Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“The shadows of her fingers trembled over Hecate’s face, eclipsing her pale cheek, furrowed brow, the drops of blood dispersed in between. Azura had touched her so many times, unthinkingly, almost brashly, never with a sense that she might touch her for the last time one day. Now, she dared not move her fingers any closer, as if she could find her skin already cold and brittle.

‘Are you—’ her voice broke.

She did not finish the question. The answer was going to be ‘no’. Hecate’s eyes stayed closed, but her lips twitched into the effigy of a smile.

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘Will you stop contradicting me?’

Once, she might have said the words with fury igniting them. Azura couldn’t keep the shiver out of her voice then.

‘I’m not,’ Hecate said, her voice a whisper, barely a thin slice of her left, ‘it’s just difficult to keep track of time. I think—I think I’m slipping.’

Azura felt it too, though it was not her own time. Sand, trickling through her fingers, drying as the tide receded.

She gathered words into one last question.

‘Will you come back—come back to me?’

‘Oh, Azura. I only ever shone in your light.’

‘Then why could you not shine a little longer?’

There was no answer this time, the shadow passing between them too thick for words to pierce. But it was just a shadow, and it would pass.”

Amity’s phone buzzed with an alarm, loud and sudden in the quiet room. She set her pen down, breathed out, closed her eyes. Then she tapped it away. It was only a month into her last year of school, summer still lingered around the edges of September. A little early to start studying for final exams, even for her, but she was trying out time management techniques on all her homework assignments. Pomodoro was working fine so far. After four periods, she was already done with most of her work and deserved a longer break. Amity closed her textbook, unlocked her phone and opened Instagram, jaw clenched, fingers tapping on her desk while she waited for the posts to load.

She'd tried to distract herself, but she hadn't forgotten what day it was.

When Amity had seen the announcement for the official “The Good Witch Azura” cosplay contest, she had been half asleep, kept up by a sweltering summer night. It had felt like a dream, something she had wished into existence with her tired, heat-addled mind. But the announcement had still existed the next day: A cosplay contest by the official page, to celebrate the community. Amity didn’t have to read the rules to know she would participate—though she did, more than once, read them, and copied them into a notebook, itemized and color-coded, and she would do everything to win.

And she had. She had picked an outfit, scrolled through five different google searches for reference pictures, squinted at the colors of wigs and fabrics in tiny preview windows, ordered samples, gotten frustrated that nothing was quite the right color, bought wig and fabric anyway, endured the “another wig?” comments without rolling her eyes, drew patterns and cut fabric and sewed and stitched and pricked her fingers, pressed and ironed and bled on her seams and dropped a tear or two on them, locked herself in her bathroom and burned her fingers with the hairdryer and glued them together with hairspray, until every last artificial hair sat perfectly, contacted the one photographer she felt comfortable with, put on an hour’s worth of make-up and a sleeveless dress and woke up at 5 am for a sunrise photoshoot. She had posted the best photo on her account and entered it into the contest.

When her page refreshed, the announcement of the winners was the top post. Heartbeat in her ears, Amity scrolled and—the cheerful face of an Azura cosplayer stared back at her. It wasn't her. It was a high-quality picture of someone dressed in Azura’s typical outfit, hat astray on their wig, legs spread wide in an over-the-top pose, hand raised dramatically. Amity’s vision blurred until there were only colors, white and blue and green and brown. Her heartbeat didn’t know what to do anymore. She swiped through the next pages of the post. She wasn’t anywhere. No second place. No honorable mention.

Even as Amity read the post, it did not feel like reality. She had fallen asleep while studying and this was a dream, the site had glitched, or—

We are so happy to announce the winners of our cosplay contest! So many of you wanted to celebrate the first glimpse at the cartoon adaptation of the The Good Witch Azura novels with us. It was difficult to choose a winner between all these amazing, talented people. And remember - there’s a bit of magic in all of us ✨

Here’s our magical winners!

1st place - @luzura as no one but the Good Witch herself!

...

Amity didn’t continue reading. She scrolled back up to look at this luzura person, figure out whatever they had done differently than her. Maybe she had just chosen the wrong character. It was logical that the main character, the titular character, would win the franchise cosplay contest. She’d known sticking to Hecate had been risky, not the best choice if she wanted to maximize her chances, not the best choice if she went by general popularity, because Hecate was a popular character only to a very specific subset of the fandom. But it fit her and anyone who had read further than the first four books knew Hecate was the best antagonist-turned-rival-turned-ally ever written.

Somewhere in the depths of her account, there was a picture buried of Amity dressed as Azura. It was old, her face still rounded by baby fat, the hat too big for her. She’d loved dressing up as Azura. But it had never felt quite like herself, and it had taken some time to realize why. She knew now. She was no protagonist. She wasn’t optimistic, or brave, or loyal, or even friendly. She wasn’t a heroine. Someone who wasn’t any of these things, either, but learned to be useful and good in her own way felt much better to wear. She loved Azura, but not in the way she wanted to be her.

And so, Amity had picked out Hecate, and referenced outfits from sparse descriptions and book covers, and built her online brand around it. She updated her Instagram, @princessmoon every day, on a schedule set to maximize likes, and even in the small niche that were the Azura novels, she gathered a thousand followers. And then the adaptation was announced, followed by the contest, and she knew without a doubt no one in the fandom embodied a character as well as her, no one was a better seamstress than her, no one had her way with wigs or make-up. She knew without a doubt she’d win, and her Hecate cosplay would appear on the official Azura Instagram page.

Until now.

Instagram user luzura wore the typical Azura outfit every fan bought when they first got into the franchise, hat, dress, staff, boots. Amity zoomed in on the hat, examining the stitches, the seams on the dress. The color and texture of the fabrics was off, and it didn’t seem like a new, ironed cosplay. The skirt and top were evidently modified from off-the-rack fashion. Amity zoomed in further to examine the uneven stitches. The modification was shoddy at best. The hat, at least, seemed handmade, but Amity wasn’t impressed by its quality either. The staff, the centerpiece of the picture, where half of the drama lay, was too smooth to be anything but 3D-printed.

Anger burned in the hollow of Amity’s throat. She had worked hard not to sneer at everyone she met at cons or saw online who wore cheap costumes with not a single stitch made by themselves. It was fine—Amity had to tell herself time and time again—people did cosplay for different reasons. Some people did it for nothing but fun and didn’t care about how well-made their costumes were and how much work they put into them. Amity had accepted it, though it still left a bad taste in her mouth that she was seen as just the same as these people.

What was not fine was losing to someone with a thrown-together, haphazard costume, half of it not even handmade. The contest had said nothing of handmade cosplays and props, but it had been implied. It was a cosplay contest. How could it not have been?

Bile was rising in Amity’s throat. Even if the technical skills did not matter, she was supposed to be the best fit for a character, more than any Azura cosplayer could ever be. But this one—even with makeup that could not amount to more than a layer or two of mascara and a hastily braided wig—was a great fit, no matter how sick it made her. Nothing about the smile or the pose looked like acting, it was like their personality shone through the flimsy fabric, through the pixels, and it was the sort of electric, captivating personality any true main character was gifted with. Amity knew why they had won over her.

Her phone clattered to her desk, and she blinked at the wall. She had moved her desk for schoolwork to Emira’s old room last year, after her siblings had moved out for college. Something about being able to work better if you did it in a different room than the one you slept in. There was barely anything personal left in the room, just a bed, a drawer full of old clothes, and Amity’s desk. She had stuck her timetable on the wall behind it, where there had already been things stuck to the wall—photos, tickets, yellowed-out notes, and frayed pieces of fabric. Amity had barely paid attention to them when she’d put up her schedule. She took it down carefully now. It was time to replace it with the new one anyway. Behind it, the wall was still plastered like she remembered it to be. Apparently, the memories hadn’t mattered enough to Emira to take them with her, but once, they had mattered enough to stick to her wall.

Faces of her siblings and their friends, ones she recognized and ones she’d never seen before, names of movies she remembered watching, her own face, even, once, in a corner, barely visible behind a concert ticket.

Amity hadn’t put up any photos in her room in a long time. There was no one she wanted to remember that much, nothing she wanted to keep that she’d hang up for everyone else to see instead of sealing it away.

Her phone screen lit up with another Instagram notification, and she opened the app with five furious taps. Amity’s chest was still weirdly heavy, and she didn’t like being disturbed out of her funk. She had two new followers: Someone from school, who she blocked immediately, and someone with an Anime profile pic who was going through all her posts and liking them. She didn’t click on their profile. She did not care. She had two new comments on her newest post: One said “cute ❤️”, the other “DM us for Promo”. She sighed. Left was one new message: Edric had sent her a video of a kitten destroying a pair of socks and hissing at the person behind the camera as menacingly as it could and added “you lmao”. Amity didn’t answer or react, but she let the video replay a handful of times and felt the corners of her mouth twitch upwards despite herself.

The rest of her homework and dinner, where she distracted herself with thoughts of the cat her parents would never allow her to have, kept her from thinking of the contest and the person who won it. It could not distract her once she had turned off the lights and laid down in bed. The thought came back as soon as her head touched the pillow, the nagging, terrible thought of that cosplayer with their terrible outfit who had won over her. She tried to distract herself with reading, but even that didn’t work. She couldn’t focus. The words kept bending to her thoughts, spelling out nonsense and half-sense. After she had stared at one paragraph for five minutes, she sighed and reached for her phone on the nightstand.

Amity was going to find out exactly who had beat her, and what their weak points were, so she did not have to walk around with this heavy emptiness inside of her.

Instagram user luzura had a good but not enormous number of followers, went by Luz—what an absolute surprise—and used she/ her. Amity felt good at least knowing the right name and pronouns of the person she was hate-stalking. Her profile pic was her own smiling face in some Anime cosplay Amity didn’t recognize, her bio full of emojis and references Amity didn’t want to try to understand. The only decipherable things were her age—listed as “Lvl. 17”, which made Amity roll her eyes—and the three flags right under her display name—Dominican Republic, United States, and the rainbow flag. All in all, maybe a little cringe, but still at a standard level for a cosplay Instagram page. Amity scrolled down her posts.

Her Azura cosplay was scattered throughout, but there were a lot of other fandoms, too. Popular Anime and obscure games and other fantasy novels, some non-Cosplay posts in between. Her brain hurt trying to comprehend how one person could be a fan of so many things. And Luz, though most of her cosplays looked half-bought and none of them looked professionally made, looked like she was the biggest, most earnest fan in every single picture of her. Even if the character she was dressed as was not the type to smile brightly or point dramatically, she managed to brim with positive energy with her arms crossed and a frown on her face. It was a little sickening.

Amity’s vision blurred as she kept scrolling, until a flash of dark blue and orange stopped her. There: Luz, as Azura, next to a Hecate. It was just a con snap, not a professionally posed picture, but they were smiling, and their faces were leaned close together as Luz had put her arm around the other cosplayer’s shoulders. A hot something flashed through Amity.

It wasn’t that she had never met an Azura cosplayer at a con or taken a picture with them. It wasn’t that it was a particularly good photo of either of them, or that this particular Hecate had anything on her. She didn’t know what exactly it was. But it happened often when she saw people cosplay these two together, especially if they were close friends, especially if they were a couple. And still, even if neither of these things seemed to be the case here, she still felt that hot spike of anger-jealousy in her chest.

The “The Good Witch Azura” books were an ongoing fantasy novel series, but the publication dates were random and often years apart. It had been a long time since the first one had been published, too long for Amity to be an original fan, and they had grown with their audience. What had been a run-of-the-mill middle grade fantasy adventure had developed into a story with deep worldbuilding and lore, interesting characters and relationships, and a plot that was intriguing, even if the good guys always won. There were still, most of the time, clear answers to who was good and who was evil—redemption arcs notwithstanding—and the writing still dripped with typical faux-medieval slang. Amity had read books that were deeper, that were more suspenseful, that had a more original plot, more complex emotions. But she had rarely read one that had made her stay up past her bedtime, secretly, to look it up online, because she’d read the last line of the last published book and there was an empty, gaping chasm in her chest where the words used to be.

She’d been thirteen when she’d read her first fanfiction, and she’d had no idea what to expect. With her blanket drawn up over her face and her phone glaring back at her, she had continued reading through the night. The next day at school, she had been barely more than a zombie, but she knew what shipping was. And that alone kept her going, kept her eyes wide open through every class, because if she fell asleep now, someone would notice, and someone would intervene, and she couldn’t get back to what she really wanted to be doing.

Azura had never been a romance novel. Relationships were for the side characters, for the older characters and the parents. Sometimes, a romantic interest for one of the main characters was teased, but it had not led to anything more in half a dozen books. At this point, though she still loved the story with all her heart, Amity was growing a bit frustrated with it. Azura had already gone through so much, and though she had found a group of friends she was just a breath away from calling her second family, she didn't have a long-term romantic interest. Amity, as much as she even then pretended she didn’t, adored love stories. Her favorite character deserved one.

It was with pure glee that she discovered that more than half of the other readers, or at least of the ones active online, wanted her to get together with Hecate. If Amity had known it was an option, she would have thought so from the first scene they shared together. As it was, it didn’t need more than a sentence in the second fic she had clicked on for her eyes to stray to the top of her blanket and her heart to stop for a single beat before it began beating twice as fast.

It was perfect. No one else could ever come close. She had hoped for a prince, lonely, locked in a tower, that Azura could rescue from the dragon guarding his prison. But no one shared the same kind of history, the same kind of tension, the same unsaid apologies and compliments, the same feelings, whatever they might be, Azura and Hecate did. No new character could ever come close.

There was also the other thing, maybe the reason Amity had not considered it an option in the first place, or not let herself—they were both girls. As the quality of the story, the diversity of the cast had improved as well, and one or two queer side characters had appeared in all the latest books. But that had never meant anything for the plausibility of the main character, the titular character, who was great and amazing and no boring cut-out of a person at all, but still a typical fantasy protagonist and very much female, to end up with another girl. Now, though, as she knew thousands of people thought so, or at least hoped so, she dared to hope, too.

Once Amity had discovered fanfic, it wasn’t too long until she discovered everything else fandom entailed, including cosplay. And while her attempts at fanart and fanfic stayed locked in her desk, cosplay felt like something she could share with the world. Writing and drawing were too vulnerable. Amity put so much of herself into it, and she didn’t think she could stand anyone telling her it was no good, or boring, or cheesy. But she could teach herself sewing and how to handle wigs, and she could perfect it, and there would be nothing too vulnerable about it. Her face and her body and her person, the way it appeared in and moved through the world, was already being criticized every second she existed. She was used to it. She wouldn’t have to unlock any of her carefully shut doors to cosplay.

Except for one: She was fifteen when she made up her mind to go to her first con, and she definitely had to ask for permission. When she had asked for a sewing machine and fabric to practice, that had not been too much of an issue. Acquiring new skills was always a good thing, even if it was something like sewing. Maybe she’d be a fashion designer, in the future, she had suggested. She needed to know the basics for that. A good excuse, a believable one, even, but not enough to build a whole entire cosplay.

Her first mistake had been to leave her cosplay out. The first one she had ever made, her Azura dress with the crooked seams and wrong colors. Her second mistake had been to forget to lock her door.

It had been a terrible day at school, so she hadn’t taken her headphones off when she had gotten home. All she was thinking about was screaming into her pillow for ten minutes and maybe punching it, too, then numbing her mind with a day’s worth of fanfiction before she got to her homework.

Her bedroom door was ajar. Amity paused with her hand outstretched. She heard nothing but Waterparks shouting you only like me when I'm numb, but her heart was suddenly in her throat. She ripped out her headphones and kicked the door open.

Edric was posing dramatically against Amity's wardrobe while Emira was taking pictures of him on her phone. They were both giggling. Amity stood still in the doorway. It would have been bad enough if her siblings had gotten into her room on a normal day. But this was so much worse. Edric was wearing her Azura hat. Fully wearing it. It was on top of his head.

“What the fuck?”

She locked eyes with Edric, and he stopped laughing, eyes a little wider, but Emira barely turned around.

“Oh, hey. How was school?”

They were supposed to still be at school, but Amity didn’t care about that in the slightest, then. They could flunk all their classes for all she cared, as long as they left her stuff alone.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

The hat. The dress, crumpled on the floor beside her bed. The staff, tossed into a corner with no regard for anything. Her heart clenched just as her fist did.

“We’re just—”

Amity was over her bed in one stride, next to Edric on the other side of it in another. His eyes were still wide, and he held tight to the hat when she grabbed the rim and pulled on it.

“Give me that.”

He didn’t budge. Amity might have been strong for her age, but she was still a lot smaller than her older brother and pulling wouldn’t do her or the hat much good. She let go and used the second of surprise in Edric’s eyes to let herself drop to the floor and throw her entire weight against his side.

“Hey!” he shrieked as he toppled over.

He was still clutching the hat to his chest, but Amity didn’t have any trouble snatching it this time. She held it close to her chest and stood, breathing heavily. Her eyes locked onto Emira, who was grinning, still holding her phone.

“What—”

“Oh, do you want me to send you the pics?” she looked up from her phone, the picture of innocence. “I think they’d make a nice addition to your feed, ‘princess moon’.”

Amity clutched the hat tighter to her chest. If she thought her siblings finding her cosplay was bad, them finding her Instagram account was worse. There were things on there—her heartbeat dropped to her stomach. Still on the floor, Edric started laughing.

“No,” Amity tried to get out, “you can’t—”

tell anyone, she wanted to say. The words stuck in her throat. She was so angry her arms were shaking, but at the same time, she felt if she said another word, she’d start crying.

Edric got up from the floor.

“Sorry, by the way. The hat is probably fine, but the dress might be a little ripped.”

“I knew he couldn’t fit into it, but he just had to try.”

“Get out.”

Amity tried to cover the wobble in her voice by lifting her chin and pointing to the door. She was tired. She really, really just wanted to be left alone.

Maybe the shine of tears in her eyes had been enough. Maybe her siblings had decided they were bored of her. After they had left, she turned the key in her lock and sat against her door to cry. She didn’t cry often. Mostly, she didn’t have enough time for it, or she didn’t herself care enough. But she had cared this time. She cared about Azura, she cared about the cosplay she had made, she cared about getting to wear it. It had been okay because no one knew, and no one would know.

She cried until her head hurt and the room was spinning around her. Then she picked herself up and stuffed the cosplay into the very back of her wardrobe and told herself she’d never look at or think about it again.

The next morning, she was awake before her alarm, head throbbing, unsure if she had slept at all. She was still staring at the dark ceiling when a soft knock at her door startled her. Amity sat up in bed.

“Yes?”

She recognized Emira’s knocking, but it was still a surprise when it was actually her poking her head inside and smiling. A nice smile, this time, not faux innocence, almost apologetic. Amity still didn’t trust it.

“What do you want?”

“Can I come in?”

Amity didn’t say anything, but that also meant she didn’t say no, so Emira slipped inside and sat on the edge of her bed.

“So, you’re really into cosplay, huh?”

Amity yanked her blanket closer to her chest and rolled it up between her fingers. She had thought this was over.

“If you’re making fun of me—”

“No! No, no. Never.”

Amity just stared and the sincere expression on Emira’s face broke into a smile again.

“Okay. But just a little. And I know that was too much yesterday, but, you know, it was funny in the moment.”

Amity didn’t let go of her blanket.

“Is that supposed to be an apology?”

“No.” Emira unlocked her phone and slid it over to Amity. “But this is.”

It took Amity a moment to realize what she was looking at. An event announcement on an Instagram page, a date, and a location in colorful letters. She tried not to draw any conclusions.

“It’s like an Anime convention or whatever, but it’s also a book fair, and lots of people go there in cosplay. It’s an hour by car, and the tickets aren’t that expensive. We could totally convince Mom and Dad to let us go.”

“Really?”

Amity smiled. She couldn’t help it. She had tried to forget about cosplay the night before, but deep down she had known it was impossible. But now, with the possibility of going to a con right in front of her—

“Wait, ‘us’?”

“Yeah. We wouldn’t let you go alone. And don’t get me wrong, this whole thing is weird, but you’ve always been a nerdy little weirdo.”

“Hey—”

“Anyway, it’s time we spend some time together again. Just don’t worry about it, we’ll get us there.”

“...thanks.”

Emira nodded and stood, and Amity felt with a sudden clarity that it was not enough. Of course, yesterday had hurt, and it would probably hurt for a while to come, but this was more than just making up for one incident. This was giving her a way into something she had longed for, and she barely had to do anything to get there. Thanks was by far not enough for that, but she kept her lips shut. She wasn’t the type to say things like that aloud. No one in her family really was.

Emira paused with one foot already out of the door and looked back to ask:

“You haven’t deleted your Insta, have you?”

Amity had told herself she would, but she hadn’t been able to bring herself to press the button. She shook her head.

“Well, you shouldn’t. We won’t tell anyone else. And keep the name, it fits you.”

“It does?”

Emira’s smile turned into a grin again.

“Yeah. You are a spoiled little princess.”

Amity rolled her eyes and finally pushed back the covers so she could get up.

“If I’m a spoiled princess, what does that make you?”

“A queen.”

Amity snorted and Emira left the door open as she left, which meant Amity had to get out of bed to close it again, but she couldn’t even frown about it. She would have to come up with another cosplay—she would not wear Azura again, that was for sure—but she would get to go to a convention.

Since the Azura costume was dead and buried, Amity had chosen Hecate instead, and soon, nothing about it felt instead anymore. It felt like that was how it was supposed to be, and Hecate had turned out perfect. Of course, Amity herself still saw flaws in it. The parts where it didn’t sit quite right on her, where the needle had slipped the tiniest bit. But those were hidden, and no one who didn’t know exactly where to look would notice. So why had she still felt so empty every time she looked in the mirror?

No, not empty—incomplete.

They had been at the convention for an hour—Amity, in her cosplay, with a tight ball of anxiety buried deep in her stomach, and Emira and Edric, in normal clothing, having the time of their lives—when she got an inkling of what she was missing.

“Hey,” Edric bumped her arm and pointed to the side, “there’s someone dressed as the same character as you! And—oh. Ohhh.”

Amity followed his gaze to the other Hecate. Every drop of hesitation or the need to compare herself evaporated when she saw what Edric had been ohhh-ing at: A photo shoot of an Azura and a Hecate. There was already nothing platonic about their pose, their arms around each other and their noses almost touching, but before Amity could will herself to look away, the Hecate lifted her hand to the Azura’s face, tilted it up, and brought their lips together.

Amity felt like her soul had evaporated. Her chest was burning.

Edric bumped his elbow into her arm again. She didn’t need to look at him, she didn’t need him to say anything to be embarrassed that he had seen her react to that. She bumped him back.

“Ow!”

Amity deliberately, and with great difficulty, turned away and took three steps.

“Anyway, did we lose Em?”

Edric’s face scrunched up and he looked back into the mass of people behind them.

“I think she’s… flirting with someone over there?”

Amity rolled her eyes.

“Fine. She’ll catch up.”

Amity felt jittery, a little out of it, not just because it was her first con, for a while after that. But there were so many things to take in, so many people and so many rooms and so many vendors, it wasn’t difficult to forget about it. When they sat down to eat three hours later, the Hecate and Azura were in the far off reaches of her mind, but then, she looked up, and there they were: Walking by next to them, close enough she could have reached out and touched one of their dresses, close enough to hear them laugh. There was no camera on them this time. They were still holding hands.

Amity’s heart clenched, fierce and sudden. That was what she was missing. That was what she wanted. She wanted someone she could walk around a con with, hand in hand or at least arm in arm, shoulder to shoulder, someone who fit right into all her edges, and she could fit into all of theirs. Like Azura and Hecate did. Like, maybe, only fictional characters ever could. Maybe that was why it hurt so much, watching these two walk past her—because she knew she would never have what she imagined them to have.

The feeling had never gone away. She had been going to Cons for two years now, and met some people, even made what she could tentatively call friends. But she hadn’t found a cosplay partner. She hadn’t found an Azura just for herself. She had definitely not found a girlfriend. The only thing she could hold onto was how well-made her cosplays were, how good she looked in them, and that one day, someone was going to notice. And if the official TGWA account had posted her, someone was almost bound to notice her.

But it hadn’t happened. Luzura grinned back at her from a grimy con photo, with her stupid nickname and her stupid smile and her stupid, ugly cosplay, that she hadn’t even ironed before this con. She’d taken the contest from Amity, and she had the gall to go and flaunt how well she could talk to other cosplayers and make friends with them.

Amity let her phone clatter to her nightstand and let out a deep sigh. Every nerve was tense with anger, jealousy, and anger over being so jealous. She was never going to be able to fall asleep like this.