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The thing about life was that nothing in it could prepare you for death.
For all the books Luz had read, and with all the experience she had with those close to her dying, none of it held a candle to actually dying. In her books, death was peaceful, meaningful words being uttered before someone passed on. Or there was the moment of acceptance, where they took one last look at the world.
That was all wrong. At least it was when Luz had died.
She hadn’t wanted to die. She hadn’t wanted to be killed by some monster.
A boring death with Amity would’ve been fine, being all wrinkly and old and sappy would’ve been great.
It took a long time for her to wrap her head around the fact that she had died, even if she’d felt it happen. She felt her body disintegrating, her lungs turning to dust and her limbs crumbling to pieces. To this day, it was the most painful thing she’d ever felt, but despite that, she smiled.
Why? Because she had so much to smile for, and she didn’t want to spend her last moments feeling sorry for herself, especially after all the damage she’d done.
So instead of crying, and praying for an impossible miracle, she told the Collector that he’d done good. It wasn’t his fault that the first time he tried to be kind, and forgive, that it was on a genocidal monster.
Instead of crying, she said goodbye to King and Eda, no matter how hard it was, and even if she took a little too long to figure out what she should’ve told them.
When the attack spread up to Luz’s face, covering her mouth, her nose, then finally her eyes, she let go.
She didn’t want to die. Not like that.
It wasn’t peaceful at all.
Then she was drowning. As she sunk, she figured out what she should’ve said to them.
Thank you.
Luz had wanted to go back so badly, but the water was oppressive, she was dead, she was no longer alive, she should rest now. It was so convincing, so she began to let herself sink.
As she sunk, she reflected on her life. It all started when she found that snake skin. She’d always been an odd kid. She remembered the first time got pushed over at recess for being weird, and the first time she got called to the principals office.
After that, there was the first time her mom had told her to apply herself, then when they moved, just before her dad had died.
More trips to the principal then finally… The Titan pulled her back up. Everything came flooding back to her.
The Titan, King’s dad, offered Luz power, his power to defeat Belos.
Of course she wanted it. She wanted to kill Belos with her own two hands, he’d hurt everyone she cared about.
He’d taken Amity from her siblings, Gus from his parents, and Willow from hers.
That monster had hurt Hunter in more ways than she could count.
He had tried to kill Eda and King a sickening number of times.
Belos had killed her, and he was trying to kill everyone she cared about.
So yeah. Luz had wanted to tear him apart.
That’s why she was unsure about it. Why should she be given the power, when she wanted to kill more than she wanted to save?
But there wasn’t really another choice. So Luz accepted the Titan’s power, promising to settle the score with Belos, and relay a message to King.
The Titan gave her a new body, and then she was on her merry way back to the fight.
When she saw King and Eda, there was so much she wanted to say, but there wasn’t time. So she pulled a tacky book quote, and got to fighting.
Using magic with the Titan’s power was like slicing a knife through warm butter. It was so easy. When using glyphs, she always had to manipulate and pull, and force it to do what she wanted. Now? Magic bent to her will with half a thought.
With a quote from Azura, she won. Belos was dead.
Boiling rain was far too merciful of a fate for him though. But he was dead, and wouldn’t be coming back this time.
Luz wondered if she was a terrible person for thinking that.
The celebrations were incredible, everyone elated that there had been no casualties to the final battle. Amity, Hunter, Gus, Willow, and Mami all helped out with un-puppetifying people while her, Eda, King, and Raine fought Belos. So all the Boiling Isles were okay. They were all alive.
Luz didn’t have the heart to tell them otherwise, so thank the titan that Eda and King weren’t there to refute their claims.
Besides, everyone was so happy, she couldn’t ruin it, not after she caused all of that to happen.
So she celebrated.
When Mami asked what happened at the fight, Luz told the truth.
Mostly. She didn’t dare tell her own mother that she’d died in the battle, and returned from the dead. Luz knew her mothers heart couldn’t take that, because normally?
Normally the dead didn’t rise.
But Luz had never been good at normal.