The light of abyss (The owl house x Marvel)

The following few days were weird for Amity. One of the first things that happened when they got home was her Dad taking her Mom asside to "talk" in his lab. Things got very loud, but Amity couldn't make out what exactly they were yelling about from her room.

An hour after that, a healer on a house call was led to her room and took a look at her leg. Luckily, her ankle had just gotten twisted by the bad landing, nothing was broken so it would only take a few days to heal once the healer's patch was on. she'd even be able to walk without support in the morning but needed to rest it overnight.

Dinner that night had been brought to her room by Edric, who apologized about her diary ten times before handing her a serving tray. A pizza bagel made from a full-sized bagel and a small bag of those spicy chips she liked. She hadn't had anything like that since she was a kid... She, she wasn't sure how she felt, but...

Sleep was fitful. Objectively, her fancy, expensive mattress was more comfortable than a pile of blankets on the floor but she felt more comfortable in that lived-in converted storage closet with her... Friend, Luz than she had in her own home for a while.

...Also, she suddenly thought about how she'd almost asked the human girl out twice while high on the potentially toxic brew that Luz called "coffee" just as she was falling asleep and the sheer mortification kept her awake for another hour.

The next morning, after testing that putting weight on her foot wouldn't make it hurt worse, she went down for breakfast and was surprised to find her Dad sitting with the family. Normally he took his meals in the lab. Her Mom looked mad. Over breakfast, Dad reiterated that Amity was not in trouble for running away and that she would not wearing that necklace anymore. He then went on to explain that neither she nor Ed and Em would be assisting with product demonstrations for investors anymore, unless it was an emergency and then they would be paid an employee's wages for the night's work, and that he was cutting back on his hours at work because this whole incident had been a wake-up call for how out of touch he'd been lately. Amity wasn't sure how she felt about that, either...

But the fact that he was clearly trying to be supportive gave Amity enough courage to ask about keeping her hair down. Her Mom looked like she'd just eaten a raw bulb of garlic, but conceded on the grounds that Amity style it appropriately and dye it immediately so her brown roots didn't show.

Emira had immediately volunteered to take care of it and almost literally carried Amity back upstairs in order to get it done after breakfast, apologizing repeatedly for her diary. Amity was starting to get annoyed by how apologetic and protective her siblings were, but having them actually act like siblings for a change was nice and Emira... did do a pretty good job getting her hair in order. She liked what she did, even if part of her would have preferred any color other than green.

The rest of the morning had been spent on Penstagram. First she posted a status update that she was home and okay, then she went back through her timeline and made notes of rude things she'd said or posted. Amity had meant what she said about wanting to be nicer, which meant she'd have to apologize to some people. At last the ones she could apologize to and...

It became abundantly clear to her that most of the rude things she'd said or done had been directed toward Willow. She hadn't... Meant to single out her ex-friend or... Maybe she had. She'd wanted the other girl to hate her. Even things she'd done to try and encourage the girl were intentionally done to try and make the other girl try and spite her and... Maybe it was her fault that Willow felt the need to cheat? This... Was going to be harder than she thought.

That first afternoon had seen her escorted to Hexside. Her Mom had apparently called Principal Bumb and used her status as head of the Parent-Creature Association to arrange for Amity to sit for the midterms that she'd missed after she ran away. That took up most of the rest of the day, but Principal Bump had been very understanding of the situation and had discretely slipped her a pamphlet discussing mental health services provided by the school "just in case." He'd apparently already been at the school for an entrance exam. He said he wasn't at liberty to answer when she asked if it had been Luz, but gave a knowing smirk and said something about being pleased when his students worked out their differences and became friends.

The next morning, after threatening to glue Eda and Em to the ceiling if they didn't stop babying her and insisting that she didn't need a bodyguard, she went to the library to see if she still had a job. She was greeted by Maphas with a stack of "we miss you" drawings from the Kiddie Corner kids and a note that he'd taken the liberty of changing the opening mechanism of the secret study room to something that was harder to figure out how to get into, and that she could start up again as soon as she was ready. She'd taken her normal shift that afternoon and the hugs of happy children she received that day outweighed every other hug she'd ever received in her life... Not that it was that hard.

Also, Braxas had talked about how he'd had his daddy beat up the "Big Kids" who were mean to her and take them away to the "conformy-tory" so that explained Ed and Em's bruises.

It continued like that for a few days but eventually, the mid-term break ended, the new semester began, and Amity had to face the music.

Her loitering around the entrance before school officially started, her last bit of freedom before going in and seeing just how badly she was going to be mocked was rewarded when she was present for Luz's arrival. She approached just in time to hear the human saying something about how she was going to quit showering which Amity hoped was a joke, and then after biddeing her mentor farewell the human turned and saw her.

"Amity!" She greeted with a smile. The human girl then rushed over to her. "How are you? How's your leg? I like your new haircut."

"Fine and fine," Amity replied back. At least for now. "And thank you. Things are a little weird at home, but not bad. And uh, congratulations on getting in and not being in the baby classes."

Luz suddenly got a very sheepish expression on her face. "Uh, about that..."

"If you ended up in the baby classes somehow you better not use it as an excuse to show up to story time at the library," Amity insisted. "We can come up with better excuses to hang out."

"Oh, nothing like that, I'm in regular classes," Luz insisted. "It's just... I was helping Eda clean out her freezer and... Found a glyph in the frost in the back," she said while pulling out a pre-drawn one that conjured an ice block. "Eda swore up and down that it wasn't there the day before but... We might not have had to be in any danger at all. I'm so sorry."

This prompted Amity to laugh so hard that she almost fell and needed Luz to catch her.

"I'm sorry, I just... I think I needed that," she admitted when she was done. The absurdity of what Luz had just described had broken something in Amity and suddenly a whole lot of stress had melted out of her in the form of laughter. She smiled back at the human. "Luz, it's fine. Chances are you wouldn't have even noticed it if you hadn't had a chance to connect with nature... Or maybe the Titan just likes you."

"Yeah, well." the human girl began awkwardly. Amity then got a good look at her. Right now her Hexside uniform was the grey and white of an undecided student and Amity couldn't help but picture her in the different colors of the coven tracks and formed the idea that Luz would be cute in any of them. "Yeah," Luz finished lamely.

A small voice in the back whispered 'You don't need that bitter elixir, do you?' and Amity spoke up. "Um, Luz, would you like to go—" Suddenly a great deal of heat rose in her face and her brain switched tracks to 'don't screw up a good thing.' "And hang out. Later, after school? I'm free this afternoon."

"Sure!" Luz said with a smile. Luckily, she didn't seem to put together what Amity had almost said. "You wanna meet up here or go someone else and meet up there or...?"

"We'll figure it out later," Amity declared as her nerves suddenly failed her. "I should get inside!"

She then bolted into the building like the coward she was, passing a bemused Willow and... Amity needed to learn the name of Luz's other friend as they stood near the stairs at the entrance.

Amity managed to calm herself after getting to her locker, then braced herself for what she expected to be a day of ridicule. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath.

Opening her eyes, she was startled to see that Boscha, her three-eyed 'friend' had snuck up on her in the interim.

After recovering from her initial flinch, she braced herself for the worst. The pink-haired witch was obsessed with status and always on the prowl for any sign of weakness. Amity's only saving grace was that grudgby season didn't start until after Grom. Boscha was extra aggressive then. But still, whatever she did was going to be bad...

Except, Boscha wasn't doing anything. The silence was awkward, and Amit y could sense some strange feeling coming off of Boscha, something she wasn't familiar with but that she'd felt coming off of Ed and Em, her dad, and even Luz briefly. She couldn't name it but—

Amity's train of thought was derailed when Boscha did the last thing she ever expected the three-eyed witch to ever do: Pull her into a hug.

"I'm so glad you're okay," she said while Amity froze. After a moment, Bocha let go and reached into her bag. "So I wasn't able to round up everything, there are still a few pages missing, but..." Then the triclops handed Amity a bundle of papers that Amity immediately recognized as the pages from her diary. A tear came to her eye. "Hey now, don't go soft on me," Bocha said nervously, "it's not like I read them or anything."

"It's not that—"

"Okay, I read halfway through the one that was taped to my locker before I figured out what it was, but I stopped immediately and went on a rampage to get the other pages back," Boscha defended. "Now I wasn't able to get all of them and a few kids talked before I could threaten them so the whole school knows that you still like stories for little kids and about your bunny lunch sack but it's not any worse than that time you called the teacher 'mom' and I think the worst of it has blown over so dry those tears before someone sees you."

Amity wiped her eyes. "It's not that. I... You know how we started hanging out..."

"Because our moms were rivals in school and wanted an excuse to passive-aggressively brag about our accomplishments to each other as a way of keeping it going through us?" Boscha asked. "If I cared about that we wouldn't have been friends for this long."

"That's just it, I never really thought of you as a friend, I was just doing what was expected of me."

"Okay, ouch," Boscha deadpanned.

"And I... I'm sorry for thinking so little of you," Amity finished awkwardly.

"It's fine," Boscha declared with her signature eye-roll. "Has my besty been keeping anything else from me?"

"I don't like picking on people," Amity admitted. "I never have."

"Not ever Half-a-witch Willow?"

"Especially not Willow," Amity said. "And can we stop calling her that?"

"Fi~ine" Boscha whined like a child being told to eat their vegetables. "I'll try to dial it back."

"Thank you," Amity said with a smile. Then her nerves started getting to her again. "Um, which one was it that you read."

Boscha looked around quickly. "...The one about your crush on the human."

Amity noticed a brief tinge of anger mixed with sour sickness come off of Boscha, but it only lasted a moment, and the eruption of heat in her face meant that the only thing she could focus on was telling the three-eyed witch to "shush."

Boscha held up her hands defensively. "Hey, I get it. Of course, the Queen of Hexside has exotic tastes. So what is it that got your eye?" she asked with a mischievous grin. "The venom spay? The gills? The spinnerets?"

"Turns out that most humans don't have those," Amity explained.

"Really?" Boscha asked in genuine surprise. "Then what is it? She doesn't like those children's fantasy novels you rave about, does she?"

Amity very deliberately didn't respond.

"Oh my Titan," Boscha declared as if Amity had just confessed to beating up the wife of and stealing the kid of the world's greatest martial artist.

"It's not just that," Amity clarified. "It's... hard to explain but... she makes me feel safe and happy in a way that I haven't for a long time."

"Okay, I get that," Boscha acknowledged. Then she put an arm over Amity's shoulders. "Now rumor has it that she's starting at Hexside today so how about we go out and bag you a human?"

Amity started stammering. "Uh, right now? Like this? Today?"

"Uh, yeah," Boscha declared. "You want the human, you're getting the human."

"She has a name."

Boscha rolled her eyes. "Whatever, now come on."

A voice in the back of Amity's head, one that sounded suspiciously like her mother, whispered 'You don't deserve Luz.'

"I can't, not like this."

Boscha let go of Amity, turned to face her, and looked her in the eye. "I'm gonna tell you something that I have never told anyone else, and if you try to spread it around I'll deny it. I had a crush on someone once." Amity felt a brief twinge of what she could only describe as pain coming from the three-eyed witch. "But I waited too long to say anything, and she found someone else and Titan take me if I let that happen to you, so grit your teeth and bite the bullet, Blight. Before it's too late."

Amity looked down. "I don't want to... We've got a good thing going and it wasn't that long ago that I tried to... I don't want to mess this up."

"Amity, if she rejects you and it ruins whatever weird friendship you have," Boscha began, "then she didn't deserve you in the first place. And you'd know. Just ask her straight out."

"Okay, but... It has to be on my terms, got it?"

"Got it. Remember," Boscha finished, "I've got your back."

TLOA

Unfortunately, there wasn't really a good time to ask Luz out during that first day... Because Luz somehow managed to get herself tossed in the detention track on her first day. Then Amity was pulled aside and asked to help with a demonstration for an inspector for the Emperor's Coven who, as it turned out, was actually a greater basilisk, a shapeshifting magic-eating snake demon that was supposed to be long extinct, who stole the magic from almost everyone in the school until Luz and a bunch of other detention trackers arrived to save the day and everyone's lives by crushing the magic back out of it. Afterward, she convinced Principal Bump to abolish the restrictions on track studies, allowing students to study multiple forms of magic. The multicolored uniform she was given to show that she was studying all of them was especially cute.

Okay, maybe she could have asked Luz out when they were hanging out that afternoon, but the excitement of the basilisk attack and Luz's heroic actions left her too emotionally drained to work up the nerve and instead, she simply asked Luz to teach her more about the human world.

...That had been a mistake. Luz's lecture on the different types of superhumans had been interesting for the most part, but the description of those 'symbiotes' complete with the sketch of that one serial killer gave her a nightmare that night. She vowed to never let Luz find out about it.

On the upside, Luz had given her a device from the human world that would let them stay in touch since the human's "phone" couldn't connect to what Luz had called the "witch internet" or the Crow network, while the same could be said of Scrolls and communication crows for human means of communication. Small, handheld, and shaped like something that Luz had called a "Tamagotchi," the device allowed strange, hieroglyphic symbols that Luz called "emoji" to be "texted" to its mate as a means of communication. Admitted, Amity had no idea what it meant at first, mistaking the short phrase "U R COOL" for a command until Luz explained that most of the symbols could be substituted for letters when the device was turned sideways though some of them were just what they looked like.

The next few days had progressed as normal but on the day when she finally worked up the nerve to ask Luz out, school was canceled due to a pixie infestation and that just took it out of her completely.

Back to the drawing board, work up the nerve for a few days, and...

Amity wanted to do it, but Luz was hanging out with Willow and that would be really awkward. So instead Amity stood in the distance and watched while Luz taught Willow how to duel human style, which involved holding hands and waggling your thumbs against each other. Skara, the bard student of Amity and Bocha's little circle, was handing out invitations to her fifteenth birthday party, but Amity wasn't paying much attention to that.

Boscha looked from the scene Luz and Willow were making back to Amity. "You're seriously in love with that dork?" She whispered.

"She's not that bad," she whispered back. "And could you keep it down, I don't want anyone to know until I'm ready to..."

"Right, right... I mean, okay, I get it, the heart wants what it wants but I can't help but feel that this would be a lot easier if it was someone who didn't spend so much time with Ha... With Willow."

"Didn't you used to be friends with Willow?" Skara asked Amity far too loudly, drawing the attention of several people in the hallway including Luz and Willow.

Amity's first instinct had been to deny or deflect but... She meant what she said on the Knee about wanting to be better. It wasn't much, but it'd be a start. "Yes," she replied bluntly.

The look of bewilderment on Willow's face at Amity's admission stung Amity's heart. The plant witch just stared at her until Luz reminded Willow that it was memory photo day in photography class and dragged her off.

Amity and Boscha had their next class together as well, though it was awkward as gears visibly turned in the three-eyed witch's head, but she seemed to be over it as class ended and they made their way to the cafeteria... But then they passed the open door of the photography room and something caught Amity's eye.

"Whatcha looking at, Blight?" Boscha asked. "Is there a ghost in Photography class? Are they cute?"

"Uh, no..."

"Wait, your human said something about memory photos. You caught a glimpse of your crush as a little humanling and you want a closer look?"

"...Yes!" Amity lied. "So um, you go along ahead, I'll catch up with you in a bit."

"Don't take too long!" Boscha playfully warned as she walked off and Amity approached the photo that had actually caught her eye.

A picture of herself and Willow as small children. Amity was hugging Willow tightly. That had been both the happiest and sadest day of her life.

A month ago, she would have tried to hide the photo, maybe even destroy it if it being a memory slipped her mind, but...

She pulled the strange human device from her bag and typed out a message, "IM READY"

A few minutes later, Luz replied. "GREENHOUSE AFTER SCHOOL"

TLOA

Amity got to the greenhouse first and paced around nervously, alternating between making sure her hair was straight and clutching at the hem of her tunic hard enough that her knuckles turned white as she paced. This was...

She was finally going to clear the air with Willow and she was terrified.

'It's not too late to run,' a treacherous part of her mind whispered.

"Shut up brain!" she hissed.

She heard some movement from outside the greenhouse and stopped with her fussing, turning to face the door just as it opened and Luz stepped in followed by Willow. Strong built, chubby, muscular, braided-haired Willow.

Who saw Amity and turned absolutely livid. This was already going poorly.

"Luz, I said no schemes!" she exclaimed while looking towards the human.

Luz's shoulders fell as she looked skyward and whined "But it's no~ot! Amity asked me to help her talk to you weeks ago!"

Willow turned back to Amity and it was like something had broken in the other girl. Amity had never even conceived that sweet, nurturing Willow could be that mad but... Amity didn't need her abnormal talent to feel the rage coming off of Wilow.

"Okay, you wanna talk? You can start by explaining this." Willow then tossed a crumpled-up piece of paper to Amity.

It'd been a bit since Amity quit the grudgby team, but her skills weren't so rusty that she couldn't catch a simple toss. Unfolding it, Amity recognized it as a page from her diary. Specifically, the entry she'd written the day of the 'fake abomination incident.'

"What?" Willow asked. "Can't read your own handwriting? It says 'I don't know how to feel about today. Willow cheated. Got some weird... Person(?) to slather abomination slime on themselves and pretend to be her homework. Professor Hermunculus fell for it and not only gave her an A+, but he took my top student badge and gave it to her after just one good grade. I will admit that I lost my head and acted in a manner most unbecoming'—understand of the century—'especially since today is also when I found out that the Top Student badge is just something Professor Hermunculus does and I'm the only one that cares, which made me feel really stupid'" Willow snorted. "'But... After everything was exposed and Willow and her accomplice bolted, Willow used plant magic. Strong plant magic, I had no idea she was ever that powerful or talented, and Principal Bump was so impressed that instead of punishing her for cheating, he transferred her to the plant track. I'm angry that she cheated and that her accomplice made a fool of me, but at the same time I can't help but be proud of her. I wish I could tell her.'"

Willow had recited the diary entry word for word, which meant she'd read it enough to memorize it.

"You told me, when we were little, that you couldn't be friends with me anymore because I was too weak," Willow continued. "You spent years mocking me and belittling me. Calling me half-a-witch and letting your new friends do worse. And now all of a sudden you're proud of me? And you admitted that we used to be friends today when you'd always denied it if it came up before ...I remember how happy you looked when I showed up to your birthday party. Ten minutes later you stabbed me in the heart... Have the last six years been... Some kind of sick game!? Or am I just finally strong enough and you think I'll just come crawling back if you stopped acting like that all I ever was was a mess on your bootheel?"

Amity had expected this to be a hard conversation, but... She hadn't thought about just how badly Willow would have been hurt. She knew she'd hurt her, but...

"No," Amity began. "It's... not... I..." Great, now her mouth wasn't working. She was suddenly intimately aware of how fast her heart was beating, the walls were melting away and she knew she was on the verge of another tan—meltdown.

Then something snapped her back to her senses before she could completely lose herself. She hadn't even noticed that she'd brought her hand up to her mouth until Willow grabbed her wrist. The other witch didn't seem... as mad.

"Please don't," the other witch begged sadly.

"...What?"

"You'd always bite yourself when you were super upset about something," Willow explained. "I always hated it when you'd do that and... You've got all your grown-up fangs now, right? It'll really hurt if you do it now."

Amity took a deep breath and when Willow let go of her backed up into one of the walls and slid down it. She hadn't expected Willow to sit down next to her.

"I'm sorry. I'll listen," the other witch said.

"Don't, I deserved all of that and more... I... A lot's happened over the past few weeks, and..." Amity swallowed and continued. "I've been rethinking my life, and I'm not happy with any of my choices. I want to do something about that, and it starts with telling you the truth. I wasn't... supposed to invite you to my birthday party that year. My Mom had made up a guest list of kids that she wanted me to socialize with. The children of people she wanted to network with, or that she worked with. Our kind of people... she didn't care that I didn't like those kids, that they were mean. She never liked that I liked hanging out with a kid who was only upper-middle class. But, it was my birthday, and I wanted my best friend there..." Amity trailed off for a moment and she worked up the nerve for the next part. "Mom was mad, and Dad just enabled her like he always did. She took me asside and gave me an ultimatum: If I didn't break off our friendship, she'd make sure you never got into Hexside and... Even though I was little, I knew that if that didn't work that she'd do... Something else." Amity knew where the bodies were buried. Sometimes literally.

"Why didn't you just say that?" Willow asked.

"Because I'm a coward." It was as simple as that, really. "I didn't know how to tell you that you'd been banished from my life even though you hadn't done anything wrong and, and when you asked if it was because you still couldn't do magic... I panicked. I figured that it'd be easier if you hated me, and..."

"I never hated you," Willow replied. "I've had so much anger bottled up in me for so long and... Sometimes I was mad enough that I wanted to hurt you, but even when it was that bad I never hated you."

"Willow, I'm so sorry. About everything," Amity finished. "I wasn't strong enough to stand up for you or brave enough to tell you the truth and I spent all this time hurting you and—"

"Amity," Willow interrupted, "I forgive you."

"Wha, uh... I was... I don't deserve—"

"Maybe you don't, maybe you do," Willow interrupted again. "You were in a bad place and you made a bad choice. But that... You were just a kid. How is a kid that age supposed to stand up to her parents of all people? And... I'm sick of carrying this anger around."

"I don't know how much clout I really have at school anymore," Amity began, "but I'll try and make sure that nobody picks on you ever again."

"It's mostly just you and Boscha, really," Willow admitted. "And Boscha's backed off since this semester started..."

"Yeah, I already talked to her about... I never liked picking on people."

"Thanks for that."

"So... Where do we go from here?" Amity asked. "I know we can never be friends again but—"

"Who told you that?" Willow interrupted for a third time. "I don't think we can ever have what we had, but if you want to be friends again... This is a good start."

The next few moments were a blur, but Amity could distinctly recall hugging and crying. Eventually, they composed themselves, and that just left one thing.

Luz had been standing at the entrance to the greenhouse the whole time, awkwardly, and now that the situation with Willow had been resolved, Amity could feel what she was pretty sure was some kind of anxiety radiating off of the poor human.

"So um, are you two good now?" She asked with a forced smile.

Amity looked at Willow, who nodded., so Amity looked back to Luz and replied. "Yeah, we're good."

"Okay," the human girl replied with more awkwardness. "I'm gonna... Eda's probably wondering where I am so..."

"You can go," Amity replied. "And, thanks for being here."

"I didn't do anything."

"You did enough," Amity said with a smile.

Luz smiled back before leaving Amity and Luz alone in the greenhouse.

"She's a good friend," Willow chirped.

"Yeah," Amity agreed. "She is."

"...You're in love with her, aren't you?" Willow asked suddenly.

"Who told!?" Amity snapped as the heat rose to her face.

"I was there when you almost asked her out at the beginning of the semester," Willow explained with a shrug. "And she's described you as a 'very blushy person' so... You'd be cute together," Willow acknowledged.

"Thanks," Amity replied awkwardly.

"But just because we're good now that doesn't mean I won't throw hands if you hurt her," Willow warned.

"Yeah, that's fair," Amity agreed. "I was actually planning to ask her out today but then I saw your photo of us together and..."

"I told her no schemes!" Willow exclaimed.

The greenhouse was silent for a moment, and then both witches laughed. It felt so good to laugh with Willow again.

But still... Amity would have to work up the nerve to ask Luz out all over again... Grom was coming up. That would be the perfect time to bite the bullet.

AN: Yes, I do take the interpretation that Boscha has an unrequited crush on Amity. Why do you ask? Of course, as we learned in Season 3 Boscha genuinely values her friends more than she's willing to admit, so since she's still friends with Amity at this point she is swallowing her bitterness and trying to be supportive.

Just so we're clear, Amity's new haircut is her season 2 design, but green instead of lavender. I considered having her go for it, but she's not quite ready for that level of rebellion just yet.

I hope that Amity and Willow's reconciliation is worthy of the legacy of the original Understanding Willow.

...Poor Luz, just having to stand there while her two best friends vent their feelings and speedrun a reconciliation. She probably didn't even get a chance to enjoy that sweet, sweet backstory exposition, especially since she'd have been able to feel Willow's anger and Amity's anguish.

Anyway, next up is Grom and I've had how I want that to go cued up in my brain since before I started writing this fic.