Chapter 62

Luz blinked awake, feeling confused... She must have fallen asleep after all.

Nobody had particularly felt like going to bed after everything that happened, so after dinner (which ended up being a party-sized bucket of chicken) they'd pushed the couch back, plopped down a pallet of pillows and blankets, and put on some cartoons to just try and... De-escalate, emotionally. Calm down, process, and rest. Her Mom had gone to bed at about one and asked that everyone try to get some sleep as soon as they felt like it but they were up for at least a few hours after that, watching the same show that Luz had gotten the song she'd played for Amity all those months ago.

Hunter got reallyinto it, just staring at it while wrapped in a blanket, and Vee got fixated on trying to figure out why the purple one sounded familiar.

Luz sat up and tried to take in her surroundings. She... Probably fell asleep first, all things considered. To her left was Hunter, who was sort of curled in on himself. Willow was on the other side and seemed to have an arm over Hunter. To her right was Amity, and to Amity's right were Vee and Masha, who was sort of on top of Vee, not that the basilisk seemed to mind. Looking down, Gus was sprawled out near the foot of the pallet and using Vee's tail as a pillow. Near his feat, their various palismen were snoozing in a pile.

The TV was off, and it was still dark out so she probably wasn't out for very long... Part of her hoped that the Titan would talk to her again the next time she got a good few hours of sleep. She... She really wanted to know if he was surethe Collector wasn't a threat.

As she finished returning to consciousness, something hit her ESP. Everyone had been feeling bad emotions last night, to the point that Luz had sort of tuned it out but now it was worse and... It was coming from Amity!

Amity was shaking in her sleep and, and...

Luz tried to gently shake her girlfriend awake. "Amity," she whispered. "Amity wake up. You're having a nightmare."

After a few moments, Amity threw herself up and blinked awake, tears clearly filling her eyes.

Luz took Amity's hand and carefully led her to stand up and moved her out of the living room and into the kitchen, stopping only to grab a box of tissues.

Once they were sat at the table and Amity had a chance to dry her eyes, Luz took her girlfriend's hand. "Are you okay?" she asked quietly.

Amity sniffed and answered "No."

"You wanna talk about it?"

Amity took a deep breath. "I was back in the skull. When Belos killed my Mo... When he killed Odal..."

"I get it," Luz said and gave Amity's hand a comforting squeeze.

"Except this time she didn't... Completely go to dust. Her petrified head was left and it was... Staring at me. Then Belos was gone and I was running through, like, some kind of labyrinth suspended over a pit, and every time I got to a corner there was her stone head again. Starring at me, like, like what happened was my fault and..." Amity was breathing heavily at this point.

"It's not your fault," Luz said confidently. "You didn't make her take you to the Head, you didn't make Belos petrify her, you... You aren't responsible for any of this, it's just your brain being mean to you." If anything, Luz was more to blame than Amity was.

"...I joked about dancing on her grave yesterday," Amity said. "And before that, I... The last time I saw her before I. When she tried to have me taken to Belos I told her to her face that I wished she'd die... She didn't understand me, I said it in Spanish, but still."

"That still doesn't make it your fault," Luz insisted.

"...What really gets me, what I don't understand," Amity said as tears came back to her eyes, "is... I hated her. I was afraid of her for the longest time... She hurt me. And tried to control me and... She hurt Ed and Em, too. Not in the same way but... I can't remember a single time she ever acted the way a mom is supposed to when it counted. So... Why am I so sad?"

Luz got up and pulled Amity into a hug. She rubbed Amity's back and let Amity cry into her shoulder. "Feelings... Don't always make sense. As bad as it was... She was still part of your life for... All your life. So, maybe... Maybe part of you was always going to miss her? And, you didn't really get to break away from her on your terms. Every time you tried to she'd force her way back in, so... I don't know, I'm not a psychiatrist... But I'm here for you," Luz said, "whenever you need me I'll be there. Saldremos de esto juntos. Te amo, mi alma gemela."

Amity sniffed again... "Yeah..." Luz could feel that Amity was starting to feel slightly less bad. "Eso también te aplica a ti, Noceda. I know you're feeling bad... I think, I think you're feeling worse than everyone else and... I don't want you neglecting yourself to try and help me again, okay?"

"I won't," Luz said. "I promise."

"Good, because... When you're hurting, it hurts me too," Amity said and in doing so drove an icy dagger right through Luz's heart.

"...Yeah. Don't worry about that. I'll take care of myself," Luz said. "But... Let's get back to bed for now."

"Alright." Amity agreed. They turned to leave the kitchen only to be met by Ghost, who peered up at them suspiciously. Amity bent down to pet her palisman, who purred something. "It's alright, Ghost. I'm okay," Amity said. Ghost purred something else. "Luz, she wants to know if you're okay."

"Yeah, Ghost, I'm fine."

Ghost seemed satisfied with that and meowed something as she padded back into the living room Amity snorted.

"What?" Luz asked.

"Stringbean sent Ghost to check on us. Your palismen was concerned but didn't feel like getting up."

Luz forced a small laugh and then the two girls returned to the living room where they carefully eased themselves back into the pallet. Same position but this time Luz made a point of holding Amity and then...

Amity fell back asleep pretty quickly, but Luz just stared at the ceiling for a while, thinking. Luz... Didn't feel all that good about herself right now and... Everyone who knew that she helped Philip said that none of this was her fault. And she knew that... Their arguments made sense, but none of that changed how she felt, and... she felt like she deserved to feel bad but... If she was feeling bad, she was hurting Amity, and... Was she hurting the other people she loved, too? She didn't... She didn't want to do that.

She felt like they'd be better off without her. If she'd never been born... Except she knew that wasn't true. She knew what everyone's lives were like before she met them. She knew she'd helped them... Heck, Vee, and Hunter wouldn't even exist if she hadn't been tricked by Philip but... She still felt so guilty. Like she was a...

And regardless she was in their lives now and... It'd hurt them if she left their lives, wouldn't it? And... It's not like she...

...The only way Luz could go without hurting the people she loved with all her heart, her friends and family, would be to...

How was she supposed to...?

It felt like something inside of her was broken. She kept thinking about every mistake she'd made, about being tricked by Belos, about all of this stuff that she felt like was her fault even though she knew it wasn't. How awful it all made her feel... If she was broken, then... How was she supposed to fix herself?

Luz looked at her sleeping girlfriend and planted a kiss on her forehead, which made the girl produce a contented purr in her sleep.

"Don't worry, Amity," Luz whispered. "I'm not... My brain's being mean too, I guess. But I'm gonna... I won't let my bad feelings hurt you or anyone else."

Luz had no idea how to stop feeling so terrible, but she'd figure it out. For Amity, and everyone else she loved.