Chapter Text
Luz is having a very ordinary day of drooping over the edge of her bed upside down with her homework strewn on the floor and the clock ticking away her precious few minutes between school and work.
V is there with her, because she’s territorial by blood and supportive by nature. She’s sitting by the closet and going through Luz’s clothes, because she’s territorial and supportive and someone has to have a presentable wardrobe.
“I know that’s your go-to study method, but I think it might not be helping much,” V suggests, genuinely. It doesn’t follow the best study tips she learned in camp, either. Some days she still misses camp.
Oh, who is she kidding; she always misses camp. Where have the days gone?
Luz lets out a long sigh. “It helps me emotionally.”
“Ah. Okay.”
Luz sighs again, draws it out into a dry scream. She grabs one of the strewn papers. “I’m not built to memorise dates and figures and math. I’m human, not robot.”
“You memorized all those spell books,” V points out helpfully.
They both look at the messy corner – Luz’s corner – with stacks of books brimming with magical knowledge and littered with enough stray pages of references and notes written by Luz to make an encyclopedia on its own.
“That’s different! School is boring. ¡Qué rollo!”
For her part, V enjoys school somewhat. She likes to learn all the shiny new things about this world alongside classmates who will only try to tear her down academically. And she gets a kick out of doing well on an assignment, tearing others down academically.
V puts down the two sweaters she was choosing between – they were identical except for colour, and she’s not sure why Luz has so many multiples of the same clothes. “Do you want me to quiz you?” She’d already memorized the same study sheet and finished all the homework.
“Hmmmmm,” Luz hums, and V starts to get the feeling that its not a difficulty curve at play here. A phone tone rings. Luz swipes it so fast the papers go flying. “A distraction!”
V sighs. She can’t exactly fault Luz; different people, different strokes, as the humans say.
She watches Luz beaming at her phone. “What did Amity say?”
Luz’s eyes flit to her for a second. “Who says it’s Amity?”
“Your face.”
“Oh. She’s just checking in on me.”
V leaves her to it and resumes the tedious task of finding something worth stealing from Luz’s clothes, as sisters-slash-doppelgängers do.
“AH!” Luz yelps, cutting the mission short.
“Did your girlfriend send you another pic?” V asks, because Luz has only just stopped talking about the last one.
“MY GIRLFRIEND SENT ME ANOTHER PIC!” Luz shouts, because the universe can’t be left in peace for long if she’s in it.
V sidles up next to Luz. “What is it?”
(Can sister-slash-doppelgängers share girlfriends, too? V plans to ask Luz at some point, because Amity is very pretty and also very magical and as much as V loves the Human Realm, she would be even happier with a steady source of magic to feed on. One that’s willing to go back and forth between the realms for love. Maybe they could work out a deal? Trade some of Luz’s clothing?)
Luz is too preoccupied choking, red in the face. V, worrying because obviously being upside down for so long is messing with her human blood flow, quickly pulls her legs off the bed and lays her down on the floor. Luz is still struggling, but has enough motor power to show V her phone screen.
It’s a picture of Amity holding an old-timey human ‘flip’ phone against her ear in one hand, the other lighting a small purple fire under her stuck-out tongue. And, as with Amity, her cat-like eyes are half lidded, aloof expression, yet with the sharp sort of knowing gaze.
“Oh, she’s good,” V agrees. She turns the phone back to Luz.
“Hot DAMN,” Luz yelps, as if it’s the first time she’s seen the photo.
“But why is she setting herself on fire?”
“She’s doing the Jennifer’s Body thing!” Luz bolts upright. “We watched the move a while back and I told her that that was the scene that I knew and she just did this and I can’t even!”
Luz really should be focusing more in school, because she’s missing so many words from that explanation. “You knew what? Can’t even what?”
Luz flips her hands out flat like she measuring something. “The moment I knew knew. You know?”
“I don’t.”
“Meghan Fox.”
“Oh.”
“And now,” Luz jumps to her feet, “I’m here while my girlfriend is out there being her best self and I have to miss it!”
V has to hand it to her; Amity knows how to get Luz worked up. Then again, when it comes to almost anything other than school, Luz is a live wire.
Right now, she’s throwing her hands up and pacing the room in absolute distress. “Oh my GOSH, help! My girlfriend is so hot I can’t!” Luz drops to her knees and starts punching the ground. “Someone send help, I’m going to die dead!”
With Luz occupied, V tucks her haul under her shoulder and, before heading out, snaps a video of Luz’s turmoil and sends it to WitchChick128 on Penstagram.
Amity’s smiling and blushing like an idiot, she’ll accept that.
“You’re such an idiot!”
“No I’m not!” Amity bites back sharply, though with her blistering tongue it may not be sharp per se.
Emira holds Amity’s jaw open and inspects her mouth. She's kneeling at the foot of the bed that Amity's seated at. “Yes, you are. My stars, I can’t believe you’d do something so stupid.” She spins a spell with her free hand. “Don’t talk, I’m going to work on healing it. Idiot.”
“Ah’ ‘aw’,” Amity tries to say.
“No talking!”
In her defense, Amity doesn’t have the best track record with the fire spell. It’s probably because the twins taught it to her; it was bound to be trouble from the start.
From behind Emira, Edric is scrutinising his reflection in the mirror of Amity’s vanity with his tongue stuck out. “Yea, Mittens, what…an…idiot…”
In one swift motion, Emira releases Amity’s jaw, summons a spell that puts curtains over the mirror and Edric’s face, and then grabs Amity’s jaw again before she can say she’s really not an idiot.
“Don’t even think about it, Ed.” Emira lets out the long sigh of an overworked and underappreciated mother from the human eighties. “Seriously, I’m surrounded. By. Idiots.”
“We’re all fools in love, sis,” Edric sings, though the curtain drawn over his face muffles the performance. He pauses, then pulls the curtain enough to wink at Amity. “Some of us are just good at it.”
Amity isn’t entirely sure what he means, but sitting there, playing over the video of Luz in gushing disarray, she thinks it’s totally worth the tongue burning and tongue lashing. She’d do it again.
She probably will.
"Well, you shouldn't be that foolish.” Emira squints. “I taught you the wrong sex ed."
Amity blushes crossly. "Blegh. Never again. You guys are the worst teachers."
Edric leans over Emira's head. "That's ‘cause you wouldn't watch any of my educational illusions." He summons up a dinosaurus and a witch and a bed.
"Yea, no way in hell will I watch them, Edric, put them away!"
"How are you going to know how a bug and a biped tango?"
Amity summons an abomination to crush the illusion between its hands. "Shut up, you guys are so annoying."
A karate chop lands square on Amity's head. "Amity! If you don't stop talking and I can't heal your tongue, how will you kiss your girlfriend?"
Amity's face just can't catch a break, it's going to char up more than her tongue. "...sorry."
"You better be." Edric puts his hands on his hips, smugly. "Never forget who it was that got you two together."
"Uh, not you guys. You were trying to humiliate me."
"Because you got our butts whooped by Dad's Abomination bot for cutting class." Edric turns around to show off his tush. "I'm not built for rough housing like you. My bum is crooked, you see."
"No one wants to see your bum, Ed," Emira mutters, shoving his butt away from her head.
"Tell that to my date last night." He winks. "Let me tell you all about it, Mittens, you need the lesson!"
"Shut up!" both sisters groan.
"Fine, fine. Not as exciting as saving the world and going to 'college'."
"Well, not yet. But soon." Amity says. She’d told them about it because, well, she’d wanted to tell someone she could trust. And somehow, the twins fit that bill.
That, and maybe she wanted to light a fire under them so they’d get the heck out of the Blight Manor, too. Amity is only still there to bid her time, and with her and Mother ignoring each other’s existence and their father telling them they have a better future with her than him, the tension is taut to breaking point, and it will hurt when it snaps.
(And maybe some part of Amity doesn’t want to lose the twins, again, after just getting them back, again, like she had her father. Maybe people didn’t change, and if they once believed they weren’t strong enough, they’d always. But Amity has it in her head to prove him wrong.)
Amity looks down at her feet stretched out on the floor. She’s grown taller, she thinks. "And…sorry about getting you guys in trouble back then."
The twins share a look and smile.
"Anyway, I was always team HuMittens," Edric says.
"Your love helped us turn over a new leaf – and helped you, too, we've noticed." Emira follows up.
Amity nods. "Yea, Luz is inspiring like that."
"Tongue burning inspiring?"
"No, sis, I think that's all Mittens."
"Of course. Mittens the legal idiot."
"Luz is way too cool for you. Kinda wish she'd gone for us. We could've been the no-milk-misfits."
Amity scoffs. "Don't embarrass yourselves. You guys are way too lame for Luz."
"Have you forgotten who you're talking to?"
"Emira, you haven't had a date since grade school. Even Edric is beating you out on the field."
For once, Emira blushes. "That's because I'm too busy making sure you two don't get yourselves killed, or worse. Now stop talking or I'll never fix this."
Emira gets back to healing once more with concentration. Over her shoulder, Amity shares a look with Edric, and for a moment they're in sync.
They both squish Emira in a hug, though awkwardly with Emira still holding Amity's jaw and committing to her spell.
"Ha'ks," Amity tries.
"Thanks," Edric clarifies.
Emira rolls her eyes but smiles despite herself. "Just don't forget to visit your big sis when you guys go off and get married."
"Unfortunately I can't. We're two peas in a pod."
"Unfortunately that's true."
"Oh."
Amity is level-headed and realistic, and very sensible. Until it comes to Luz (as obviously demonstrated). So she's already zoned out and picturing Luz at an altar in a suit jacket and wedding dress.
The twins are there, too, because unfortunately they're Luz's friends and unfortunately they're kind of friends with Amity too now, and they're causing trouble at the food table until they see their mother and get to work removing her before she can hurt Amity.
And Amity feels like she has people to rely on. Someone who has her back, so its not always her and Luz against the world.
Luz. Standing there saying her human vows in her human veil with her human eyes on Amity. It rivets her soul.
"I need to buy a ring," she blurts, earning another karate chop from Emira.
Luz is in an total tizzy. Panic! It’s absolutely the end of the world.
“How am I gonna impress Amity?”
She’s lying on the floor making very distressed carpet angels.
"God, Amity is so beautiful and cool, I can't compete. She’ll realise I’m just a hack job, just ordinary! Her brain will figure out that her heart made the choice and it’ll totally change her mind!”
It was a miracle that Amity even liked her at all. Liked her first, even! How? Novelty of the human? Touch-slash-love-slash-kindness-starved Amity latching on to the first thing that was handing out hugs?
Luz stops tearing into the carpet and tries to rationalize. Amity liked things about her. Like how she gets in trouble all the time. That’s – endearing, to Amity? Maybe the chaos reminds her of home. Maybe Luz should teach Amity about therapy.
She calls Luz cute. Does she mean visually, in the way Amity is cute but also very hot? Or is she cute-funny, in the way people are when they have nothing else going for them?
Luz bolts upright.
“Oh my god, Amity thinks I’m short and ugly.” She holds her head in her hands. “I’m lactose intolerant, the shortness picked meeee!”
Luz drops to the floor once again and stares at the ceiling. She collects herself, tries some of Gus’ breathing exercise.
Okay, so Amity fancies her, bizarre though it is. And Amity has yet to realise how silly that really is, which gives Luz time to get her act together and become something great.
She’s not as naturally beautiful as Amity, so random effortlessly dazzling pics aren’t going to work in her favour. And she doesn’t want to keep leaning on the comedic shtick, because she’s endlessly funny but that won’t pay the bills (well maybe it will but not the Amity bills, and by that Luz means – she’s getting off topic.)
“Hmm,” Luz says out loud. Talking to herself is very motivating. Maybe Amity likes that about her…? “Amity likes teen-to-YA America cinema. Maybe I should go into acting? I can be a magician, or an evil robot.” She mimics her magnificent robot impression. She did that for Amity once, it’s probably what made her fall at first. “Or I can sell out and be Hollywood’s go-to token Latina character!” Luz hides her face with her hand. “Sorry, Mami, I have to do it for love.”
Her phone goes off again, but instead of her chic and charming girlfriend, it’s her alarm for work.
“Oh geez,” Luz sighs. She picks herself up off the ground and drags herself to her closet to get ready. “Duty calls.”
She grabs her drab uniform out of her closet – which is surprisingly clean; at least she’s doing one thing right – and slides into it.
She’d made the decision to start working part time when she’d turn fifteen; as much as she wants to spend her days waiting out school to go on magical rampages in the Demon Realm, she’s got to start building herself a…something. Some kind of life, some balance between the world she wants to belong in and the world she wants to be in.
It’s not glamourous, but if she wants the best of both worlds, she figures it isn’t going to come easy, anyway. And she has to do her part, too; Lilith and the coven heads reinstated and revamped law in the Demon Realm; Eda and King continue to live wild – breaking newly instated law just to establish dominance over it – while also guarding the Human Realm portal just so Luz can visit; her mom is secretly still taking extra shifts to make up for supporting their impromptu family during The Collapse while also trying to save towards Luz’s and V’s college; their friends have realigned themselves to the tracks they’d planned out for themselves.
Luz is still as lost as ever, but she can at least work to set things right, make them better. A little extra change snuck into the Dinner Out jar, an extra shirt she knows V would want but wouldn’t ask for. Trying to get a scholarship, make her mom proud. Figure out the rest of her life when she’s an adult and has more answers than questions.
As she’s heading out the door and blowing her mom a kiss, Luz wonders if she should ask Amity about her plans. But the future was cripplingly frightening to Luz, so much that she would have the urge to physically run if anyone brought it up. Scared to hear Amity say she’s got different plans. Scared to try and re-envision her already flimsy future without the one certainty she’s come to look forward to.
Amity is many great things. A great chef, she is not.
It couldn’t be the stolen plantains she stole. Two wrongs make a right, obviously.
“Maybe it’s supposed to taste bad to me?” Amity mumbles to herself. But she's had plenty of human food lately – fish and chips, milkshakes that don't shake, pancakes and all its galore – so there's no fooling herself: she done messed up.
Sucks. Those plantains were not easy to steal.
Well, she’s going to have to learn in time for when she and Luz go off to college. They’ll be in a dorm together and struggle to have enough money to cook meals and get involved in all sorts of mishaps – well, that last part is a given when you're with Luz – and they’ll study together and have movie nights together, and they’ll, well, be together. No more dagger-and-dash meet ups with what little time they have left after school and work, nights they both have to return home alone from.
It’ll be just like the human movies, Amity thinks, but better because it's real life.
Amity’s been studying hard, doubly so; her mother would be proud if she wasn’t so vindictive. Amity has been juggling finishing off her Hexside studies – keeping notes for Luz, who’d dropped out on what Amity believes is self-destructive absolution – and taking an accelerated course of human schooling. And with a bit of help from friends, she’ll forge the paperwork and be set for college.
Speaking of, Amity’s also been working as the Owl Lady’s storefront manager – it's where she's learning to be such a slick thief. The work is grueling, especially because the Owl Lady gets a kick out of making her life harder – “I can’t help it, Boots, your reaction is priceless. See? Look at your face now! King, look, she’s about to pass out!”; as if the twins weren’t bad enough… – and since she’d been put back on the Wanted list for twice the original bounty, to the apparent joy of the Owl Lady, Amity has spent a good chunk of time evading capture like a vigilante merchant.
She's had to pull a few tricks she learned from the twins, though she’d never tell them.
But it will all be worth it. In the Demon Realm, it would be easy to do – anything, really, as long as she avoids her mother and all her contacts still in power and…well, maybe not so easy to climb out of the grave she’s dug herself – but Luz’s home and half her heart were in the Human Realm, and Amity wants all of Luz, strings and worlds attached.
Besides, dreary college life seems like the best thing ever. No parental overcast, no permanent world-ending consequences, and the assurance that there’ll eventually be a happy ending. The movies make that very clear, and life imitates art.
Amity is snapped out of her daydream when she burns her hand on the stove. “Crap! This was not part of the script!”
When Amity dies, it will be by fire. This much has been written into her story; there’s far too much foreshadowing to ignore.
But she’s got lots of time until then, and hopefully it’s enough time to figure out this traditional Mangu.
Until then: “Mano, I’ve got food for you.”
King comes running on his stubby feet and climbs up the chairs around the dinner table with the effort of a mountaineer.
“More food fit for a king, I see!”
Amity smiles; she’s never had a little brother before, and King is a barrel of laughs.
“Si, por le mejor de todas mis hermanos,” Amity announces, bowing as she bestows the un-stellar dish before King.
“I have no idea what you just said but I like your tone!” King chirps before digging in.
The owl demon charges in through the window near the kitchen. Amity briefly wonders if that hurts him twice, since he technically is the home itself.
“I KNOW WHAT THAT MEANS!” he bellows.
Amity pinches the bridge of her nose, but entertains him; he’s an actual pain in the ass, but he’s always protected Luz and is surprisingly strong, so she will tolerate his existence. “Really?”
“YUP! I’VE BEEN LEARNING ESPAÑOL FOR LUZ, TOO, SO WE CAN PROTECT AGAINST IMPOSTER LUZS LIKE THAT ONE TIME!”
Gosh, Amity’s still scrubbing at the stain of that memory. Seeing her sister de-transform from an illusion of Luz… Amity feels like that’s just sacrilegious.
“CAMILA AND I EVEN HAVE A SECRET CODE! BUT WE’VE ONLY USED IT ONCE SINCE SHE NEVER COMES OVER ANYMORE.”
Camila, bless her soul, doesn’t share her daughter’s love for the fantastical. She’s less adventurous than Amity’s mother, and that’s saying something (bad). But she raised Luz so she must have done something right.
(In her defense, Amity can’t wrap her head around the idea of a good mother. She can’t trust Camila’s kindness because she’s seen that sort of sweetness from her own mother in front of a client, only for it to become venomous insults and knife twisting behind them. Mothers who chain you to them by some self-proclaimed right and never let you free. Not even until the day they die, Amity worres.)
“AND NOW YOU AND I CAN SPEAK IN OUR SECRET CODE WHEN WE GO ON EPIC ADVENTURES.”
“I won’t go on adventures with you.”
The owl demon is unphased. Perhaps. It’s hard to tell with his menacing eyes and yapping beak. “ONE DAY! IN THE MEANTIME, I’LL BE HERE. AND THANK YOU FOR BEING THERE FOR OUR LUZ.”
“Yea,” King says between bites. Amity’s glad he doesn’t have any taste buds. “Thanks for taking care of her. Sometimes she’s even too much for Eda. Plus, I get to eat good when you’re here! I’m glad you’re part of our family.”
“MI FAMILIA!”
Well. The owl tube just moved a few spots up her list (sorry illusions boy). And now Amity has a fuzzy warm feeling in her gut. Family. One she shares with Luz.
Can she give the same to Luz without all the baggage? She decides not to brood over that. They’ve got plenty of time until college, where they’ll figure everything out like they’re meant to. Chains and strings and all.