take a step she heard Willow ask a simple, but jarring question.
“What do you think?”
“What?”
Willow chuckled. “Let me rephrase that,” She took Amity’s shoulders and turned her so they were facing each other. “What do you think you could have done better? We can't change the past, but we can reflect on it and make ourselves better from it.”
Amity hummed thoughtfully. “I guess I didn’t have to be such a bitch to you, did I?”
Willow smiled. “True, you didn’t. What are you going to do about it now?”
“Maybe I’ll avoid Boscha. I don’t want to use her as an excuse for how I behaved, but she really did have a lot of influence.”
“Yeah.”
The silence between them stretched while they finished repotting the tree. Willow dusted herself off and stood, studying it. “Right, water. Almost forgot!”
Amity smiled. “Hey, Willow?”
Willow looked at her as she walked across the classroom to get a watering can. ‘What’s up?”
Amity shuffled her foot. “Thanks. For talking to me about this, I mean.” She surveyed her choices for her next words carefully. “I’m glad we’re taking a step in this direction.”
Willow smiled back. “Me too.”