Work Text:
The trouble with movies, Luz thinks, is that after the world almost ends, they never talk about the cleanup. Everyone celebrates and has a party and walks off into the sunset, until maybe there's a sequel where the world starts ending again.
What you never see is the part where the characters spend their fifteenth birthday helping rebuild a school.
She doesn't really mind. She's happy to be helping, and Titan knows she'd take years of nailing planks and mopping floors and repainting walls over any more apocalypses.
It is a little annoying that she doesn't have the glyphs to help her anymore, though. The others are all using magic to speed up their tasks, avoid getting their hands quite as dirty. She's on her knees scrubbing dried abomination goop off the floor.
It's not like they didn't all try to get her to take a day off, her mom and Eda and King and Amity and her friends, but they couldn't really afford a whole day, not when there's still so much to be done.
She's almost done with the floor when there's a beep from the game device in her pocket. She pulls it out and flips the screen round to see a message from Amity.
Meet at Grom Tree.
Urgent.
Urgent? That doesn't sound so good. Luz pockets the device and stands, worry clenching her stomach. What if something's going wrong again, what if Amity's hurt? More likely she just needs help with something rebuilding-related, but still.
Luz heads for their Grom tree as fast as she can, rounds it with the words “What's the emergency?” already out of her mouth, then stops dead.
In front of the tree, there's a blanket spread on the ground, covered in snacks. Some of them are Boiling Isles foods Luz can eat, others are from the Human Realm. For once, there's nothing inedible there at all, not even fairy pie.
Amity sits on the blanket, grinning up at her. She's wearing work clothes, a streak of paint on one cheek, a splash of abomination goo on one shoulder, but she looks radiant.
“Huh?” Luz says, intelligently, trying to put the picture together.
“Happy birthday!” Amity says, jumping to her feet and pulling Luz into a hug.
Luz hugs her back, trying not to grin. “This was 'urgent'?”
Amity lets her go and smiles sheepishly. “I knew if I told you to come celebrate, you'd say you had work to do.”
“So you tricked me.” Luz nudges her. “Never knew you were so devious, Blight.”
Amity gestures for her to sit down, then sits opposite her. “It's your birthday. And I know fifteen is meant to be a special one. One day we'll make it up to you properly, I promise, but for today... I wanted to at least do something for you.”
“And this is why you're a sweet potato.”
Amity blushes a little, then holds out a gift, wrapped haphazardly in what looks to be Human Realm Christmas-themed wrapping paper. “Here.”
Luz unfolds the paper, and gasps. She recognises this necklace. She's seen Amity wear it a bunch of times, the gold sliver around the purple gem, like a lunar eclipse.
“I thought you loved this necklace,” she says, hesitant. “Are you sure...?”
“I love you,” Amity says, closing Luz's hand gently around the pendant. “And–” She bites her lip. “You know. I still think about it sometimes, how we could've lost each other when everything happened. Since we can't always be together, it'd make me happy if you had a little piece of me with you.” She grins. “Anyway, it's not like I can't still see it. I'll see it on you, and you'll look even nicer in it.”
She lifts it, fastens it gently around Luz's neck, and Luz smiles back at her.
“Okay, okay. Thank you. It's beautiful.”
Amity gives a dramatic sigh. “Thank Titan you accepted, or I'd've had to find a trick for that, too.”
“Texting me 'urgent' was barely even a trick,” Luz counters. “I'll have to teach you a thing or two, as a master of trickery myself.”
Amity snorts. “I don't think that's you. Eda, maybe, with all her pranks. Or Gus, because, you know, illusion magic.”
“I'm tricky!” Luz protests. “I learned from the best.”
Amity shrugs, laughing. “And I didn't, but I still tricked you into this, so.”
Luz laughs, too. “I'm glad you did.”
Amity leans in and kisses her cheek softly. “Me too. Happy birthday.”
They stay there for a while, eating and laughing, and even though Luz is tired and there's goop on both their clothes and there's still so, so much work to do... just being here, with Amity, makes her happy, right down to her bones.
The movies never really talk about the aftermath, the small moments like this one. They focus so much on big miracles, not the everyday ones, the ones where you keep living and loving and finding joy, even after the world tried to take it all away.
Right now, Luz thinks the movies are wrong.