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There was a rose bush in the backyard.
It was an overgrown thing, bushy and full of thorns too big for the small, wimpy flowers that it produced. Its branches spread all along the back row of trees that gave way into the small forest behind the house, almost as if it was guarding the entrance. The thing grew without limit, spreading as far as it dared and blooming its fragrant flowers with little care.
That rose bush had been there longer than Luz could remember.
It was still there when she got back to the human realm. Unchanged, unphased by the passage of time that Luz had gone through. It cared little for Luz, just as Luz had paid it no mind while she was in the demon realm.
The roses that bloomed were weak and fragile, their petals pulled just from the smallest droplets of rain. But neither Luz nor Camila had put in the effort to try and help it grow, or to nurture it to produce any more than the glass-coated blossoms that it produced.
Maybe that was the problem, maybe if they had paid more attention to it, then there would be something beautiful to show. If they had cared for it more and pruned its overzealous branches and given it the room to grow then it wouldn’t be the sickly mass that it was now. That was their fault, they were stupid.
Luz had gotten pricked by its thorns more times than she could count and maybe that was the reason behind their neglect. No one wanted to take care of something so full of thorns and hostile to the world. No one wanted to take care of something that would scratch and hit the hand that tried to tend it.
Maybe that was where they went wrong.
It wasn’t the rose bush’s fault. No, they couldn’t punish it for something it couldn’t control. The rose bush had been given thorns for a reason, it needed to protect itself somehow. The few wimpy flowers that it produced were fragile enough as it is, so of course, it had to produce more thorns than it could possibly need just to keep the predators out. It was a defense mechanism, the only one that it had and that was where they stopped trying.
If they had given it a little more water than it was getting or offered it protection, it wouldn’t need to spend all its energy on producing thorns. If it didn’t need to focus so much on defending itself and keeping itself safe, then maybe there would be more room for it to bloom.
The rose bush had too many thorns, too many leaves, and too many branches that took all the energy away from making roses. And maybe if it had been given some more care, it would be able to bloom as freely as all the other rose bushes that Luz had seen.
But they had ignored it and left it to fester on its own. And that’s exactly what it did. It spread, and it spread far, all the way across the edge of the backyard with a harsh thicket of thorns and half-hearted flowers. There was no way into the forest that way unless you went through the brush of rose bushes and thorns.
Luz swore that now that she was back in the human realm, she would take care of the bush, after all, it would be something to distract her from the pain that took over her entire body. She could prune its leaves and water it just a little more (but after the storm they had just gotten, she was sure it wouldn’t need much).
Maybe it would even produce some better flowers if she took the time to care for it. Its flowers wouldn’t wilt within a few days' time, the petals wouldn’t fall off when the breeze hit it a little too hard, and maybe she would be able to reach into its dark bramble and not come out with a bloodied hand.
The thorns were harsh, Luz knew that after a long time of pulling them out of her palms after getting a little too close. Whenever she got too close, Luz assumed that the bush felt threatened, it got scared, and it lashed out.
It lashed out because there was nothing better that it could possibly do. And Luz was always the one that got hurt because of it. So maybe that was why she never paid much attention to it, how she always ignored its gaping presence at the edge of their backyard.
As long as she never got too close, it didn’t matter. It could stay there and take over as much of the line of trees as it wanted, as long as she never got too close. The thorns hurt. And Luz didn’t like getting hurt very much.
She didn’t even know why the bush remained there, neither Luz nor Camila liked it. It was all thorns and no roses but yet maybe both of them were too intimidated by its presence to try and remove it. So they just let it be, like a startled and angry animal. They let its thorns fester.
Luz remembered the time when she was younger and she had tripped and fallen while she was playing. She had gotten too close to the rose bush where its vines snuck away from the safety of the treeline and spread out into the backyard. Luz had tripped. She had fallen into the bush.
The thorns were sharp and the roses lashed out at her with a frantic and desperate fight. Luz had lashed out back, she had kicked and screamed to try and pull herself from the emerald green grasp. In her panic, she had torn out a few of the branches and crumpled some of the pitiful roses beneath her heels.
She never played that close to the thorn bush again—that’s what it was, a thorn bush. It never produced enough roses for it to be considered a rose bush anymore, it was just a bundle of thorns too scared and too weak to defend itself enough to produce roses. It couldn’t protect the flowers so it spent everything that it could to make thorns and leaves.
If it had enough thorns, then that would mean everything else that would try to attack it would just leave it alone. But by the time the day ended, there was never enough room to make roses, it had fallen too deep into the trap of thorns, enthralled by its own stubborn cage.
The others stayed clear of her as if she were made of thorns as if she were overreaching her territory with a tangle full of prickles and blood. She was tired, exhausted even, and could barely stop herself from snapping at the slightest provocation.
It hurt, everything hurt, even when the physical wounds had closed and healed. They all were in pain.
Hunter rarely slept, he helped around the house until there was physically nothing left to do and then he still found things to busy himself with. Gus had fits of nightmares almost every night where he woke screaming with sobs tearing themself from his throat until he was hoarse. Amity could barely focus, falling into her own thoughts until she came back with tears streaming down her face, she never did talk about what was going on inside her head. Willow had moments where she went quiet, completely silent save for a few sniffles that came every once in a while, she refused to talk in those moments.
And Luz lashed out whenever it felt like things were getting too oppressive, or there was something wrong. She and Hunter fought often, and the arguments often left a sour taste in her mouth and tension thick in the air. She couldn’t sleep either, every time she closed her eyes, her mind was filled with thoughts and images, all of which she never wanted to see again.
So she pushed herself until she couldn’t, she pushed others away until they gave up trying to get her to talk. She snapped and hissed until her throat was raw.
And yet she knew she was being selfish. It was wrong, they were just trying to help. And Luz was being unreasonably mean, she knew how awful and unfair she was being and yet she was too tired to try and stop.
Her friends were just trying to help and Luz couldn’t even pretend like she was going to accept it. She couldn’t even force a smile or a laugh and pretend that things were alright even though they weren’t.
They were trapped here, all because of Luz, because she wasn’t strong enough to stop all of this from happening. If it weren’t for her, then they wouldn’t have even been in this mess in the first place. It was all because she was stupid and naive because she had helped the person that they had been trying to stop this entire time.
If she hadn’t helped him if she hadn’t been so stupid. If she were able to look past her own problems for one second she would have been able to see what was going on. But it was all her fault.
All her friends were trapped here because of her. All of the Boiling Isles might be dead and it was because of her. Eda and King and the others could be gone and it was because of her stupid decisions and because she was too stupid to see past a clear disguise.
Luz needed to find a way to fix this, she had to get all of them back and she had to fix her mistakes. This was all her fault, she needed to fix it.
And everyone else didn’t realize what she was trying to do, what she needed to do. She needed to make up for her mistakes, she needed to fix this.
She hadn’t meant to yell.
Amity was trying to help, really, she was. She was concerned, and she was tired and hurting, and god how they all were hurting. Amity was just trying to look out for Luz, she was just trying to get her to rest a little bit.
Luz didn’t mean to yell. She didn’t mean to push Amity away when she was just trying to be helpful. Amity was doing her best to do what she could despite the circumstances. All their magic was weaker, Luz couldn’t do any magic and Hunter was weak and sluggish. Amity had tried to get her to take a break, to do something else besides her obsessive research and experimenting. She even tried to offer an alternative, she tried to suggest something that they all could do to have a break,
And Luz had yelled at her for it. She had yelled until there were tears streaming down her face and she had devolved into a mess of sobs. And when Amity tried to comfort her, she pushed her away and in a desperate haste, Luz ran out the patio door into the backyard.
Their backyard wasn’t very big, but she ran until she couldn’t anymore and she was already out of breath. She ran all the way to the edge of the forest where the trees stretched high above her and made way into the darkness behind them.
And there was that rose bush again. The pitiful, thorny thing, standing in her way, blocking her from fleeing any farther than this.
Luz could see the thorns hidden behind its too many leaves, she could see the wilted flowers that crumbled under a small gust of wind. And Luz stood there for a long time, staring at it as it swayed slightly.
Eventually, her knees gave out and she dropped to the ground with a stuttered sob, her fingers curling around the grass blades and pulling them from the roots.
The thorns were right there, and Luz could practically feel them piercing into her skin, wrapping around her limbs and tearing her apart. It reminded her of when she was younger and had tripped and fell into its thorny grasp. Her heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear anything else over the rushing of her blood.
Everything hurt, she was in pain and it hurt so badly she could barely breathe. Luz choked on her own sobs, tears rolling down her face until she physically had nothing left to cry. And even then she continued to dry sob, tearing at the grass around her knees and digging her fingers into the soft, slightly muddy soil. Her chest constricted until it felt like she was suffocating on breaths that were too small to sustain her. The ground around her spun and she was sure she was going to pass out.
No one followed her outside after she had run out, no one dared to approach. No one dared to come closer like she was a rose bush made of thorns.
Luz was in so much pain and all she could think of was to lash out at the people who were just trying to help.