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Someone To Rely On
Even trapped as they are in the Human Realm, they try to stay on top of their studies.
Every day that Luz has to go to school (which is more often than they’re used to—this Realm doesn’t have to cancel class every time it rains), Amity and Gus gather everyone in one room for a few hours at a time to go over simple spells and castings. Usually, they work on casting with their Palisman — as to not leave Hunter out of things — but there’s also a point in most days where someone decides to show off and the lesson derails from there. It’s fun. It’s nothing like Hexside, but it’s fun, and Amity’s pretty sure she’ll never be able to forget most of what she’d crammed into her head over the last few years, so she’s glad she can put all her useless lecture memories to good use.
And she’s not the only one.
There’s a reason she and Gus are in charge of the whole thing. If given half a chance, Hunter would just as soon as never use magic again, and Willow’s surprisingly lazy without a curriculum to force her to class, but Gus stores more knowledge in his tiny little head than Amity thinks she’ll ever attain in her life.
It’s seriously impressive, how much he remembers from his classes—and from others, too. She’s only a little jealous.
Amity hasn’t talked to Gus much, is the thing.
They haven’t really had a chance to. In the early days he’d kept a respectful distance from her, likely for Willow’s benefit, and Amity can’t blame him for it. They’d had maybe three conversations alone together before the Day of Unity, and she’s nearly positive that all of them had had something to do with Luz.
But she worries for him. Like, a lot. He’s so young; twelve years old and dealing with the end of the world. She was miserable when she was twelve, and half the things she’d been dealing with had been her own fault! As fun as the Human Realm can be, no one is entirely happy here — with maybe the exception of Hunter — and Gus is so young. She worries, and she thinks their little one-on-one ‘meetings’ where they come up with ideas for the next group magic training is nice for the both of them.
Until one day, five weeks into their stay in the Human Realm, Amity comes down into the basement to find Gus not at his usual desk, but instead staring unseeingly at the wall from his place on the couch—his bed, really. They usually try to meet up in the basement at least once a week to plan a flexible schedule of spells to go over, but the blank look on his face makes Amity think not a lot of work will get done today.
She lands on the last step and it creaks, making Gus jump. “Oh!” he says. “I forgot you were coming. Sorry, it’s a mess down here right now.”
Amity pffts and waves a hand in denial, coming around the corner to look at him better. “You should see the mess Vee makes in our room when she’s trying on Luz’s clothes. This is nothing.” She takes in the room; the books scattered everywhere, the near-frantic look in Gus’ eye, and tries for levity. “Ready for cramming?”
“I don’t know if I’ll be able to remember much today,” he admits with a small shrug, shaking his head. “It’s all gloomy up in my brain today.”
She frowns. “Where’s Hunter? It’s rare to see you two apart these days.”
“He went off with Willow and Vee to work on the garden in the backyard,” Gus says quietly. “I’m not very good at it, so I didn’t want to get in the way.”
“You, not being good at something? I hardly believe it,” Amity teases lightly. When he doesn’t smile, she softens her tone. “Seriously, though, you’re like, incredibly impressive,” she admits hesitantly, letting out a little laugh. “I mean—maybe I should’ve been bullying you all that time, huh?”
He doesn’t respond, and she cringes. Sometimes she’d very much like to bash her own head in.
“Sorry. That wasn’t as funny as I wanted it to be.”
Now Gus turns to look at her. “It wasn’t not funny,” he says, which is very nice of him. Titan. He’s nice, too. Nice and freakishly smart? It’s not fair, how are some people just like this? “I’m just not in a mood to laugh right now.”
Amity blinks, nodding perhaps a tad too enthusiastically. “Right, I know. I mean, I figured, considering all the—” she gestures vaguely to the pile of books beside him. “—Y’know. It’s not like you to not be reading. I, uh.” She swallows. Pull it together, Blight. Just be like Luz. “If you want to talk about it, I’m all ears? Unless you don’t want to talk to me. You don’t have to. Just if you want to.”
At least her stupidity makes him smile, even if it’s gone in a half-second. “I don’t know,” he says, smile fading. “I just really miss my dad.”
Oh.
She gets that. “Yeah,” she says quietly. “I miss my family, too.” Most of them. Shaking the thoughts of her own family out of her head, Amity creeps forward to sit next to him, pulling her knees up to her chest. “Do you want to tell me about him?”
Gus’ back vibrates with a choked laugh. He’s buried his head into his arms, so his voice is slightly muffled when he begins to talk. “He was my best friend for so long,” he says weakly. Amity reaches out to place her hand on his shoulder. “Before Willow, no one wanted to be my friend. Not for good reasons, at least. Everyone just wanted me to help them with schoolwork.”
“The perils of intelligence,” Amity teases softly. “So you’re close with your dad?”
“He’s my only family,” Gus replies, which is an answer in itself. “I—my other parent left before I turned three. My dad doesn’t talk about them much. It’s always just been us two, and now—” his voice breaks. “Now I’ve left him all alone.”
Amity sighs in agreement, shuffling closer. “He’ll be okay, Gus,” she tells him. “They all will be. And you’ll see him again.”
But Gus just stiffens, pulling away from her touch. “But what if I don’t? What if we never find our way back?! What if—” his voice cracks. “What if we find our way back and he’s not even there?”
For a moment, she doesn’t know what to say. After all, Gus is only voicing the same things she’s thought; worries she shares. What if their families aren’t okay when they get back? Amity doesn’t know what she’d do. She only just got some of her family back.
But she doesn’t say any of that, of course. Instead, she shakes her head. “They’ll be fine,” she tells Gus, because they have to be. “The Collector wanted to play a game with everyone, remember? So they won’t hurt anyone. King won’t let him.” She smiles. “And when we get back, your dad’s going to be waiting for you there.”
Gus looks up at her. “You think so?”
Amity scoffs. “You’re the smart one, right? Come on. Do you really think any of us are going to give up before we get back home? Do you really think your dad doesn’t know you’re trying to come back to him? If he’s half as smart as you, he knows.”
A shrug. “...He is pretty smart,” Gus mumbles.
“Exactly,” Amity says. “He’s your dad, so I’m not surprised. I bet he’s already managed to talk the Collector down and get working on a new portal to get us back. If we can’t make one for ourselves, then maybe the Boiling Isles will come to us. Maybe your dad’s working with mine, too!” But the thought hurts — whoops — and she moves past it quickly. “Either way, you’ll see him again. I swear to it.”
Gus regards her with an unreadable gaze. “You sound like Luz,” he comments quietly.
Amity feels her ears burn. “Well—you sound like Hunter,” she counters, a sly smile spreading across her face. “Which one do you think is worse?”
He laughs. “Yeah, you’ve got me there.” Letting out a loud breath, he says. “I think you’re right, anyways. There’s plenty of ways to get back to the Boiling Isles. We just have to find them.”
“And we will,” she assures him. “It just—y’know, might take us a little while.” a beat. “And until then, it’s up to us to keep everyone on top of their spells, right?”
“Right,” he says, more energetically than before. “Sorry. This is our cramming time, huh?”
Amity shrugs. “Not if you’re not feeling okay. It’s okay if we skip a day or two.” She chuckles. “I doubt Willow and Hunter will complain much. Can’t give them too much of a break, but I don’t know if they’ll even notice if we just don’t have our lessons for a day.”
“No, I’m okay now,” Gus insists, giving her a bigger smile. “I just needed to get that out of my system. I’m ready to work!”
“If you’re sure,” she says, somewhat hesitantly.
“I’m sure,” he says. He stands up, accidentally disrupting a blanket that had been haphazardly hanging off the couch. Amity leans down and picks it back up, folding it absentmindedly. “Where do you want to start? I was thinking you could show us some Abominations spells sometime this week.”
She eyes him for a moment, but relents, deciding to take at his word that he’s okay. “I don’t… actually know how that’d work,” she says slowly, frowning. “I mean, I’ll have to find a lot of alternative ingredients, and even then, it wouldn’t be exactly the same.”
“Maybe you could use mud?” Gus suggests. He gets out his notebook and writes MUD? in big letters. “What do you think would be the closest thing to what you need for Abominations?”
After a little organization, they manage to work Abominations in for Wednesday’s lesson, which will give Amity enough time to experiment on her own and find the right alternate ingredients. As they work, Gus smiles again, wider and wider as time slowly passes, his eyes lighting up more often, and Amity’s glad. He’s so young.
She can’t fathom being as strong as he is.
.
.
.
“Do you ever wish things could be different?”
Willow’s question is quiet, but it still startles Amity somewhat. They’re the only ones in the room — a fact that might’ve made her sweat only a few weeks ago, but it now fairly normal — Vee and Luz are out picking up dinner with Camila, and Gus and Hunter have long since disappeared to whatever corner of the backyard they’ve claimed for their cool-guy hangouts. Amity supposes she should probably go check on them — they tend to get themselves into trouble more often than anyone else — but she can’t bring herself to move. She’s too comfy.
Amity’s stretched across the couch in the living room, Ghost sleeping soundly on her chest. Willow had taken the armchair that Camila usually claims during movie nights, and neither of them had spoken in a good while. Amity’s brain moves like a groggy slitherbeast, slowly firing as she begins to realize that Willow was probably talking to her. And probably not just herself.
(Not that there’s anything wrong with talking to yourself. Amity doesn’t do it, of course. Just, like, in general.)
“Huh?” Amity asks coarsely, cracking her eyes open. She stares at the ceiling for a moment, processing, but she can’t remember. “Sorry?”
The sound of snickering comes from Willow’s direction. Rude. “I was asking you a question,” she says teasingly; Amity’s ears burn. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were sleeping.”
With strength that usually only Titans can wield, Amity heaves herself up into a sitting position. Ghost hisses at her for the intrusion, but quickly relocates to her lap. “I wasn’t sleeping,” she grumbles, beginning to scratch Ghost’s back in an attempt to soothe them. “Just napping.”
It’s not a very dignified response; she knows it’s the wrong thing to say the moment her gaze finds Willow’s, which is far too amused for her own good. She knows she’s not making sense, but whatever. She’s tired. No one can expect her to be functioning at peak efficiency right now.
“Pretty sure that’s the same thing, Amity,” Willow says kindly. Or sarcastically. Amity can never tell with her.
“Whatever,” Amity says, eager to move past her nonsense brain. “Either way, I’m awake now. What’d you ask?”
A pause. Willow glances away, which is the first warning sign. Red alert, screams Amity’s head, and she hopes that when Willow looks back, she doesn’t realize that Amity’s shoulders have stiffened somewhat. Willow’s not one to be shy about things, not anymore, and when she’s uncomfortable with a topic, that means it’s about to be agony for everyone else. Plus, heavy topics with Amity are already more uncomfortable than if Willow has them with anyone else, which is something that’s also Amity’s fault.
“I asked you if you ever wish things could be different,” Willow says. She sighs. “Which I realize now is a stupid question. Of course you do. We all do.” Curling her knees up to her chest, she waves a hand in Amity’s direction. “Sorry. I answered myself. You can go back to sleep now.”
Amity’s honest knee-jerk reaction is to snort. “Wait, you have regrets? But you’re so—” she cuts herself off abruptly, suddenly aware that she’s nearing dangerous territory. But it’s too late; Willow’s watching her with a raised brow, and Amity has no choice but to continue her thought. “I mean. You’re so unapologetic? About everything? It’s really inspiring, actually. You’re the strongest of us, Willow,” she says, unable to hold Willow’s gaze any longer. Instead, she studies the carpeted floor. “I’ve always known that.”
Neither of them speak for a long moment.
“Guess that’s why you went after me so much, back then, huh?” Willow says. She’s trying for a joke, but her voice wavers in the middle of her sentence and it falls flat. Amity swallows hard.
“Willow—” she tries.
“Don’t,” Willow says. Because she values her life, Amity shuts her mouth. “Of course I have regrets,” she says then, and Amity thinks, oh. “So many things could’ve gone differently, back at the Boiling Isles. I could’ve—done something. Tackled the Emperor, or something.” She sighs, tipping her head back to gaze unseeingly up at the ceiling. “I hardly remember that entire fight, to be honest. It was such a blur. I thought I was ready to fight, but maybe I wasn’t.”
Amity frowns. “Well, I remember the fight, and I remember that you were amazing during it. Seriously!” she says, doubling down when Willow sends her a skeptical look. “I don’t know if we would’ve made it out of there without you. Actually, I know we wouldn’t have.”
She’s telling the truth. While the memory of the fight against the Emperor’s monster form is a bit blurry with adrenaline and fear, she distinctly remembers Willow and her vines taking the brunt of the biggest hits. Without her… she shudders to think of what would have become of them. They wouldn't have lasted long enough for the Collector to explode his way out of the chasm, and they certainly wouldn't have made it through the Portal Door without Willow’s quiet strength. She’s always been the strongest of them all.
“Well, no offense, but you’re a little biased, Amity.” Willow’s tone hasn’t lightened, and she still refuses to look at her.
Amity stiffens. “What does that mean?”
“You know,” Willow says, voice strangely detached, “you’re going through this entire thing where you’re trying to be better, so, you kind of have to say nice things about me, right?”
Disclaimer aside, Amity honestly doesn’t know if she’s supposed to be offended by that. She thinks maybe she’s not supposed to be, but decides that she is offended, because ouch. “I don’t have to say anything. I’m just trying to be honest! I wouldn’t say those things just because.”
“Wouldn’t you?”
“No, I really wouldn’t.” Amity doubles down, setting her jaw firmly. “Willow, I’m done lying and pretending to make others happy. I think you’re awesome because you’re awesome. You’ve always been awesome. I was just too scared to tell you.”
Willow goes quiet for a long moment. Amity doesn’t speak again, because she doesn’t know what else she could begin to say. They sit there in the darkness, the only sound being Ghost’s gentle, sleepy breaths.
“Do you think,” Willow asks then, her voice catching, “do you think we’ll ever be able to be like that again? You were my best friend, Amity. I loved you so much.”
I loved you, Amity thinks brokenly. I loved you more than anything. You were the only bright spot in my life. It broke my heart to do what I did to you.
She doesn’t say any of that, though. This isn’t about her. It shouldn’t have ever been about her. Instead, she says, “I’m sorry,” because that’s all it comes down to. “I’m so sorry, Willow. I’ll never be able to make it up to you, but I am so sorry. That’s not just me wanting to change, that’s how I really feel. You deserved so much better than what I did to you.”
“Yeah,” Willow says listlessly. “I did.” After a moment, she sighs. “I’m sorry I said you were lying. That was mean.”
Amity just shrugs. It was already half-forgotten. “I mean, I think you of all people deserve to be mean sometime. You don’t have to be strong all the time, Willow.”
“Someone has to be,” Willow replies.
“Maybe,” Amity says. “But not all the time. Not forever. We can take turns, maybe? If you need a break.” She doesn’t mean to say it in such a silly way, but she can’t think of any alternative way to describe her thoughts. Still, she thinks Willow may understand.
Willow says, after a beat, “I think—that’d be nice. To take turns.”
Amity smiles. “Okay, then it’s my turn. You can give yourself a break for a little while.”
They don’t speak again, just lay there in silence for however long. That’s okay with Amity. Silences can make her uncomfortable sometimes, including and especially when they’re involving Willow, but this is different than usual. She feels like they’re… closer, now. Like they’ve taken another big step that she hadn’t even known existed.
When she looks over, the smile on Willow’s face tells her that she feels the same.
.
.
.
Amity’s not sure what exactly wakes her up.
She’s absolutely exhausted — they all are — and even as she pulls herself into a sitting position, the heaviness under her eyes scream at her for disrupting the peaceful unconsciousness. Despite the allure of sleep and the warmth of the blanket on top of her, there’s an uncomfortable feeling tugging at the corner of her mind, and Amity stubbornly blinks her eyes open, waiting for her vision to adjust in the dark room.
They’d come out of the portal into the Boiling Isles, and they’d immediately found a house, which, judging by the amount of family portraits dotted around inside, had once belonged to the parents of Eda the Owl Lady. Amity doesn’t know how they’ve managed that one, but there’d been no sign of anyone, something that had made Luz’s face tighten worriedly. In fact, the entire place seemed abandoned, with Belos’ new monster form also nowhere to be found.
It’d been in the middle of the night when they arrived, so they’d taken a vote and elected to spend the night inside the house and try to get as much sleep as they could. They’ll need energy for tomorrow, anyways, considering that they don’t even know what they might possibly be facing.
All around, strewn about the room, are the rest of her friends. None of them had wanted to sleep separately tonight. Amity’s heart swells when she looks at them; lying on top of the bed they’d dragged into the room, Luz is cuddled into the crux of her mother’s arm. On the floor, practically smothered in a pile of blankets, Willow snores with her mouth wide open (something, it seems, that has not changed since she was a child). Then on the other bed, the one that’d been in the room initially, Gus is curled up alone, looking awfully small.
He’s not supposed to be alone. Amity and Willow had near-simultaneously decided to give the others the two beds, taking the floor instead, and no one had had the energy to argue with them.
But Hunter’s gone.
Swallowing her nerves, Amity stands up from her makeshift bed, shivering as the cool air hits her shoulders. She’s still in the tattered remains of her Hecate costume, and it’s not exactly built for Boiling Isles weather. She supposes they’ll all have to find warmer clothes, but that’s a task for another day. Trying as best she can to be silent, Amity begins to slowly creep her way out of the room. Thankfully, she doesn’t wake anyone else. They all need the rest.
It doesn’t take her very long to find Hunter.
She finds him hunched on the floor in the next room over, his back to the bed. He’s holding his head in his hands, and she doesn’t think he’s crying, but he’s clearly been crying; his shoulders are still shaking.
“Hunter?” she whispers, taking another step into the room. “Are you okay?”
Instantly, she knows it’s a stupid question. Of course it is. She can’t begin to imagine what he’s feeling right now; he’d been taken over by the man who hurt him the most, forced to fight his friends, and then his Palisman had sacrificed his life for his own. She can’t fathom losing Ghost. Just the thought of it sends a chill down her spine.
He doesn’t look up. “Go away,” he rasps in a broken voice, though considerably louder than she’d been. “I want to be alone.”
Amity’s instincts say do not leave him alone. Instead of going back the way she’d come, she closes the door behind her and creeps closer. “Hunter,” she says again, softly, “I’m going to sit next to you now, okay?” When he doesn’t respond, she sits down, just as slowly. She doesn’t touch him, doesn’t sit too close, either, but swallows down her nerves and stays with him. “Do you want to talk?”
“What’s there to talk about?” Hunter snaps. “Everything’s gone so wrong. Flapjack’s gone—” his voice cracks. “—Belos is still out there, we have to stop him and the Collector, and I—” he raises his head; as he does, his hair, longer than before, dips into his eyes, and he shoves it back with barely-restrained growl. “—and I’m so angry that I can’t even mourn my Palisman right!”
She says, quietly, “What do you mean?”
“It’s all my fault,” he says. Amity opens her mouth to argue, but he barrels on, “I was weak and let Belos get to me again. I got complacent and forgot to watch out for him. I should’ve known trying to live my life wasn’t a good idea—I’m not even a person.”
Amity doesn’t respond. She can’t. She’d nearly forgotten that bit—the thing that Luz had blurted out in a desperate attempt to help. Hunter’s a Grimwalker. She hadn’t even known they actually existed. The words die on her tongue.
“Don’t you get it?” Hunter’s eyes are wild when he finally looks at her, still-unfamiliar brown a stark contrast against the jagged pink of his scars. “I’m not even a real person! I’m just a copy—a copy of someone who Belos cared about. Who Belos murdered! I’m not even myself.”
Amity flinches. That had hit a nerve, one she thought was buried months ago.
Suddenly angry herself, she squares her shoulders, shuffles an inch closer, and jabs him harshly in the chest with her finger, ignoring the ow! he lets out in response. “You listen to me,” she growls. “You are your own person, Hunter. No one can take that away from you, no matter where you come from or who you were modeled after.” She leans back, crossing her arms over her chest. “Do you understand?”
For a moment, Hunter looks more stunned than anything else. Then his shocked expression melts into something softer — gratitude, maybe — though he quickly shuts it back down. “Luz is a lot nicer with her pep talks,” he grumbles half-heartedly.
At least, she thinks it’s half-hearted.
“Well, I’m not Luz,” Amity says dumbly. “Clearly.”
“Clearly,” he parrots, but this time it sounds half-hearted for a different reason. Amity’s chest twinges. Part of her is already celebrating a job well done, but she has a feeling that Hunter’s not quite finished with his fit of self-loathing.
Amity decides that she’s not going to get any more sleep tonight anyways, and so she gets to her feet, pulling Hunter with her. She gets him to sit on the bed and surveys him for a moment. “How can I help?” she asks.
Hunter gives a pathetic shrug. “I don’t—know,” he says in a whisper. He doesn’t look at her. “I just—I can’t sleep.”
“Why not?” she presses. “Is there anything we can do right now that would make you feel any better?”
It’s a shot in the dark, maybe; it could just be grief and terror that’s keeping him from sleeping, but there’s got to be something that can give him comfort, as little as it may be. Maybe not. Maybe there’s no healing, yet. Maybe she’ll just have to sit with him until the sun comes up. She will, though. She’s not about to leave him alone.
But then he goes quiet, and she knows he’s thought of something.
“Hunter?”
Slowly, he reaches up with one scarred hand to grasp the end of his hair, now longer than ever, clinging to his neck and drooping into his eyes. “I—” he tries.
With a pang in her chest, Amity already thinks she maybe understands.
“This was—this was how he looked. I still don’t feel like myself,” Hunter croaks eventually, turning his eyes to the floor. “I just want to look like me.”
So Amity nods, because that’s something she thinks she can help with. “Okay,” she says shortly. Taking a moment to roll up her sleeves, Amity summons a mirror with a little Illusion magic that Gus had taught her. As she sets it on the ground carefully — she never knows what’s going to be solid or not, Illusions makes no sense — she also summons a pair of scissors and a comb. “Okay,” she says again, brandishing the items in front of her. “How do you want to look?”
And—well. Amity’s never cut anyone else’s hair before, but she’d watched Emira cut Amity’s, so it can’t be that hard, can it?
It’s not, really. Hunter is quiet and still as she works, and only speaks up a few times through the entire thing; he mostly seems content to close his eyes and take deep, slow breaths, which probably benefits in calming them both. It doesn’t take too long, all things considered, and Amity’s finishing up only a half-hour or so later. She takes one last snip with the scissors, evening the bit near his ear, and then pauses, a sudden idea striking her.
“Okay, I’m nearly done, but I’m going to… add something,” she says nervously. “It’ll be temporary, okay? So just… tell me if you don’t like it.”
“I’m petrified,” Hunter snarks. Normally she’d bristle back, but honestly, she’s so happy that he feels well enough to snark, and so she brushes the insult off her back. It hadn't been genuine, anyway.
She’s half-afraid he has real reason to worry, though, which is why she asks him to close his eyes while she adds this particular finishing touch. He does, albeit after another snide comment, and Amity takes a deep breath. She hopes dearly that she hasn’t misread the situation. Quickly, she performs the spell — it’s easy, and she’s had a lot of practice with it — and steps back to view her handiwork before her potential imminent demise.
It looks—good. It does. His hair is now a little shorter than it’d been when Willow cut it, but she’d spiked it up a little more in the back, too. His cowlick is entirely gone again, the ends of his hair once again flopping down on his forehead above his eyebrows.
“Okay,” she says, hoping he can’t hear the hesitancy in her voice. She holds up the mirror in front of his face. “Open your eyes.”
He does.
She’s done more than just cut his hair, she’s changed the color of it. The color is darker at the bottom and directly above his ears, of course, but the whole thing is no longer his usual pale blonde. Instead, it’s red. Cardinal’s red.
The color looks great on him. She’d had a feeling it would.
“Do you… like it?” she asks, half-afraid to look at his face. When she summons the courage to do so, his expression is near-blank. Stomach lurching, Amity wonders if she’s just made a huge mistake. She goes to rest her hand on Hunter’s shoulder, the spell to take the color away on the tip of her tongue. “Hunter?”
Hunter doesn’t respond for a very long time. He takes his time studying his own appearance; she watches as his eyes flicker up and down, right and left. He takes in the red color, the way it stretches over his entire head, and reaches up to pull gently at one single strand.
Amity watches in horror as tears begin to well up in his eyes, spilling over instantly and rolling down his cheeks. She panics.
“I’m so sorry!” she half-yelps, berating herself. “I thought—it’s too soon, I get it! Here, let me get rid of the color, then—”
“Wait,” Hunter wheezes. “Wait, please.”
She falls silent.
He’s still crying, but as she watches, a smile slowly begins to stretch its way across his face. His chin trembles, his shoulders shake, but his smile stays. “I love it,” he says. Amity almost collapses with relief.
“You do? It’s not too much?”
Hunter chuckles wetly, wiping away a tear with his hand. “It’s perfect. It makes me think of him.”
Amity smiles softly. “It’s just a temporary spell right now — I don’t have any actual dye — but when we get a chance, I’ll dye it properly for you, if you’d like.” Hunter nods, still studying himself in the mirror, and something in her chest warms. “And until then, I’ll keep doing the spell if it starts to fade. It’ll last a few days on its own, though. Just let me know when you want me to cast it again, okay?”
“Okay,” Hunter agrees quietly. He sniffs, once, and finally succeeds in cleaning his face. Amity looks away respectfully. “Can we, uh, keep this between us?” he asks.
Amity knows what he means, but she can’t resist the jab. “I’m pretty sure there’s no keeping that a secret,” she points out, gesturing at his new haircut. “But no one has to know all the details if you don’t want to share them.”
He nods again. “Okay. I—I think I’m ready to try and sleep now.” He stands up from the bed — they’re going to have to clean up the mess tomorrow, they’ve left hair all over the place — and gives her a look that she can only interpret as appreciation. “Thanks,” he says. “For coming to find me.”
She smiles at him as they leave the room together, and though she doesn’t mean to, their shoulders bump as they walk. Hunter doesn’t pull away, and neither does she. They make their slow way back to the room everyone else is in, and Amity lowers her voice so that she doesn’t wake anyone else up.
“Anytime, Hunter.”
.
.
.
It’s well known that Amity and Luz hadn’t exactly started off on the right foot. Amity has a lot of regrets from those few weeks; she regrets acting so recklessly, regrets the threats and snide remarks. She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to entirely make up for the way she treated Luz back then, but she does take care to never treat her like that again.
Luz, too, had been infuriating back when they first met. Infuriating later, for a different reason, but she’d had the uncanny ability to get under Amity’s skin and get her blood boiling. First it was because she was cheating (helping Willow cheat, too, a double blow), and then it was because she was so good at making a fool out of Amity, and as brief as it’d been, Amity had hated her once.
Yet, despite all that, Amity’s fairly certain that she’s never once been angrier with Luz than she is right now.
It’s their third day back on the Boiling Isles, and there’s still been no sign of anyone anywhere, except for some of the more hostile creatures that usually live on the outskirts of the Isles. They’re all getting antsy as time goes on and nothing is found, but Luz especially so, and Amity’s been trying to be respectful and not hover, but then Luz had had the bright idea to jump in front of a giant fire-breathing jackalope and take the hit that Willow was about to counter, and—
And now Amity’s not sure if she’s ever going to let Luz out of her sight again.
Especially considering Luz wants to keep moving immediately after attaining the injury. “We have to go and meet up with Gus and Hunter!” she says flippantly, like her arm isn’t actively blistering, and Camila, her mother, isn’t half in shock from her first monster witnessed (besides the Emperor). “There’s no time to waste.”
Amity grabs her arm — the other one — before she can make it two steps out of the little alcove they’d taken cover in. Luz stills.
She says, confused, “Amity?”
“You’re not going anywhere right now. Sit down,” Amity snaps, fury nearly choking her. “Now.”
Luz—does. She looks somewhat startled, which is probably because this is the first time in a long time that Amity’s raised her voice at her. She winces as her arm twinges at the movement, and Amity swallows down the lecture that she so desperately wants to let free. Not yet.
“Amity, I promise I’m fi—”
“Show me your arm,” Amity orders, stone-faced. Luz goes silent, and after a moment of hesitation — wherein Amity has to resist the urge to grab the injured appendage on her own — she does, stretching out her arm to show Amity the burn. It’s not bad, thankfully, but it still looks painful, and it needs to be treated. Luz would agree if it was anyone else. No one speaks as Amity spell-circles a bandage and begins to wrap it around her arm. Luz hisses.
Then Camila, still standing to the side, suddenly pipes up. “Come on, dear,” she says to Willow, who hasn’t torn her eyes away from Luz, “Let’s go and get them some water.” No one makes a comment about the way her voice shakes. With her hand on Willow’s shoulder, she guides them both away from Amity and Luz, leaving them alone.
As soon as they’re out of earshot, Luz shifts uncomfortably. “Amity,” she says, and Amity’s blood begins to boil instantaneously. “Listen, I was just—”
“Being an idiot, is what you were doing,” Amity interrupts her, tugging perhaps a tad too harshly on the bandage. Luz hisses again, but she can’t really find it within herself to be apologetic. “You nearly got yourself killed, Luz.”
Her voice sounds strange and far away to her own ears; it’s low-pitched and airy, like she’s out of breath. Her heart hasn’t stopped pounding since she saw Luz get hit. She hopes Luz can hear more anger than fear.
“But I didn’t!” Luz argues. “And besides, it’s better me than Willow, or you, or anyone else!”
“Stop talking like that!” Amity growls. She drops Luz’s arm as if it’d scalded her, crossing her own across her chest. “No one blames you for anything, but you still insist on acting like this is your fault! It’s not!”
Luz glares back at her. Amity doesn’t know if she’s ever looked at her this way before. It hurts. “If it weren’t for me, the Day of Unity would’ve never—”
“The Day of Unity still would’ve happened,” Amity snaps right back. “And worse, if you weren’t there to help us fight the Emperor, everyone on the Boiling Isles would’ve been killed right then and there, none the wiser.” If not worse.
Still, Luz is unyielding. Angry tears are threatening to spill down her cheeks, but she doesn’t let them fall. “But I helped Belos meet the Collector! I set everything into motion—”
“And if you hadn’t, then someone else would have,” Amity fumes in return. “I can do this with you all day. This isn’t your fault, Luz. The Emperor would’ve met the Collector eventually—either by tricking another kind soul into it, or just finding them on his own, and who knows? We might not have even met.”
“Well, maybe that would’ve been better!” Luz snaps.
Amity feels like she’s been slapped. Her mouth falls open; all thoughts other than maybe that would’ve been better vanish from her head. “...What?”
“Maybe if we never met, and I never came to the Boiling Isles, then everything would’ve been okay here. Maybe Eda and King would be okay, and maybe everyone wouldn’t just be missing because of me.” Luz sniffs, the tears from before finally making their descent down her face. “Maybe you’d be with your family, instead of being here with me trying to fix my mistakes.”
For a second, Amity has no idea how to respond to that. Finally, though, she decides that she can still be angry and hug her girlfriend at the same time, and so, angrily, she pulls Luz into an embrace. At her touch, Luz lets out a single sob, and it breaks Amity’s heart. For a few moments, Amity just holds her, and when she eventually pulls away, she keeps her hands on Luz’s shoulders.
“You saved my life,” Amity croaks. Titan, she hadn’t meant to get so emotional, but tears are welling up in her own eyes now. Furiously, she blinks them away. She’s being angry right now. “More than that. You saved me so many times, Luz, and I will never stop owing you. You pulled me out of that horrible pit that I’d dug myself into, you gave me so much more happiness than I deserved, you cared for me, and I—” she swallows, heart pounding, and tries again. “Luz, I—”
Luz’s chin trembles. “Please don’t say it,” she whispers.
That does it. Pushing down any remaining traces of fear, of that rejection that still niggles in the back of her mind, Amity presses her forehead to Luz’s, taking a deep, steadying breath.
“I love you, Luz,” she says. “You mean more to me than I can ever say. I want you to be in my future, remember? You’re not allowed to get yourself hurt like that. I love you.” They’re both crying now, and it’s far too late to stop, but it doesn’t even cross her mind to try and get a handle on it.
Luz sniffles. “I—I love you too,” she says through unsteady breaths, setting her own hands on Amity’s outstretched arms. “I want you in my future, too, I love you—” dissolving into sobs, she seems to lose her train of thought, or maybe she’d just finished it altogether. Amity doesn’t know how long they sit there like that, foreheads pressed together, arms locked over each other’s. No one speaks for a long, long time.
Absently, she’s aware that Camila and Willow will be coming back any minute, but even that doesn’t make her move. She doesn’t know if she’ll ever be capable of letting go of Luz again.
Finally, breaking the near-silence, Luz chuckles weakly. “Was that just our first couple’s fight?”
Amity laughs with her as she tries in vain to stop crying. “I hated it,” she croaks. “Let’s never do that again.”
Sniffing pathetically, Luz pulls away to draw her into a proper hug. Praying to the Titan that Luz can hear everything that’s sticking in her throat, Amity hugs her back just as tightly. “I’m—I’m sorry, Amity,” Luz mumbles into her shoulder. “I’m so sorry.”
It’s so quiet that she hardly even hears it. But she does, and that only brings about a new flood of tears. Amity sniffles into her neck, trying to compose herself enough in order to form words.
“Please take care of yourself, Luz,” she whispers into Luz’s skin. “I don’t know what I’d do if I lost you. I don’t care what you blame yourself for, because I don’t blame you for anything. No one does.”
“If we don’t find anyone—” Luz tries.
“We will,” Amity tells her. “We’ll find them, okay? You’ll see. They’ll probably all throw a celebration in your honor after everything’s done. Because you saved them, Luz. You saved everyone on the Boiling Isles. Please don’t forget that.”
Luz doesn’t respond audibly, but she does give a hesitant nod. It’s a start. Amity senses that this isn’t going to be the last conversation they have on the matter, but they’ve taken a step, and a big one at that. Besides, Amity’s happy to spend every day of her life telling Luz how wonderful she is, especially if that’s something she genuinely needs to hear. Amity’s never going to let her blame herself for anything like this again, not if she can help it.
“Is everything okay?”
Willow and Camila are back. The former stands back as Camila steps forward to hand Luz one of their jugs that they’d stolen from the Clawthorne household, now nearly overflowing. Taking it from her mother with a sheepish smile, Luz nearly empties it again single-handedly. They’ll have to refill it once more before they go and meet up with the boys.
“We’re alright,” Amity answers for both of them. No doubt Willow and Camila see that they’ve been crying, but she sends them both a wobbly smile. “Everything’s okay now.” She doesn’t think either of them believe her entirely, but no one challenges her.
Luz doesn’t let go of her hand the entire walk back.