Chapter Text
It’s far from the first time Luz has been violently jolted awake by a nightmare, but that doesn’t make the experience any less jarring.
She abruptly regains consciousness with the distant knowledge that she’s gasping for air. Her brain is still swimming with residual images of her nightmare, staining her mind like ugly Rorschach blots. A blink of her eyes produces a thousand overwhelmingly saturated imprints of Belos’s grotesque monster form, of her own legs turning to stone beneath her, of the ruins of the Titan’s skull swirling above her in the sky. Overwhelming, overbearing, overpowering. Luz can still feel herself gasping for breath in the chill of her childhood bedroom. She doesn’t know if she can stop.
“Luz?” A soft voice calls through the darkness. Luz mentally berates herself— she’s not alone in here, she needs to get herself under control before she wakes everyone else in the room with her stupid mental break. Vee, Amity, and Willow are barely even a few feet away. They’re already stuck in the human realm because of her, they don’t need to be kept awake every night because of her, too. Deep breath in, she tells herself, but it’s easier said than done, and her attempt ends up producing a noise that sounds akin to a half-drowned cat coming up from the water.
“Luz?” The voice calls again, audibly more concerned. The darkness of the night is suffocating. Luz almost reaches for a light glyph that isn’t there. She hears shuffling coming from the direction of the voice, pieces together that it must be Amity who she woke up.
“I’m okay,” Luz finally whispers, voice hoarse. “I’m sorry. Go back to sleep.”
It’s quiet for a moment. Luz’s eyes are finally adjusting to the shadows, but she keeps her gaze trained straight ahead, stubbornly refusing to make eye contact with Amity beside her. It’s a remarkable exercise in willpower, since she can feel Amity’s eyes boring straight through her.
“It sounded like you were having a nightmare,” Amity finally responds. Straight to the point. Luz huffs.
“Something like that. I’m sorry for waking you.” It’s quiet again. Even in the still of the night, the silence hangs heavy in the air like an executioner’s sword ready to swing down. Luz finds herself internally praying that Amity will just fall back asleep. (A quieter, weaker part of her hopes she doesn’t, hopes she gets up to cradle her and soothe her and pick up the pieces of her to put them back together.)
“You don’t have to apologize. Do you want to talk about it?” Amity speaks slowly, the same way Luz’s mamá speaks when she’s approaching an injured animal. Like even the slightest movement will set it running off scared. She flinches under Amity’s gaze.
“I don’t…” Luz starts. She tucks her knees into her chest. It’s not that she doesn’t want to talk, at least she thinks so. Her emotions are so muddled, it’s hard to tell. Her voice is just shy of a whisper when she speaks again. “I don’t want to bother you.”
When Luz raises her head again, Amity is stood by her bedside with a familiar concerned expression on her face— it mirrors the expression she’d seen on her before when she had told her about her dad’s passing, about her mom asking her to stay in the human realm, about Belos nearly petrifying her on the Day of Unity. She hates that expression. She hates that Amity has to worry so much for her.
“You’re not bothering me,” Amity whispers. She motions gently at the space on the bed beside Luz. “Can I… sit here?”
Luz nods before she can help it. She’s selfish, so selfish; she forced Amity awake with her dramatics and then has the audacity to sit here and crave her touch and her comfort, as if her own careless actions didn’t trap Amity in another realm away from her family. From her whole life. The guilt makes her wants to shrink away from Amity’s affection, but she was never one for self control. Especially not in this vulnerable, exhausted state. When her girlfriend slides up next to her on the bunk, Luz is drawn to her the way flowers are drawn to the light of the sun.
“I get them too, sometimes,” Amity admits quietly. Luz isn’t even sure if she’d be able to hear her if it wasn’t for their proximity. Her entire right side is pressed right up against Amity’s left, and Amity’s arm has risen up to rest her hand on Luz’s shoulder. “The nightmares, I mean. So I get it.”
“I’m sorry,” Luz murmurs.
“Why do you keep apologizing?” Amity’s hand has trailed lower, grazing soft lines against the curve of Luz’s shoulderblade. It’s so soothing, and Luz is so tired, and the vulnerability of the whole thing makes her almost want to break and confess everything she’s been holding in. Almost.
“I don’t know,” She lies. Visions of Philip Wittebane, of Stonesleepers and ripped portraits and shadows that speak in rhymes flit through her mind like waking nightmares. Except the memories don’t disappear when she opens her eyes.
Amity sighs. She pauses like she wants to choose her next words carefully. “I know there are a lot of things you don’t feel… comfortable talking about yet. And I get that, believe me, I get it. I’ll wait as long as you need me to. We all will.” Luz feels a pair of lips press against her hairline and all but melts. It’s funny, she reflects, how much their relationship has matured in such a short amount of time. Just a month ago, Amity would dissolve into a flustered mess at any physical contact between them, but now it comes as naturally to the both of them as breathing. In moments like these, they feel so intertwined that it’s hard to even tell where she ends and Amity begins.
“But, in the meantime,” Amity continues. “I’m not gonna let you go through this all alone. This is confusing for all of us, you don’t have to take it all on by yourself.”
“Please stay with me tonight.” The words tumble out of Luz’s mouth before she can stop them. She mentally cringes at how childlike her voice sounds.
“I’ll always stay with you,” Amity responds without hesitation. The double meaning of the words aren’t lost on Luz, and it makes her breath hitch. Always. All the guilt and turmoil swirling in her gut dissipates momentarily— Amity is here, and Luz wants her, and Luz is also quickly becoming too fatigued to argue against Amity’s affection in the name of penitence. Her head falls to rest against Amity’s collarbone.
“I’m so tired,” Luz whispers. She feels a small hand begin to softly run through her curls.
“Do you wanna sleep like this?” She does, she really does. She wants to be selfish, and fall asleep in her girlfriend’s arms, wrapped up in her scent, to the sound of her breathing. She wants to take everything she doesn’t deserve and never give it a second thought. But it’s never that easy.
“I don’t know if I can,” Luz quietly admits. “I close my eyes and I– I see. So much. I don’t want to see it.”
“I know,” Amity breathes. “Sometimes I wish there was just, like. An off-switch for dreams.”
Luz huffs a weak laugh, lets the quiet sit comfortably for a moment. “What do you see? I mean, what do you dream about?”
The hand in Luz’s hair stills. “I guess…” Amity begins. “I guess, in my bad dreams, I see a lot of my mother. But that was always the case.” She sighs, and her ministrations resume. Luz’s eyelids flutter shut at soothing feeling of Amity’s hand combing through her curls. “More recently, though, I… I don’t know. I see a lot of Belos, which is a little weird. I mean, I idolized him my whole life, and now he’s the monster in my worst nightmares. Unrecognizable, but still. Him.” Luz hums in affirmation. Amity’s voice suddenly cracks, a shaky quality to her next words. “I think the scariest thing is what isn’t there. I never see my dad, or Edric or Emira in my dreams. I think about them all day while I’m awake, I think about how badly I want to get back to them, but– but once I’m asleep, they’re gone. I don’t see them at all during the night.”
“I have the same thing, with King and Eda, now that I think about it,” Luz replies after a beat. Just verbalizing their names delivers a painful pang to her heart that she does her best to ignore. “I think maybe it’s because so many of my dreams are just nightmares. My brain doesn’t want to mess the good up by mixing it with the bad, so it just keeps it separate.”
Amity makes a curious noise. “What about the good? Like, what do you see when your dreams are good?”
“You,” Luz immediately jokes.
“Oh, hush,” Amity hisses. When Luz glances up, her girlfriend is making a respectable effort to glare at her despite the color flushing her cheeks. “I’m serious, what do you dream about?”
“I was serious, too!” Luz insists. “I see you in the nice dreams a lot.”
“Okay, well, good,” Amity grumbles, but her lingering blush gives her away. “But what else?”
Luz lays her head back against Amity’s shoulder. “Magic. I’ve always done magic in my dreams, but now that I actually, you know, know how to actually cast it, it’s always there. I never do it the way you guys do it, though. It’s always glyphs. But I like it that way.”
Amity hums. “What else?”
She rolls the question around in her head for a moment. “It’s funny… Before I came to the Isles, my dreams were always these fantastical adventures. Like, quests and epic journeys and everything. But ever since I arrived, I don’t know. I guess I get enough of that in real life to satisfy me. My best dreams are all chill and relaxing now.” Lots of hazy visions of cloudgazing in a meadow, the sun on her skin, the wind touseling her hair. Never anything too defined, not the way her nightmares are, and nothing she had ever pictured herself enjoying so much in the past. Absent of excitement and thrill. Only rest.
“That makes sense,” Amity muses. “You’re all ‘go, go, go,’ all the time, your brain must love the chance to relax.”
“What about you?” Luz asks around a yawn. The hand raking her hair feels criminally good, and it lulls her into an even sleepier trance. “What do you dream about?”
Slowly, Amity’s back leans down to meet the bed. Luz falls right along with her, partially on instinct, but partially because Amity’s arms don’t move from where they’re entangled around her. The two girls lay there for a moment. Luz’s face is pressed flush against Amity’s sternum, so close that her head rises and falls along with her breathing— it reminds her of that sensation she gets after she comes home from the beach, where she can still feel the rise and fall of the tide against her when she closes her eyes. It’ll be hard for nightmares to find her like this.
“The best ones are about my future,” Amity confesses softly. “It changes every time, but it’s always after I graduate. It’s always something that I want to do. Sometimes that’s working at the library, sometimes that’s studying history, sometimes that’s perfecting my abomination magic. Even back when I thought I wanted to join the Emperor’s Coven, I never would end up there in my dreams.”
“I can see you being a cute little librarian,” Luz snickers. “You could sneak us advance copies of new Azura books.”
“That’s not really how libraries– whatever. Yeah, it would be fun.” Amity smiles. “Point is, I guess my dreams were always the one place my mom couldn’t reach me. My thoughts were my own as long as I was asleep.”
Luz lifts her head up from where it sits on Amity’s chest, her girlfriend’s hand drifting down from her hair to the base of her neck. It’s moments like this, where they’re in the dark and Luz can really see it, that she notices the unnatural golden glow of Amity’s irises. Maybe if they were closer to the window, she could pass it off as a trick of the light. Just a reflection of the moonlight hitting her eyes. After all her time around magic, though, she knows better.
“What about now?” Luz asks without breaking eye contact. “Do you feel like your thoughts are yours when you’re awake, too?”
“I do.” Amity blinks slowly at her. When her eyes reopen, casting a soft glow between them, they quickly glance down to Luz’s lips. This simple fact sends a jolt down Luz’s spine. Wow. “Ever since I met you, I feel like… I’m allowed to think about what I want, instead of just dreaming it.”
And Luz can’t conjure a clever response to that, not when she’s half asleep and Amity is so close that she can count the tiny freckles on her nose. Instead, she closes the distance between them, melting the moment their lips meet.
Selfish, selfish, selfish, her mind taunts her. Oh, be quiet, she hisses back internally. Fine, she’s selfish, but in this state, she doesn’t have the wherewithal to feel guilty for it. It’s the first real kiss they’ve shared since that evening on her balcony, between the chaos of, well, everything. Luz didn’t even realize how badly she needed it until now. Amity seems to be having a similar epiphany, desperately clutching at the nape of Luz’s neck to pull her in deeper. Her heartbeat hammers in her ears, drowning out whatever other cruel comments her subconscious elects to make.
It’s over as soon as it began, but pulling away doesn’t do anything to dispel the fuzziness clouding Luz’s brain. And, oh, Amity’s eyes are glazed over like she’s been stunned. The giddyness catches up with her the same time the knowledge that they’re sharing the room with two other people does as well, and she has to stifle the sudden bout of laughter that bubbles up from within her chest.
“That was nice,” Luz giggles. A pretty pink flush colors Amity’s cheeks.
“Ah, yeah. Thanks.”
With a sense of playful ease, they quietly settle back down, pulling the covers over the two of them. In the cover of the night, falling asleep together is a little less embarrassing than it surely will be when they’re discovered in the morning. That’s a problem for future Luz.
“Feeling a little better?” Amity asks, her hand returning to rub delicate circles on Luz’s shoulder.
“Huh? Oh, right.” For a brief moment, Luz had forgotten the nightmare that had sent her spiraling. “Yes, much better. I liked hearing about your dreams. The nice ones, I mean.”
Amity beams at her, a groggy quality to her smile. “I liked hearing about yours, too. I also liked, uh… the–”
“The end part?” Luz finishes. It’s supposed to be a tease, but she supposes she looks as flustered as her girlfriend. Probably makes it a little less effective.
“Yes. That.”
They’re lying on their sides now, faces turned towards one another, almost in a silent competition to see who can keep their eyes open the longest. Luz knows she’s lost before Amity’s even won. Her drowsy eyelids wink shut as sleep begins to take her, and she’s reassured by the fact Amity is surely joining her. Amity. Her wonderful, beautiful girlfriend. The type of girl that tears herself out of bed just to hold her and reassure her. The type of girl that Luz never, ever deserved, but chose her just the same. Amity, Amity, Amity. Such a pretty name. She loves her name. She loves her.
Wait.
Oh. Oh, shit.
Luz’s eyes fly open the same moment she involuntarily sucks in a sharp breath. For a moment, she worries that she’s been caught, but Amity’s eyes have already closed.
“Everything okay?” Amity mumbles despite the sleep claiming her.
“Everything’s fine,” Luz rasps. “Goodnight.”
“‘Mngoodnight.” Amity’s words are muffled by the pillow.
And it’s a unique kind of terror, being left alone with this discovery. Is it really a discovery, though? Like, come on. She knew this already.
Oh, no, that is so much worse. Yes, she already knew she loved Amity. Which is mortifying, actually, because how long have they been together? A few months now? How long have they even known each other? She knew it, but she never fully admitted it to herself, because admitting it makes it real and consequently more terrifying.
Luz loves her. She loves everything about her. She loves how sweet and gentle she is with her, and how hard she worked to overcome putting up that instinctive rough exterior. She loves her sharp wit. She loves her dorky smile. She loves that otherworldly glow to her golden eyes. She loves the way her tiny hands fit perfectly into Luz’s bigger ones. She loves her.
Her face burns, and her stomach is doing backflips, but maybe it isn’t so bad, really. The initial panic is dispeled somewhat, though her heart remains lodged in her throat. She loves her. She just can’t tell her, no way, not with everything going on. Not the time or the place. Besides, it’s way too early. Luz is barely 15 and their relationship is practically fresh out of the womb. She knows that Amity likes her, even from her view clouded by self-deprecation she can see that, but she’s going to take a wild guess and assume she was the only one dumb enough to fall head-over-heels in love so soon.
It’s fine, she decides, exhaling steadily. This doesn’t have to be a problem, it’s just a fact of life. The sky is blue, water is wet, and Luz loves Amity. Titan, she feels lightheaded. She senses her dreams will be more pleasant with this realization, at least. And she’s right in this assumption, because when she relaxes enough to close her eyes again, she’s doesn’t see all the horrible things she’s grown accustomed to see with sleep. She falls backwards into that familiar meadow that she sees in her best dreams. Watches the clouds go by, feels the sun warm her skin. Except this time, Amity is right there with her.
And, well, if there’s any thought that’s going to cross her mind in a fantasy as subdued as this, she probably could’ve already predicted what it would be.
I love you.