Emira awakes groggily the next morning, half an hour earlier than usual. After such a late night, she could really do with the extra sleep, but this is for Amity. She repeats those words - this is for Amity - over and over in her head as she crawls out of her bed and into her uniform, like a war cry to prepare her for the day ahead. A bit dramatic, maybe, but today is important. After all the pressure placed on her by their parents, all the hurt they've caused her through their excessive expectations and standards, Amity deserves this - deserves Luz, as a friend if nothing more. If Emira can help her fix whatever divide has been created between them, help her understand and come to terms with her emotions, then maybe that will begin to make up for almost getting Amity killed back in the library.
With this in mind, Emira sneaks cautiously to the kitchen, being careful to avoid waking anyone else in the manor. Their rooms are all spread out, but the house's halls and corridors are echoey and sounds travel far - sounds like the faint clanking and shuffling currently emanating from the kitchen. No-one is normally up this early - or rather, no-one is normally in the kitchen this early. Amity often wakes up well before anyone else, but she generally comes downstairs after Emira after spending half the morning working on one project or another, trying to keep ahead of the rest of her class. The waitstaff always finish their morning preparations well in advance, in case any of the Blights decide to wake up early that day, and should currently be resting in the servants' quarters on the other side of the manor until they are needed. Wary of intruders, Emira slowly moves around the corner leading into the kitchen - and finds Amity, digging around in the coolbox. She sighs audibly, partly in relief and partly to warn Amity of her presence, and immediately the younger girl stiffens slightly, but otherwise she does nothing to acknowledge her presence, simply continuing to move things around within the coolbox until she apparently finds what she's looking for, straightens, and moves over to the table to eat her breakfast. Emira stands awkwardly in the doorway until the tension becomes too much for her and she moves to sit at the opposite end of the table.
"Uh, Amity, are you… there?"
It's a lame question, since Amity is pretty clearly sitting right in front of her, but it's the best she can come up with. Amity's never ignored her before; she's shouted, even screamed, at her, stomped away from her, closed doors pointedly in her face - but never ignored her. Then again, Emira has never approached their arguments as something to be rectified rather than a way to get under her skin before, either, so this is new ground for both of them. Hopefully Amity will notice the concern in her voice and talk to her, but Emira has no idea how to play this if she doesn't. She spent an hour planning last night, but never even considered that things might play out like this. Thanks to her lack of sleep, she's in no state to improvise, either.
Amity begins to eat faster, not quite shovelling her cereal into her mouth - she's far too disciplined for that - but speeding up significantly nonetheless.
"Please, Amity, talk to me - I just want-"
Emira pauses. What did she want to do? Originally, she'd only been planning to apologise for her teasing the day before yesterday, but with Amity so determined to ignore her, maybe that's not good enough.
"I want to say sorry. For… a lot of things. For what I said the other day, but also all the little things I've said and done before today, the teasing and the pranks and all the times I've taken things too far. I want to do better, to be someone you can trust, someone you can turn to when things go wrong and you need advice or a shoulder to cry on. That's why I'm down here so early: I wanted to make you a proper breakfast, more than just the stuff the kitchen staff prepare. I thought if I did something tangible, you might trust that more than just my words."
By the end of her little speech, Amity's eyes are wet with what looks suspiciously like tears, and her spoon is still within the bowl. For a moment, Emira thinks she's gotten through to her, but suddenly Amity bolts from her seat and sprints out of the room. Emira moves to follow her, hurrying through a corridor and into the entrance hall, but the front doors are already slamming shut behind her younger sister. Sighing, she walks back into the kitchen, dejectedly surveying the half-eaten bowl of cereal on the table. A paper bag on the counter catches her eye. She crosses over to it and quickly glances inside, confirming its contents: Amity left her lunch behind. Not too uncommon - she's reminded of that day in the library, when she and Edric had bought Amity her lunch. Then, they'd transferred it into her lunchbox from when she was 8 in an effort to embarrass her. Maybe this time, she could use it as an opportunity not to tease her, but to regain a little of the trust she'd lost.
Amity makes it halfway to Hexside before her thoughts stop racing enough to make her legs follow suite. Leaning against a tree, she tries to calm down and take stock of the situation, but nothing makes sense to her. She did the responsible thing, cut Luz out of her life like she'd done with Willow so many years ago, gotten rid of the distractions like her parents are always telling her to - so why is she here, slumped against a random tree in the middle of the woods? Why is she right back where she started, sprinting away from her sister after everything became too much for her? It wasn't the exact same situation, granted - this time she was running because her sister had apologised and she wasn't sure how to react, not because she'd teased her, and this time she'd forgotten her lunch - and she knew that her sister would bring it to her in that old rabbit bag that she'd tried to get rid of a thousand times now but her siblings kept finding again somehow, regardless of Emira's big speech about how much she wanted to change - but it boiled down to the same end result. Amity had let her emotions get the best of her again. Pushing Luz away hadn't changed anything. All it had done was hurt her best friend, and herself in the process.
Tears begin to stream down her face. She lets them fall; there's at least half an hour left before school starts. Crying for ten minutes won't make her late.
Luz glances to the door of the classroom, foot tapping anxiously on the ground. By her watch, the lesson started ten minutes ago, and yet Amity is still nowhere to be found. She hates me. She must do; why else would she skip class just to avoid sitting next to me? Luz knows her thoughts are nonsensical, that Amity could be late for any number of reasons, but she's never seen her be late before, not even after fighting Grom. Her mind keeps turning to the things that have changed since then, their conversation two days ago, and she can't help but feel like it's her fault. Grom itself weighs heavily on her, memories once full of happiness and joy and another feeling that she couldn't quite put into words now haunting her as she picks through them with a fine comb, trying to work out what she did to push the other girl away, where she went too far and should've backed off and given her some space instead. Was it the dance? Amity asked for it, but maybe she felt like she had to, since I invited her to Grom with me. Or what about the hand on the shoulder, when we were picked up by the crowd? I meant it to be comforting, but maybe Amity actually hated it and didn't want to make a scene - or maybe it was the tiaras? She was blushing like crazy when they appeared. What if-
Luz's train of thought is cut off as the door swings open and Amity bursts in, looking more flustered than she'd ever seen her. Not only is she clearly panicking over being late, rushing to get out an apology to the teacher as soon as she gets through the door, but her eyes are red and puffy, as if she's been crying. Her hair is in a mess too, ruffled and wild compared to her normally tame ponytail. After the teacher assures her that, while he will have to mark her late on the register, she won't be punished since this is her first late of the year, Amity heads over to their desk, dropping her books and sliding in next to Luz. Her gaze is focused straight forwards, not in a pointed way, her attention simply elsewhere at the moment. Getting into the flow of the lesson, she seems to relax a bit, untroubled by whatever was causing her to cry earlier. Despite her dishevelled appearance, she looks… beautiful.
Luz jerks back, her face burning as she turns to stare straight down at the open textbook in front of her. Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Amity turn to face her, but she doesn't dare look up, even when she thinks she hears the other girl sigh lightly - in irritation, perhaps? A few minutes pass before she feels safe to look up again, but she keeps her eyes locked on the teacher, and Amity apparently does the same. They pass the lesson in that way, never glancing around, not even acknowledging the others presence. For Luz, doing so would mean confronting all the mistakes she's made while trying to befriend the other girl, and as much as she doesn't want to admit it, she's just not strong enough for that.
After the class is over, Luz hurries to leave as quickly as possible, gathering up her books before the bell goes off. As she turns to exit the door she sees Amity running slightly, trying to catch up with her. Beginning to panic slightly, she starts to run herself, aiming to reach the relative safety of her locker as quickly as possible. Slipping into the crowd, she manages to escape around the corner of a nearby corridor and out of earshot of the other girl - but not before she hears Amity calling out to her, desperation creeping into her voice.
"Luz, wait! I just want to apo-"
Author's Note: I was a tiny bit lost about how to get from the start of this chapter to the rest of the story but I think I have a pretty solid plan now, so hopefully some things should start coming together! Also I should start to have more free time from now on so the chapter will hopefully be longer from here on out.