Chapter Text
Luz Noceda hated Gravesfield.
The average person would barely notice anything amiss, but Luz? It was only Monday, and she had already spotted three stalkers, one would-be murderer, and one imminent problem.
Every one of those was, of course, after her.
One stalker was a man with faint bloodstains on his long overalls and raincoat, which was itself inappropriate for the current cloudy but dry weather. The other two were a pair of what almost looked like twins of different genders if the male-female dichotomy had been replaced by brutishness and grace, respectively.
The murderer was naught but a tall, dark silhouette behind a copse of trees, seen in passing as her current guardian shuttled her to school. Luz couldn't say what, exactly about it screamed murderer. It just did.
Those could wait, however. The imminent problem could not.
It was a tv static-y effect of bright, vibrant blue and gold devouring her reflection, the ground lost to it worsening each successive time she glanced at a nearby classroom window. She felt absolutely exhausted after what had been, all things considered, a good night’s sleep, so the colored mess was probably sapping her energy or something too...
Examining her reflection so closely gave Luz pause as she considered herself.
She was sixteen, with short brown hair and skin, light brown-gold eyes, and a small build, but the edges of her were eroded by the scars of a hundred attempts on her life and freedom. The most immediately noticeable were the irregular chunks gouged out of her ears by that psycho with a sharpened teapot, but her lips never fully healed from when they were sewn shut and her face was nicked and marred by more injuries than she could recall. The effect wasn’t quite grotesque, but it certainly wasn’t pretty, either, leaving Luz looking more like a patchwork doll than anything else.
Things weren’t helped by the deep, deep black circles about her eyes, which were generally quite bad, but had significantly worsened since the blue-gold rot infected her.
Luz's teacher droned on about some inane topic—a boring history lesson she couldn’t be bothered to pay attention to, as she was instead trying to decipher the newest threat to her wellbeing. Operative word being ‘trying’.
She’d only dealt with a few things like this before, but by basic reasoning and process of elimination...
Infectious probably meant weak to start, swelling over time. The near-neon blue-gold implied something styling itself as fantastical or whimsical, maybe?
There was a time when Luz would have been excited to unravel a new magical conundrum (though even now, the thought of magic sent shivers down her spine, good and bad both). That naivete had vanished somewhere around a year ago, however, when the dangers started gathering in earnest. Not that they hadn’t plagued her before, just in smaller, more manageable chunks.
That was her lot in life, really.
To be the world’s designated victim, attracting everything strange and deadly so others could keep living their pretty little lives, unaware of Luz’s suffering.
And Luz couldn’t quit because the universe wouldn’t fucking let her. Every time she thought it paused, it turned out to merely be calm in the storm, everything surging back twice as hard in the rebound.
Luz resigned herself to getting very little done, both in her schoolwork and in deciphering the energy-draining parasite likely attached to her soul or something. She instead stared blankly at her desk, doing her best to clear her mind.
Putting off the horrendous weight of everything, for just a little bit longer.
♪♪♪♪♪
Luz was almost asleep when the teacher called her name, startling her awake. She truly didn’t mean to close her eyes for as long as she did—English was one of her favorite classes, and the only advanced one she happened to be taking; a college-level course in 11th grade—but the blue-gold curse or whatever had been taking its toll. Struggling to focus, Luz listened as the teacher, Mrs. Durowich, exasperatedly repeated herself.
“Luz, I know you’re tired, but can you please pay attention for the remainder of class? It’s disrespectful to ignore me like that. Now, as I said, you’re with Amity for the semester project. Do try, this time. Without the deadly weapons, please. Book presentations don’t need knives, and group projects, even less.”
Luz’s cheeks flushed, seeing everyone else had already found their partners while she zoned out, but she quickly gathered her things under Mrs. Durowich’s disapproving glare and hustled over to the open seat next to Amity Blight.
Objectively, Amity was fairly pretty, possessing a small mane of green-dyed hair (brown roots slightly visible beneath), pale, flawless skin, and golden eyes. A look that would be doing much more for her if Amity hadn’t decided it was her job to make herself a pain in Luz’s ass.
Still, she’d play along in class, Luz hoped. If there was one thing Amity hated more than Luz, it was being improper around authority figures like their English teacher.
True to her nature, she fixed a soft smile on her face (one a bit too rigid to be anything but forced) and shuffled away sheets of notes into a thick binder. “If you were a new face, I would have forgiven your momentary lapse, with expectations of better,” Amity said. “You aren’t, and so I know not to. Do you at least remember the assignment?”
“Of course I remember the assignment! With Durowich reminding us every class, how on Earth could I forget?” Luz shot back, irritation raising her voice beyond what might have been strictly appropriate.
Amity wouldn’t be satisfied without the full restatement, though, so Luz rolled her eyes and continued. “Groups of two, work together to write a story with two different endings, one by each person. Analyze each other’s conclusions, with an eye to how they complement the story at large and play off their counterpart. Happy?”
“Quite,” Amity responded, refusing to meet Luz’s eyes in full as she got out a few lined pieces of paper with bullet points and cramped wording. “I took the liberty to plan an outline in advance. Mrs. Durowich is expecting to see both our voices in the assignment, so follow my guidelines and we should be fine.”
Luz examined the neat, miniscule writing. She tried and very succinctly failed to keep the rising incredulity off her face. “Hold on a second. This isn’t an outline. This is the whole damn story! And you expect me to, what? Just roll over and accept that I have no agency here?”
“Yes,” Amity cut in. “I do. And if you had any sense, you’d go along with it. Slacker.” Amity spoke the word like an epithet. “But you’re going to be an idiot about this, aren’t you?”
“No. My intent here isn’t to be stupid, it’s to be fair,” Luz retorted, gritting her teeth. She couldn’t lose her cool here, or Amity would refuse to listen even harder than she already was. “I took this class so I could write. And I am going to damn well do so, no matter what you or anyone else says. Understood?”
Amity had a pinched cast to her face, as if she’d be shocked if Luz’s response was a surprise, but it wasn’t and so her expression fell to suppressed exasperation instead. “You’re throwing away an easy A. Anyone in this class would love to be my partner, and you’re just wasting the opportunity! The hell is wrong with you? Do as I say, and we don’t have to bother each other again for the rest of this class! Goodness knows how trying it already is just to spend time in your general vicinity.”
“Well I didn’t ask to be your partner, either! But no way am I going to follow your perfect fucking notes, to write your perfect fucking paper. I’m writing this story with you, not at your behest. That. Is! Final!”
“Is there a problem, girls?” Durowich called across the room. Apparently their argument had grown loud enough to draw her attention.
“No!” both Amity and Luz exclaimed simultaneously. Satisfied, Mrs. Durowich turned away, missing how the two immediately went right back to glaring at each other, anger evident.
Amity broke eye contact first, and Luz felt a shock of vicious glee at winning the standoff.
“I shouldn’t have to take this kind of shit from someone who can't even talk without slurring like a drunk,” Amity muttered.
The glee faded and, before Luz could catch herself, her hand went to the line of scarred spots on her upper and lower lips. It wasn’t that bad, Amity was exaggerating.
That didn’t quiet the blossoming shame and hurt, though.
Luz steadfastly ignored Amity for the rest of the class period, and Amity did the same to Luz. A minute before the ringing bell signified the class’s end, Amity slipped a note card into Luz’s folder, earning a slapped hand for her actions.
Withdrawing, Luz took out the card and read it.
Library, After school, Thursday, it said, Amity’s writing for once large enough to actually fill most of the white space. A time and location, to work on the project with Amity.
Scoffing, Luz contemplated tossing the thing into a nearby trashcan in the hallway. On the one hand, it would be hilarious to see Amity’s expression. On the other, English was the one class Luz did want to do well in, and the project necessitated teamwork for a good result...
Tucking the card back into her folder, Luz walked to her last class for the day, cursing the pretty, irredeemably controlling, infuriating visage of Amity Blight.
♪♪♪♪♪
It was curious, thinking of the small single-story house (plus a basement) as home. That was the only way Luz could describe her feelings, in a fashion that wouldn’t emphasize the bad.
Not that there was much bad, exactly. Just that, when someone got pushed between soulless households and empty ones as often as she had in the last year, it all started to blend together. Luz had to spend actual effort to even remember the last few, past a few vague names and impressions.
The owner of the house, Lilith Clawthorne, was far from the worst Luz had met, though she had her low points. A stern, no-nonsense woman, she dyed her straight hair black with such obsessiveness, Luz didn’t even know the woman’s original hair color.
She dressed in matching shades of black and more black too, with some white trim and silver jewelry as accessories.
As Luz understood it, Lilith worked some boring administrative desk job for Gravesfield’s mayor, of which Luz didn't know the details. She cared too little to ask and Lilith cared too little to volunteer information unprompted.
Luz did know, however, that Lilith worked long hours, leaving early and returning late constantly.
Gravesfield High started early enough Lilith would drop Luz off on her way to work, but the woman usually abandoned Luz to walk back home herself (not that it was that long a walk), leaving her alone in the house for a minimum of hours every day.
This suited Luz just fine, as it gave her ample time to sort through her monthly problems without interference. Distance presumably kept Lilith further out of the blast zone of Luz’s mess too, considering how long she had managed to take responsibility for Luz without growing to hate the girl who was kidnapped almost monthly. Luz supposed that was a good thing, keeping the woman away from danger.
Starting in the house’s living room—which Lilith used for storage, as she was too busy to ever actually live in said room—Luz began searching. For what, she wasn’t sure, but in her limited experience, static, unthinking effects tended to be rooted in some item or mark. Find the anchor, and you were halfway to removing the attached problem.
That was the case with what Luz termed the Forgiving Curse, at least.
When she was ten, a few months over...six years ago, she met a fairly close approximation of herself, a doppelganger of sorts. This was back when, despite a few less than stellar encounters, she had still believed in destiny and the good kind of fate, so of course she became fast friends with the not-Luz. Not having any regular friends due to her oddities only led to Luz hastening the connection.
The fake had given her a hair ornament as a gift, a thing that looked like a clip of amber run through with shocks of muddy red, which Luz placed proudly into her (at the time) voluminous hair. The catch was, buried in the heart of that ornament—and exacerbated by the doppelganger’s existence—was a curse.
The curse let Luz get away with anything—and indeed, she did use it for a time with abandon. But the way it worked, she got away with transgressions by being so easy to dismiss and forgive that no one paid her any mind. Slowly writing her out of mind and thought.
It was hard to notice at first, given that being ignored was already the natural state of things for the younger Luz, but when her Mama had started disregarding Luz in favor of the doppelganger...Well, Luz made some irresponsible decisions and in the ensuing chaos of the missing duplicate, Luz could only feel relief that her living nightmare was over.
That was the beginning of the end, for her. The first notably wrong interaction with the magical, that set a tone for all the rest. Luz still had the ornament, in a box of things within her room, but she dared not touch it for fear of what the curse would do without the doppelganger’s presence to focus on as something of a counterbalance to Luz.
It was something of an emergency measure Luz stashed away, in preparation for the worst. What that worst was, she could not say, but it was better to have the tool than regret its absence...
Luz’s search was going nowhere.
Frustratingly, none of the items in the neatly stacked, organized boxes stood out as immediately magical. Worse, none of them had the particular blue-gold coloration Luz was on the lookout for. That meant she either wasn't looking hard enough or the disease eating at her stamina wasn’t sourced from an object, complicating things for Luz tenfold.
Because after items came entities, and Luz really didn’t want to deal with yet another nebulous intelligence bent on her death, corruption, or removal from reality-
Hearing a car pull up on the uneven, broken driveway, Luz swiftly abandoned her search, shoving a set of old stuffed animals back into a nearby box.
Luz had either spent longer than she realized on the search, or Lilith had come back earlier than expected—a quick glance at a nearby clock confirmed the former.
Luz scrambled to the cramped kitchen-slash-dining-room, and was in the process of getting out a plate and spoon by the time Lilith walked through the front door. Luz did her best to look nothing but perfectly innocent, not wanting to field questions about why, exactly, she was digging through Lilith’s old mementos and keepsakes.
Lilith, oblivious or uncaring to Luz’s unease, efficiently sorted out her outer coat, boots, and purse’s contents between the cabinets of a worn, dinged compact bench-storage box seated beside the front door. She did it fast, in a way that made it obvious every item had a place, and that those places had likely not changed in years since she first decided them.
“Luz,” Lilith acknowledged, seeing her ward sitting at the kitchen’s counter, a tupperware box full of chili mixed with rice heating in the microwave.
Luz nodded back, and that was the end of their conversation. Lilith took a seat beside Luz at the counter, no questions asked about why Luz was up at almost midnight or why Luz looked like death warmed over as she blearily stared at the wall. Luz was thankful for that.
The food finished heating, and Lilith smoothly rose, taking a serving spoon to cut the chili and rice in half, depositing one portion onto a plate, for Luz, and leaving the other in the box, for herself.
As the sounds of spoons scraping filled the cramped kitchen, Luz contemplated her dinner, barely mustering the energy to eat. It didn’t help, knowing that Lilith wouldn’t even ask after Luz’s wellbeing if Luz just threw the food away—Lilith was always more concerned with fixes than problems, and Luz knew she would instead attempt to ascertain what other foods Luz might prefer instead for the future.
A slight difference, true, but a notable one.
A difference large enough to tell Luz that Lilith was doing this—acting as Luz’s guardian—more out of obligation than anything, and as long as everything was nominally alright, the woman had no concern as to deeper issues. There was a vague absence within Luz where she felt the notion should have stung, but when she looked there was just more emptiness than feeling to go around.
Luz stood there for half an hour more, slowly eating. The chili and rice wasn’t bad. Truly. Lilith had a tendency to use weekends to cook large amounts of food that kept, eating the same thing over the following week until the next cycle came around, but by no means did that mean she didn’t use spices or anything like that.
The food just felt wrong. Off in a way that had nothing to do with flavor. Not for the first time, Luz thought of her Mama and the things they cooked together, made all the better by mutual effort and love.
But that connection was one the world hadn’t permitted Luz to keep. Luz simply had to deal with that fact, before it overwhelmed her.
Washing her plate and spoon, and putting them back in their respective cabinets, Luz went to her room, leaving the lights off. She fell into the bed without even changing clothes, though she did shuck off her jacket and toss it randomly off to the side.
Luz’s room had a window facing the woods behind Lilith’s house, and moonlight filtered through it. The edges of various odds and ends strewn about Luz’s room were highlighted by rays about their edges, but Luz didn’t want to get up. Instead, she closed her eyes, savoring the release of approaching sleep.
The moonlight caught on her eyelids, and somewhere between—through refraction, or by bouncing off something colored in her room, or something—that luminescence looked slightly blue, with a hint of gold.
Luz jolted up with sudden vigor, heart beating.
She didn’t think she was going to get much sleep tonight.