If you had told Steve Harrington as a teenager that he'd be a librarian living in an alternate dimension full of demons, he'd think you were crazy. Him? A librarian? The very idea was preposterous. He could barely pass his high school classes! Besides, that stuff was for nerds.

The alternate dimension part, on the other hand, wouldn't have surprised the younger him at all. He would dearly liked it to have surprised him, but it wouldn't have. Hawkins, Indiana, where he grew up, was a hotbed for supernatural activity. Before he even became an adult, Steve had faced down Soviet troops, a horrifying monster known only as the Mind Flayer, and his friend's crazed stepbrother (who was a nasty piece of work even before he got possessed by the aforementioned Mind Flayer).

Steve had hoped that by leaving Hawkins and the vicinity of the interdimensional gate that had spawned all these horrid things, he'd never have an encounter with the paranormal again. For several years, he'd managed to escape, but one could never truly escape one's destiny. When he was twenty-five, he was working as a mechanic in Chicago (his dad had nearly had a heart attack when he found out that his son was working at such a low class job) when out of the blue, he got a phone call from his ex-girlfriend Nancy Wheeler. She and her husband Jonathan Byers had been attacked by a cryptid known as the gumberoo, and Jonathan had been severely injured. Steve was the closest thing to a professional monster slayer that she knew, so she asked him to come to Seattle and hunt the thing down.

Steve had almost said no. The breakup between him and Nancy had been…well, no one's fault, really, unless you counted the Demogorgon that had killed her best friend, but it had still left a bad taste in his mouth. He liked Nancy. He liked Nancy a lot. That was sort of why he didn't want to see her.

But then Nancy informed her that the beast was hunting her down specifically, and that she was pregnant, and really, what kind of an asshole would say no after hearing that?

Anyway, Nancy rounded up the usual suspects, namely the kids who had gotten enmeshed in the paranormal crap back in Hawkins, and they hunted the gumberoo down. (Seriously, what was up with that dumb name?) Steve shot it dead with a flare gun, and afterwards, Nancy invited Steve to the baby shower. Steve thought about saying no to that, too, but, hell, it wasn't like he had anything better to do with his time before he went back to Chicago.

And at the baby shower, he met Catherine West, one of Nancy's friends, and suddenly, going back to Chicago sounded a lot less appealing, especially when he learned that Catherine was profoundly interested in the occult. In fact, Nancy had told her all about her adventures back in Hawkins, and Catherine had believed her. It was…honestly pretty awesome being able to talk about his monster slaying with someone new.

So he stayed in Seattle, and he got a job as a mechanic there instead. Car engines were the same no matter where you went, after all. After his run-in with the gumberoo, Steve knew that even though he was done with the occult, it wasn't done with him. Over the next several years, he'd had numerous run-ins with the surprisingly vast array of paranormal creatures around the Seattle area. (In hindsight, they were all inhabitants of the Boiling Isles that had arrived through temporary portals, but Steve didn't know that then.) He had nightmares about what would happen if some horrifying creature went after one of his friends and he wasn't able to stop it.

When he told Catherine – now his girlfriend – about this, she had a very simple solution: Learn more about them. Knowledge was power, and power was safety. Steve took her advice to heart and he found, much to his shock, that he had a relentless fascination with occult texts. He was more interested in it than anything he had ever learned in school. He bought book after book, and eventually, he realized that he had a collection unlike anything in the Seattle area. So, again at Catherine's suggestion, he decided to share it with the public, and founded the Seattle Parapsychological Library.

As the years passed, Catherine became an essential part of his life. Steve wasn't a man given to mushiness, but he really felt like he had found his other half in her. So he'd proposed marriage to her when they were thirty, and she accepted. They had a beautiful wedding on Whidbey Island, and it wasn't even disrupted by any monster attacks. (The honeymoon, on the other hand, was a different story. And one that won't get told here.) Catherine worked as a teacher in an elementary school and told people that her husband was a librarian and never told anyone where he worked.

The two of them hadn't planned on having any children, but not everything in life goes the way one plans. When Catherine became pregnant eight years into the marriage, Steve had been petrified that his uncanny knack for attracting monsters and paranormal mayhem would somehow ruin his daughter's life, or even disrupt the pregnancy like it had almost done to Nancy. But Catherine gave birth to what they thought at the time was a girl and named her Avery.

Avery had been boisterous and exuberant. She didn't like dresses very much, but Steve hadn't really given much thought to that. If she didn't like dresses, then she didn't have to wear dresses. It was the twenty-first century after all. Girls didn't always conform to traditional standards of femininity, and Steve was totally cool with that. But it bothered Catherine. She tried to make Avery more feminine, encourage her to have more feminine hobbies and pursuits. Steve didn't really care about that. He just wanted Avery to be happy.

So when his child informed Steve that, in fact, Avery was a they, not a she, it really didn't surprise or bother Steve very much. He'd faced down horror creatures from a death world. His child forsaking gender didn't really have all that much of an impact in comparison. He made it very clear to them that he would love and support Avery no matter what.

But Catherine completely lost it. It was horrifying to watch, really. She saw Avery's nonbinary status as a personal betrayal, as if they were some extension of her. Which was ridiculous, in Steve's opinion. Avery was their own person. But Catherine had gone on and on about how selfish they were being, how they weren't considering her feelings at all. Which…seriously? Did Catherine not understand that it was not about her?

Avery ran away. They just ran out the door, and were gone from sight. And Steve started to go after them.

"Steve, if you go out that door, we're through!" Catherine announced. "She made her bed. Let her lie in it. She'll come slinking back soon enough."

There were monsters that Steve respected more than he respected Catherine in that moment. "They are my child. And I'm going to do what I can to help them."

But try as he might, Steve couldn't find his child. He didn't bother calling the police at first. Instead, he called his friends, and they canvassed the neighborhood in search of Avery. Catherine was no help whatsoever. She stubbornly persisted in her enbyphobic viewpoints, and Steve just was so goddamn sick of it, so eventually, he told her to just pack her bags and get out of the house. If she wanted him to choose between Avery and her, he'd pick Avery every single time.

Steve eventually called the police, but they weren't of any help finding Avery either. Since mundane methods had failed him, Steve turned towards the supernatural. His friend Jane used her scrying powers to locate what turned out to be a hole in reality out in the woods near the Harrington house. Avery had gone through it, knowing that whatever awaited them on the other side had to be better than facing their mother again.

Steve went through the portal, and he found himself in the Boiling Isles. He'd found Avery staying in the Owl House. Avery had been scared to see Steve – his own child, scared of him! – but Steve managed to impress upon them that he was totally cool with Avery's identity. The fact that he'd broken up with Catherine went a long way in persuading them.

After that, Steve could have returned, but he didn't. Well, not permanently. He went back once to inform all his friends that he was still alive, but would be staying in the Boiling Isles for the foreseeable future. They'd all taken it pretty well. Those of them who had kids knew that they'd do the same for their own children. They all swore to make sure that Catherine never found the portal.

Steve managed to become a librarian at the Bonesborough Library. Apparently, one didn't need an MLIS degree for that, merely a tremendous patience and the ability to handle the horrible creatures that infested the stacks. The job paid well, and it allowed him to continue pursuing his studies of the occult. Most importantly, it allowed him to create a stable life for him and Avery.

Avery may not have gotten any hatred for being nonbinary at Hexside, but they were a target for bullying nonetheless because they were human. Even after being taught an alternate way to use magic, the glyphs, Avery still became the target of bullying that made Steve reconsider daily the decision to stay in the Boiling Isles. But in the end, it wouldn't have been any better back on Earth, and if they returned to Earth, Catherine was sure to get custody of Avery, and Steve would die before letting that bigot get her hands on his wonderful child.

And as time went on, things got better for Avery. A great deal of that had to do with Luz Noceda, their best friend. Luz was plucky, optimistic, and devious, the perfect blend of her reckless but passionate mother and her persistent but cautious father. As Avery grew up, it was becoming transparently obvious that they had a crush on Luz to everyone but Avery themself. Eventually, though, they got the message, and they asked out Luz.

Luz had nearly gotten eaten by her locker, she was so shocked that anyone would even want to ask her out. She'd gotten used to people not being interested in her. Apparently, no one wanted to be seen dating a half-human. Avery didn't care about social ostracization – it wasn't as if they could slip much lower down the popularity ladder anyway.

It was amazing to watch Luz and Avery fall in love, slowly at first, but then descending faster and faster with each passing day. Avery deserved happiness. They deserved all the happiness not just in the world, but in all the worlds.

Nothing, Steve had thought, would be able to change that. So it was therefore very surprising indeed when Avery had, barely able to keep from breaking down while doing so, informed him that Luz had broken up with them. That was surprising enough. But the reason behind it was even more so. The girl in Luz's body was from another dimension, swapped with this dimension's Luz by fae magic. Apparently, the alternate Luz had to get the alternate version of her girlfriend to fall in love with her in a set time limit, and didn't want the relationship with Avery cluttering up things.

Honestly, a part of Steve wondered if this was just some sick joke that Luz was playing on Avery, but he knew better. Luz would never, ever do something so twisted. It wasn't in her nature. So now Steve was stuck with a child with a horrendously broken heart and with the responsibility of repairing Eda's portal to Earth so that her new charge could return to her family.

"It's the perfect time for a camping trip!" Steve announced to Eduardo when the two of them met for coffee at Steve's house the morning after the Covention. Eduardo ordinarily had breakfast at the Owl House, but things had been…tense there to say the least as of recently.

According to Eduardo, Amity had not followed Eda's original plan to use the duel to seize control of the company and use it as leverage against Hart, instead opting for directly preventing her from abusing Boscha further. In so doing, she had made a terrible enemy in Hart. The powers that be in the Boiling Isles may not have cared about what Hart was doing to her daughter, but they had to pretend that they did, and as such, the accusations against Hart had caused them to reconsider their dealings with Hart Industries. It was only a matter of time before Hart retaliated.

Amity refused to apologize for her actions. She had feared that seizing control of Blight Industries would cause Hart to hurt Boscha in an irreparable, even fatal, manner. Steve wasn't sure whether that was the case or not, but it wasn't implausible in his opinion. But now Eda was in a tizzy because even with Hooty's help, she wasn't sure she could defend the Owl House against whatever hoodlums, mercenaries, and abomination soldiers Hart would send against it.

"Why in God's name is it the perfect time for a camping trip?" Eduardo responded to Steve's original comment. "One of the most powerful women in the Boiling Isles is potentially after my ward."

"All the more reason to get out of dodge for a while," Steve retorted. "Look, Eddie, I'll level with you. I found a map to a portal to the In Between Realm. Amity won't be able to get home from there, but at least she'll be able to let her mom know she's alive." He regretted having to bring out his next argument, not because it was untrue but because it was far more true than Eduardo knew. "If it was your daughter trapped in a strange realm, wouldn't you want her to do whatever she could to let you know she's alive?"

Eduardo took a sip of coffee, clearly considering the matter carefully. He had always been a cautious man. Luz, both versions of her, had definitely gotten her tendency to act impulsively from her mother. "And you'd be taking Avery and Luz with you? Why?"

Steve had expected this question. "It'd look weird if I just took Amity with me. People would ask questions. This way, it looks like an ordinary camping trip."

Eduardo drummed his fingers on the table. "It's not going to get too awkward, Luz's ex-joyfriend and the girl we both know is going to be her girlfriend on the same trip?"

Steve couldn't help but laugh. "Hell, yeah, it's going to get awkward. But it's better that everyone sorts out their issues now instead of letting them bottle it all up. And if you're worried about Amity and Luz getting up to, you know, funny business, I won't let that happen."

Eduardo paled slightly and Steve cursed himself. Clearly, that hadn't entered Eduardo's mind until Steve planted it there. "Maybe I should go along with you all. Mrs. Serrano might be more be more reassured if she could speak to one of the people looking after her daughter."

Under no circumstances could Steve allow Eduardo to go with them. It was going to be tough enough keeping the secret from Amity with her along, but there was no getting around that. But having two outsiders would just complicate things – especially since Mrs. Serrano was New Luz's biological mother in her timeline. Steve had no clue if Mrs. Serrano and Eduardo had ever met before, but his gut told him that it would not be a good idea to find out.

"Eddie…do you trust me?" Steve asked seriously. Eduardo instantly nodded. They were good friends, and had bonded over being two out of the only three humans in the Demon Realm. "Then trust that I know what I'm doing and it has to just be the four of us. Look…I want Avery and Luz to talk things out. That's going to be hard enough with me and Amity. With you around? Luz isn't going to even try. Sorry, but that's how it is. Teenagers, right?"

Eduardo gave a dry chuckle. "Indeed. Human or half-witch, they're just a handful. And we wouldn't have it any other way, would we, Steve?"

"No, we would not," Steve said with a genuine smile on his face.

Amity never thought that she'd be looking forward to a camping trip. She was not an outdoorsy person. Fresh air was all well and good, but mankind invented buildings for a reason. And witchkind, too, she supposed. (It was really hard to get used to the idea that she wasn't actually human.) But if all went well (and, granted, it never did), she would be speaking to her mother before the day was up! And Clara! And her siblings! God, she must have been really homesick if she was missing her siblings.

Okay, that was something of an exaggeration, she had to admit. Emma and Edmond could be a bit much, and Emma would not stop teasing Amity about her apparently blatantly obvious crush on Clara (but how obvious could it have been if Clara hadn't known until Amity asked her out?), and Edmond really did not have any filter sometimes, but she loved them dearly. The fact that they thought she was dead haunted her.

Something else that was haunting her was her duel with Tasha Hart. And what was crazy was that it shouldn't have been. Hart had deserved everything she got. Amity had won. She'd freed Boscha from her mother's tyrannical hold on her. At Hexside now, Boscha was happier, lighter, more content.

And Amity had repeatedly shot Hart in order to do so. She had shot Hart in the face, shot her in the chest, pumped almost an entire magazine worth of bullets from a machine pistol into her. She'd done it for a good reason, for a worthy cause, and in the moment, she hadn't had a moment of guilt or hesitation. In the moment. But now, she couldn't stop thinking about how Hart had screamed when Amity had shot her. Or how she, who hadn't even laid a punch on someone before, had actually shot someone, fully accepting the idea that doing so might kill her.

Luz had killed Adegast. They hadn't talked about that, mostly because the whole experience was still monumentally embarrassing for Amity. There was no question that doing so was justified. Adegast had been trying to kill them and had come perilously close to succeeding before Luz killed him. But still…Luz had just shrugged it off like it was nothing. Maybe that's what people did in the Isles. If it was more dangerous, then correspondingly witches be more used to having to use force to defend themselves. Maybe Amity was the outlier here.

Or maybe Luz was having the same struggles as she was and was finding it just as difficult to process.

Either way, it was going to be a relief to have a distraction from those thoughts. A few days trekking through the Isles into the unnamed bog that Luz had, for some strange reason, immediately decided to name the Bog of Immediate Regret, seemed just like the things Amity needed to keep her mind off things. Even if having Avery around would make things awkward.

"So why'd you call it the Bog of Immediate Regret?" Amity wondered as they started off on their voyage. Luz was casting glyphs on them to augment their speed, but it would still take a few days to reach the Bog of Immediate Regret. "Sounds like kind of an ominous name to me."

Luz looked confused. "You don't remember? You know, the place where Azura faced down her rival Hecate?"

It was probably a reference to some sort of myth. The creature that had given the Isles magic was called the Titan, and titans were originally from Greek mythology, like Hecate, the goddess of magic. She tried to remember if there was a reference to an Azura in the Iliad. Edmond would know the answer; he probably had the book memorized by heart. "Was she a Hunter of Artemis?" Amity guessed. If she was right, she'd look so cool.

Unfortunately, judging by the almost aghast look on Luz's face, she had not gotten it wrong. In fact, maybe she had even said something offensive. If the people of the Isles worshipped the Titan, then perhaps bringing up the winners of the Titanomachy was something of a faux pas?

"You…you don't know who Azura is?" Luz asked in a quiet, almost broken voice. She looked as if she thought that the idea was not only offensive, but completely impossible, as if Amity hadn't known what gravity was.

"I haven't been here for very long!" Amity defended. "She must be a very important figure in your mythology in order for you to have this reaction. I apologize sincerely if I've –"

"NO!" Luz suddenly shouted, and everyone stopped in their tracks. She took a few deep breaths, and gave a smile. "No, no, it's not a big deal, Amity." It sure as hell felt like a big deal. What was Amity missing? "Let's keep moving."

Steve looked over at Luz carefully, but he must have decided that keeping moving was the best strategy, because everyone started walking again.

"Azura is a character from a book written on Earth," Luz explained. "I thought you'd read it. I was mistaken, that's all." That was definitely not all. "It's just…been a big part of my life. Ever since I was introduced to it at the age of six by…by my father. Right." It sounded as if that had explained something for Luz. It was decidedly not explaining anything for Amity.

Amity took a deep breath. "It kind of feels like that's not all."

"I…don't want to talk about it," Luz said after a few agonizing seconds of silence. Amity nodded. She could respect that.

Maybe if Amity talked about her own issues, it would inspire some reciprocity. "Yesterday was the first time I ever deliberately tried to kill anyone, and it's…bothering me. A lot. How do you handle it?"

"I don't," Luz said shortly. Yeah…that explained a lot.

"Hey!" Steve called out. "Let's save this stuff for our therapists, okay? I want this to be a fun outing! Amity, you haven't read the Good Witch Azura series, so what have you read? And, no, Young Wizards doesn't count – I've heard enough about that series to last a lifetime."

Amity wasn't sure whether to be amused or indignant at that. "Well, I'm rereading the Animorphs series. I'm still amazed that people let kids read that stuff. It is intense. But fun!"

"Yeah, Luz tried to get me into that series," Avery said. It was the first time they'd spoken since they had all left the Owl House. "It didn't take. Not my jam." They cast a look at Luz that was hard for Amity to read, but there was definitely tiredness mixed in there somewhere. "Look, this is going to be super awkward, isn't it?"

"Going to be?" Amity quipped. Avery tried to stifle a laugh, but failed.

Steve suddenly stopped in his tracks and looked over at them all. "Kids, let's get one thing clear. We need to be in this together. The Bog is going to try to play with our minds, show us visions of things that…" He paused, trying to remember something. "May be, could be, could have been? I translated the book from Old Daemonic, and their perception of time and potentialities is not exactly the same as ours."

Oh, God, he was starting to sound like Edmond, aka: the world's biggest nerd. Amity would readily concede that she herself was nerdy, but Edmond took it to a whole other level. Sometimes, she wondered if he deliberately cultivated an exaggeratedly nerdy persona to take the heat off her. But more likely, he was just that nerdy. Anyway, if that had been his intention, it didn't work.

"The point is, if we're at each other's throats by the time we get to the Bog, it may get us to try to kill each other," Steve went on. "So, yeah, let's try to work out what's bothering us…as much as we can." He looked at Luz at that point. Why did he do that?

Avery rolled their eyes. "Oh, yeah, like I'm going to be able to do that with her around to listen in." They pointed at Amity, who was starting to get a profound feeling that she was missing something very, very important. This was definitely not new to her; thanks to her autism and various other factors, Amity was not always very in tune with what was going on around her, socially speaking.

"If you two need time alone to patch things up, I'll give you that time," Amity offered. "It was never my intention to cause a rift between the two of you."

Avery sighed. "No, Amity. It's not your fault. I'm not sure if it or isn't Luz's fault, but I am sure it's not yours." God, what was with everyone talking in riddles on this trip?

In order to get to the Bog, they had to pass through the Titan's Gallbladder, which…sounded a lot worse than it actually was. Amity had been worried that there'd be all sorts of gross squishy stuff to traverse, but it turned out to be an arid desert. Fortunately, Steve had been able to magically summon canteens that he'd gotten in advance in preparation for the trip, and even if he ran out, apparently abomination goop would substitute in a pinch, even if that was easily one of the most disgusting things Amity had ever heard.

Apparently, Luz and Avery's issues couldn't be hashed out in the slightest in earshot. They'd tried, dancing around their issues so much that they were practically waltzing, until Amity had told them that she just couldn't take it anymore. So instead, they talked about Hexside, with Avery, somewhat pointedly, referencing events in their shared past with Luz. They talked about life on Earth, which Amity had a much higher opinion of than Avery. Avery stopped wanting to return to Earth the moment they left. Amity couldn't blame them for that; after all, the only family they had that they gave a damn was in the Demon Realm alongside them.

It was strange to think that if things had gone differently in previous years, Amity could have become friends with Avery. Apparently, the two of them even went to the same elementary school, though Amity never shared class, recess, or lunch with them at any point. There were only a few degrees of separation between them – they were the child of Amity's teacher's friend. And Amity had met Steve. It was strange, in retrospect, that she'd never met his child.

Amity's discussion of life on Earth made her increasingly homesick. The Isles were beautiful in their own special way, and there was no doubt that she was enjoying learning magic. But magic, especially abomination magic, had no practical use on Earth. Maybe if people knew magic existed, it would be a different story, but Amity could not use her magic in public without exposing the secret. If Amity had to choose between Earth and the Demon Realm – and she had a feeling that she would have to end up doing just that – she'd choose Earth. Her mother was there, her siblings were there, Clara was there. She'd miss Luz – more than she even wanted to admit right now – but it was really a no brainer in the end.

For now, she focused on the mission at hand. She'd be able to sleep a lot easier once her family knew that she was alive. True, she'd end up stressing them out immensely with the fact that she was stuck in a fairly hostile realm with no known way to get back home, but it was better they know the truth than think she was dead. Just about anything was better than that.

It had been Mr. Harrington's idea, definitely not Luz's, to have her and Avery sleep in the same tent. It sucked, but Mr. Harrington was absolutely adamant that they had to talk things out, and having them be in the same tent when they camped for the night was the only way they could do so without Amity overhearing. Just in case, Mr. Harrington took Amity for a walk to show her some topographical feature that Luz was reasonably, though not completely, certain that Steve had made up.

"So…" Luz said, and trailed off.

"We were going to do it, you know," Avery said, so quietly that Luz almost missed them speak.

"Do…?"

Avery looked at her as if she was stupid. "It, Luz." It? What did – OH. It. Luz could feel her face flushing scarlet to a level that she didn't think she was capable of. "After Grom. We had it all planned out. It was…it was a big deal for her. She's not the type of person to jump into bed with just anyone."

"I should think not!" Luz said, eager to defend Other Luz's honor. The idea felt like such an alien concept to her. Of course, she'd thought about doing such things with her Amity – who wouldn't in her situation? – but she knew that Amity wasn't ready for them, and, frankly, neither was she. "Why are you telling me this?"

Avery shrugged. "I wanted to get it off my chest, I guess. I…I don't know. I've been having second thoughts. As bizarre as it sounds, you're kind of unbiased in this matter. And it's not like there's anyone else I could talk to about it."

"Um, we're not going to…?"

"NO!" Avery shouted. "Absolutely not, Luz. That's not going to happen. But…do you think I'm doing the right thing? Am I too young?"

Well. This was definitely outside of Luz's wheelhouse. But, hell, she'd stolen their girlfriend's life and ended a relationship that was so strong that they were planning on doing the deed. The least she owed them was an answer. "I think that unless you're 100% certain, you shouldn't do it," Luz said after a few minutes of thinking. "There's no time limit on this stuff, no matter what people say. If you're ready the day she gets back, then that's great. If you're not until you get married, then that's cool too."

"You're probably right. I've been worried that I've been moving too fast…so I probably am. God, I'm so sorry," Avery said, as if just realizing who they were talking to. "I just made things super awkward for us both."

Did they? Luz wasn't so sure. It honestly felt like Avery was feeling better after getting that stuff off of their chest. And Luz honestly was honored that they were trusting her with such an intimate secret. It felt more like she was hanging out with her best human friend instead of Other Luz's technical ex-joyfriend. As strange as it sounded, she was now more comfortable with the situation. As long as she resolutely did not think about the fact that it was now technically her body that Avery had been planning to…nope. Luz wasn't even going to finish that sentence.

"Well, your dad did tell us to talk everything out," Luz pointed out. "It wasn't going to be easy. We both knew that. You don't have any more embarrassing secrets you've been hiding?"

Avery let out a smile. They didn't do that particularly often, but it was all the more effective when they did. "Nope. That's the most embarrassing one I've got. So what am I like back in your world?"

"Pretty much the same, honestly," Luz admitted. "Your parents divorced; your dad got custody somehow. You had a thing for me too. I had to turn you down, sorry. Amity and I prefer monogamy. I've got nothing against people in polyamorous relationships! My moms are in one! We're just…not interested in that."

Avery shrugged, not looking too bothered. "Some part of me is actually happy that they can't have you either. Probably not a nice part of me, but it's there. But you're friends?"

"We're best friends!" Luz assured them. "Well, tied with Willow, at any rate. They actually came to the Boiling Isles for a weekend this summer. They even cast some spells! It was awesome!" Some sense of guilt stabbed at her. "Look, Avery, I'm sorry that I put you in this position. I know it hurt you a lot. If I could have prevented it, I would have."

"No time travel shenanigans!" Avery shouted. "Dad told me to shout at you until you promised not to if you brought that up, and he was right. You are not changing your past self's future. It is not happening."

"No, no, I'm not going to do that," Luz promised. "I just meant that…I wish I could have found some way of handling this without hurting anyone."

Avery sighed. "As much as it pains me to admit this, Luz…this isn't your fault. It's Zoe's. This is what the fae do. They make you think that you're making the choices, but you're not. They manipulate people into making deals that screw them over. Right now, she's laughing at us." They clenched their fists. "But we're not going to let her win. She's not omnipotent or omniscient. We can still beat her at her own game. It's happened before; it'll happen again. Amity's already halfway in love with you already, and once she's eased her mind about her family thinking she's dead, she'll be able to go even farther than that."

Luz would have thought in most circumstances that Avery was just saying that to make her feel better, but she knew otherwise. They were telling the truth. They really thought that Luz was going to win, that she was going to be able to save her Amity. Of course, it was in Avery's own interests to do everything that they could to make that happen, but it was more than that. They trusted her, not as a variant of their girlfriend but as her own person.

It was that loyalty that made Luz want to be her Avery's friend in the first place. It was a relief to see that the Boiling Isles hadn't snuffed it out of them.

After that conversation, things were better between them. Things had gotten so awkward that they'd kind of circled back to not being awkward, as strange and incomprehensible as that sounded. Avery and Luz were able to talk as friends. Amity may not have been privy to the reasons behind that, but she definitely noticed the end result and was pleased with it.

The desert seemed endless, but it wasn't, and the end arrived with astonishing suddenness. The Bog of Immediate Regret was right in front of them, and honestly it kind of looked more like a swamp to Luz. She…wasn't actually sure what a bog was now that it came down to it. It looked wet and slimy and the dry heat was abruptly transitioning to humidity.

"Remember to keep your focus on reality," Mr. Harrington instructed them. "Have two to three ironclad, unique facts that you can keep reciting in your head and reject any reality that doesn't have them in it. If you're not careful, you could be trapped in a hallucination forever."

"Forever?!" Amity squeaked. "No one mentioned forever!"

"Relax, that won't happen," Mr. Harrington assured her. "And it probably wouldn't be forever, but it would be until we could go into your head and get you out. So maybe a couple of days, tops. Of course if we all get trapped in hallucinations…that's a different story." He looked her straight in the eyes. Thankfully, this Amity didn't seem to have any problem with that like Luz's Amity. Which made sense; her neurology was one of the few things that they'd be absolutely alike in. "If you don't think you can handle it, you can wait outside. And I'm not trying to shame you. There's no one here to impress. If you don't think you can handle it, you're almost certainly right."

Amity put her head up proudly. "I can handle it. I'll do whatever I have to. My family needs to know I'm alive."

"All right!" Mr. Harrington said, and clapped his hands. He looked chipper about things. It was all an act. Even Luz could tell that. But she followed suit, and, plastering a confident expression on her face, ventured right into the Bog of Immediate Regret.

It did not turn out to be aptly named, because at first, it seemed to be nothing more than a completely normal bog or swamp or whatever. It was wet and muddy and Luz was feeling really miserable having to trudge through it, but hallucinations didn't seem to be happening. And then, five minutes in, she

was standing in the rain in front of a house that she didn't recognize. Except she wasn't feeling any of the rain. She wasn't feeling anything at all. She didn't even have a body. There was a rope tied around her chest. She was some kind of spirit? Was she in this In Between Realm that Steve had mentioned. Camila was standing in front of her with her back turned to her.

"Mom, you were awesome back there!" Luz shouted enthusiastically. She had no idea why she was saying what she was saying. It was like she was in a dream, where the words made perfect sense before they came out of her mouth and then, in retrospect, no sense whatsoever. "Thanks for being cool about everything."

And then Camila turned around and the bottom dropped out of Luz's stomach. She was crying and shaking, looking like she was on the verge of a total breakdown. "I'm trying to hold it together," Camila said, her voice breaking, "I really am, but I have never been this scared before." She wiped away tears. "The Demon Realm?! Magic?! How are you going to get back here?"

Wait a second…this isn't how things went down at all. Luz hadn't told Camila about the Demon Realm until she returned to Earth.

"Is this the only way I can touch you?" Camila whispered, and Luz's heart broke into two. Camila tried to reach for Luz's hand, but it passed through her astral form.

"I…I need a little more time," Luz said frantically. "But if I keep working my hardest, I will make a working portal, I promise."

"As scary as this is, it really does seem like you've matured," Camila admitted.

"Yes!" Luz shouted. "I've learned so much! Staying here was the best decision I ever made." Oh. Oh, no. She did not just say that. Even Luz knew that this was the absolute worst thing that she could have possibly said to Camila. Camila, who probably was afraid that her own parenting failures had led Luz to run away. Camila, who had sacrificed so much so that Luz could lead a comfortable life.

Camila, who loved her more than anything.

And Luz had done the next best thing to driving a knife through her heart.

"You chose to stay there?" Camila whispered. Luz wanted to say that it wasn't like that! It had never been like that. She wanted, so badly, to not be so goddamn miserable all the time. She wanted to be special, but more than that, she wanted to be happy, not the stopgap happiness that creating her AMVs had given her, but true, lasting, enduring happiness. The happiness that the Isles gave her. That Amity gave her. Were it not for Camila, she never would have returned to Earth at all.

"What, were you trying to live out some sort of witch fantasy?!" Camila demanded scornfully. She never would have said those things under ordinary circumstances, but now, the thoughts that otherwise would have remained safely ensconced in her mind were coming out. She turned to the side, barely even able to look at Luz. "Did you – did you hate living with me that much?"

"Mamá, no!" Luz assured her. How could Luz – any version of Luz – have given her that impression? Had she done anything to give Camila that impression, the impression that she didn't feel anything but total, unconditional love for her? It didn't make any sense.

But, of course, she realized a second later, it didn't have to. Camila didn't know about the bullying. Luz had never, ever told her. Why bother? No adults ever believed her, and the pain of adding her mother to that list was not worth whatever ineffectual help Camila could have given her. Thus, Camila thought that there was no one to blame but herself.

Luz felt a tugging on her belt and she instinctively realized that she was being pulled back to the Isles, and if she allowed herself to return fully, she would never be able to return to her own reality, to the real reality. "No!" she said. "Not yet. Not yet! Mom!"

Camila looked at her impassively until Luz shouted, "I'm being pulled back!" She tried to grab on, ineffectually at Luz's astral form. "Baby, no, no, no, no, no! When you come home, promise me you'll stay here." What?

It was like something out of her worst nightmare. Scratch that, Luz had literally had a nightmare about a very similar result. Actually, her worst nightmare at that time involved her mother having her involuntarily committed to a mental institution. But the nightmare where Camila made her promise to stay on Earth, to give up everything that had made her happy, came in a close second.

"I didn't mean to push you away," Camila went on. "I swear, things will be different."

"Mom, it's not you, it never was!" Luz assured her.

"PROMISE ME, LUZ!" Camila begged, with more pain than she'd ever had in her voice in the entirety of Luz's life. "Please!"

She couldn't stop her lips from moving. She couldn't stop the words that came out. She tried and she tried and she failed and the words, "Okay, mom. I promise," emerged from her lips. And then she was being pulled up and up and she didn't know what to do, because she knew that if she left the in between realm, she'd be in that horrible reality where she was forced to choose and she couldn't! She couldn't because she had to save Amity.

I HAVE TO SAVE AMITY! Luz screamed in her head. I AM LUZ NOCEDA, WARRIOR OF PEACE, AWESOME GIRLFRIEND, OTTER WITH A DARK SIDE, AND I WILL SAVE AMITY OR DIE TRYING!

And then she was back in the bog, as if nothing had happened. Well, sort of. She'd actually traversed a good chunk of it somehow. She looked around her to see that everyone else was also stuck in their hallucinations, but also moving, as if they were being drawn to their destination. Luz could stop moving, but they were all going to the same place, most likely, so she kept moving anyway.

Besides, if she stopped moving then, she might have to start thinking. Not that she could stop herself, as it turned out. That reality was horrid. She must not have stumbled upon the book in the stacks of the library that had allowed her to repair the portal, and thus Camila had realized her daughter was missing when Reality Check Camp ended. It must have severely unbalanced her; there were no other circumstances under which she'd leap to such a conclusion.

The vision may or may not have been real, but either way, it encapsulated a problem with her character that Luz was aware of for some time: She was selfish. She had chosen to stay in the Boiling Isles because she wanted to learn magic. And why? At first she had thought it was because she had a special destiny, but Adegast had disabused her of that notion. And eventually, it was because of her friends and her girlfriend. But between then, she'd stayed because she just wanted power for herself. She wanted to be special, to not just be ground down all the time.

Were it not for the fact that the Reality Check Camp owners tried to cover up her disappearance with fake letters, Camila would have learned the truth and a confrontation like the one she witnessed would have occurred, instead of Luz being able to calmly explain matters at her leisure like had actually happened.

But it was more than that. Luz had never intended to tell Camila before the portal had been destroyed. Never. Because she was too afraid of what she'd do, how she'd react. And if the vision was to be believed…maybe she was right to do so. Luz had intended to just…well, she wasn't sure what she had intended. She hadn't planned at all. That could have become a big problem.

Of course, it wasn't as if things went any better for her when she did plan…

The bog kept on trying to assail her with hallucinations, but Luz was able to handle them better after that one. Maybe it was just because the first one had been so bad. Or maybe it was because the other hallucinations seemed a lot more implausible. There was one where she died after having an argument with Camila and then got sent to the Boiling Isles, which was hell. There was one where she was a witch from the Boiling Isles trapped on Earth and Amity was a human and Luz was a superhero, and honestly, that reality looked pretty cool. There was a reality where everyone she knew was human and the Boiling Isles was a roleplaying game that Vee was GMing.

Luz held onto the thought that she needed to save Amity and it gave her strength to go on. Everyone else seemed to be able to pull themselves out of their own hallucinations well enough each time, although it was clearly costing Mr. Harrington a lot more. He was crying harder and harder each time that he came back to reality. Luz did not want to know what was going on in his head.

Finally, they reached their destination, a cave that Luz promptly named the Tenebrous Cave in her head, because tenebrous was a really cool word. That was an objective fact. "Everyone okay? No one's stuck in a dream world?"

"If this was my dream world, I'd need a lot more therapy than I'm presently getting," Avery joked. "I'm good."

"I'm fine," Amity said curtly. Whatever she had faced had disturbed her greatly. She had probably seen visions of what her life would have been like under her biological parents' "care." That'd disturb anyone. "Well, I'm here, anyway."

Luz nodded and looked over at Mr. Harrington, whose eyes were wide with fear and horror. He appeared lucid, by the skin of his teeth, but he was shaking and probably not going to be of much help to anyone any time soon. "She took them," he whispered. He fell to his knees. Avery grabbed him and leaned him against the cliff wall in which the cave was located.

"She didn't, dad," Avery said firmly. Luz didn't have to use her alleged oracle powers to know who the she in question was. "I'm here. You saved me. You'll always save me."

"I saw a vision where you stayed there, and you divorced her, and you saved them," Luz offered. It wasn't one of the visions she saw; it was real life, but otherwise that was true.

Mr. Harrington nodded slowly. He seemed to be coming back to himself, but very slowly. "I…I can't…I need to rest." He closed his eyes, though he looked alive and otherwise conscious.

Luz made an impulsive decision. Well, most of her decisions were impulsive as of late, but this one was even more so than usual. It was time to put a theory to the test. "Okay, I need to go in alone. There's someone I have to contact there. When I'm done, you can go in, Amity, okay?"

"No way!" Avery said. "Remember what I told you? I'm not letting you do that."

"Do you trust me?" Luz asked quietly.

Avery shook their head. "I'm sorry, Luz. But I can't. Not with this."

Amity groaned. "I thought you two had stopped talking around stuff when you patched up your issues. Luz, who do you want to talk to and why does Avery not want you to talk to them?"

This was exactly the situation that Luz had been afraid would happen when Mr. Harrington announced that Amity would be attending. She looked Amity in the eyes extremely briefly. Amity may not have known Luz like her Amity did, but Amity was autistic no matter who had raised her, and she had presumably figured out that Luz was too. She knew how problematic eye contact could be to people like Luz, and she knew that it must have been serious when Luz utilized it.

"Amity, I don't want to lie to you," Luz said softly. "You mean so much to me. You do. You don't understand how much. You can't. So I'm just going to say that what I'm going to do in that cave is extremely, extraordinarily important to me, just as much as what you're going to do is. And that if you come in and see it, everything's going to be completely and utterly giraffed."

Amity let out a soft gasp at the use of profanity. She was silent for a few moments. "Okay, Luz. I trust you."

"Sorry, but I still don't," Avery said bluntly. "It's nothing personal."

"How is that not personal?" Luz wondered.

"So I'm going in with you," they finished. "Is that okay?" It actually was, now that Luz thought about it. She wasn't planning on doing anything spectacularly reckless. She was going to be taking a slight risk, but it wasn't an especially large one. So Luz nodded and the two of them went into the cave together.

The cave looked…fairly normal, actually. Except for the inky pool of black water in the exact center of a circular chamber. That didn't look normal at all. Luz cast a levitation glyph on herself, one that she'd never discovered in her reality but that the other Luz had put in her glyph binder. She just willed herself upward and she could fly! Avery cast the same glyph, and Luz had to admit that it was cool to see her best friend – even if it wasn't the same person – using such advanced glyph magic.

"Ready?" Luz asked.

"I'd be crazy if I was," Avery said, and then with a crazed grin, added, "so that's a yes."

The two of them jumped into the pool, and then there was a flash and they were floating in a bizarre chamber, all twisted angles and curves, with orbs floating around.

"Before you do anything stupid, tell me what it is you're going to do," Avery asked her.

That sounded reasonable enough to Luz, so she explained it. She would take Näkijä's advice into account and not try to change her past self's future so that this whole debacle never happened. However, she still felt badly that her family was stuck with Other Luz and no knowledge of whether Luz was even alive. Thus, she hoped to change the latter by giving someone a message that she was alive with instructions to deliver it to her family on the date corresponding to the one that Other Luz was in right now. Someone that she knew could be trusted to keep his trap shut and not change the future until the message could be delivered. Someone who could lie so adroitly that he could plausibly have known about it the whole time, even pretending that he didn't know Luz at all when they were first introduced.

She grabbed onto one of the cubes and said the name of that someone, as Mr. Harrington had instructed her: "Stan Pines," focusing her mental energy so that it went to the Stan Pines of her universe instead of the one she was presently residing in.

And the image of Eda's ex-husband appeared on one of the faces of the cube.

In a lot of ways, Stan was the male version of Eda, if Eda ran a tourist trap in a town in Oregon that was a magnet for the paranormal. He was an inveterate swindler who nonetheless cared deeply for his family, which eventually came to include his ex-stepdaughter. He was extraordinarily good at keeping secrets, and she had no doubt that he could keep this one, even for a whole year.

By the looks of it, Luz's image was showing up on Stan's TV screen. He rubbed his eyes as if he thought they were playing tricks on them. "Hi!" Luz said with a wave. "Okay, so kind of a long story. Remember that woman you married in Vegas?"

"You're Eda's apprentice, aren't you?" Stan said.

Luz blinked. She had no clue that Stan even knew that Eda was anything less than human before Eda contacted him so that they could get divorced. She had refused to say why to Luz, but she had a hunch that it had something to do with her relationship with Raine. "Yeah," she admitted.

Stan scratched his head. He looked confused, but not surprised. He wanted to know why and possibly how she was able to contact him thusly, but it still wasn't the massive shock to the system that Luz had been expecting it would be. Which was good news! "I thought you were a human," he said.

"Okay, I have to ask, how do you know about me?" Luz said.

Stan rolled his eyes. "Because Eda keeps calling me about you, that's why! Using your cell phone, I guess – it's got a 425 area code. She keeps on asking me questions about raising human kids, what foods are safe, how much sun they should be getting, whether or not they really need an appendix…"

"That was a huge misunderstanding," Luz lied brazenly.

"Anyway, I thought you were human," Stan said. "But you aren't, so what gives?"

Luz told him what was giving. She explained everything to him, and honestly, it was a huge relief to be able to tell it to someone who wasn't going to judge her and didn't have an emotional connection to her. When she was done, Stan let out a whistle. He looked almost impressed. "That Zoe lady is one hell of a good con artist," he said, sounding as if he was admiring a fellow professional's work. "She's even got you thinking it's your fault!"

Luz blinked several times. "It…kind of is?"

"Well, yeah, but only because you're playing her game the way she wants you to," Stan said. "You've got to think outside the box, Luz. She's set you up to fail. You can't succeed. She won't let you. Because she wants something, and I promise you, it's not whatever you think it is. You need to find your own way to win. So what do you need?"

"I need you to pass along a message to my mami, Camila Noceda, but only on a specific date," Luz explained. "Otherwise, you'll screw up the timeline and I can't risk that. Oh, and when you meet me in person, you need to pretend that you don't know me."

Stan nodded. "Okay. I can do that. No skin off my nose, right?"

"Thanks, Grunkle Stan," Luz said with a smile. "Oh! Sorry, you let me call you that later on. I guess I haven't earned the right to do that yet…"

"Kiddo…with everything you've gone through, you've sure as hell earned that," Stan assured her. "What's the message?"

Ah. Good question. "Tell her that I'm alive and that I'm doing everything I can to get back to her," Luz responded. She told Stan the date he was supposed to pass along the message, then said, "And so she knows it's me tell her…deja una luz puesta para mí." Stan was fluent in Spanish – he had apparently gone to prison in Colombia for something that Luz didn't want to know about – so Luz wasn't worried about him not understanding her. Camila had seen the video that Luz had made after the portal was destroyed, so she'd know the significance of the phrase.

"I'll pass along the message. Good luck, Luz," Stan said, and then Luz severed the connection.

She breathed a sigh of relief as a weight on her shoulders that she'd hardly known was there was lifted off. Her family would know that she was safe now, and she'd be able to return to the cave if necessary later on in order to give them further messages. "See? No destruction of the time space continuum! I'm not totally incompetent at the whole planning things."

"Never said you were," Avery assured her. "You want me to bring Amity in here?" Luz nodded. She would need a few moments to compose herself. Not all that many, but a few.

After she'd gotten that time to compose herself, Avery brought Amity through the portal. Amity looked amazed at the alien scene around her. Which was fair, Luz supposed. Luz was used to such things, but all this was very new to Amity. "This is so freaking cool!" Amity said, and Luz couldn't help but feel a sense of glee at her amazement.

"Did…things work out with whoever you needed to contact?" Amity asked delicately. Luz could tell that she was itching to know who it was, but respected Luz enough to not ask for details. In response to Amity's question, Luz nodded.

"All you need to do is touch the cube and say the name of the person you want to contact," Luz explained to Amity.

Amity nodded, steeled herself, grabbed a cube, and said, "Camila Serrano."

And Camila's image appeared on the screen.

It was the first time Luz had seen her mother since the whole ordeal had begun and it was taking everything she could to not break down into tears at the sight. It's not as if she would have had a real plausible explanation for them. They appeared to be looking out of the mirror of Camila's medicine cabinet. Camila was brushing her teeth in her bathroom and hadn't noticed them. It was a different bathroom from the house that Luz lived in, which made sense, given that there weren't enough bedrooms for four people in Luz's house.

"Hi, mom," Amity said softly, and Camila turned around. When she saw the door closed, she turned around, confused, and then shrieked when she saw Luz and Amity's image in the medicine cabinet reflection.

"¿Qué demonios está pasando?" Camila muttered. Her eyes lit up in sudden enthusiasm. "No, wait! I know what's happening! Finally, after all this time…"

"Yes, mami," Amity said, her voice cracking with emotion. "I'm here."

"…I've finally found out how to lucid dream!" Camila finished.

Amity did a doubletake. "What?"

"Well, what other explanations for this could possibly exist?" Camila asked. "I mean, people don't just appear in mirrors in real life."

"Not in the world we're from," Amity agreed. "But I'm not there anymore. Mom, I'm in an alternate dimension. It's the world I was born in. I'm trapped here, but I'm doing everything I can to get back home. I love you, and I never meant to leave you. It was an accident. This is my friend Luz!" Luz waved at Camila, not trusting herself to speak.

Camila blinked a couple of times. "Okay, I'm not liking this dream," she said. "I really don't know what it says about me that I'd dream something like this. I guess that's something I'll talk to my therapist about."

"Mami, you're not dreaming," Amity said urgently. "It's really me, your daughter."

Camila laughed. "That's preposterous. Amity is in her room right now, not in some fantasy realm." Wait, what? That didn't make any sense at all. Camila pinched her arm, hard. "Why won't I wake up? This doesn't make any sense." She rubbed her eyes. "Maybe it's some sort of holographic projection one of the twins set up as a prank? Amity! Could you come in here, mija?"

Luz obviously didn't expect anything to happen. Amity was right next to her, and Camila had clearly lost her mind at her daughter's disappearance. It was horrifying to see. So it was therefore something of a surprise when the door opened and an exact copy of Amity walked into the room.

"You need something, mom?" the imposter – Posterity, a silly part of Luz's brain supplied – said in a perky tone.

"Do…do you see anyone else in that mirror?" Camila asked her.

Posterity could clearly see them. It was blatantly obvious to Luz. But she said, "I'm sorry, mami. I just see the two of us. Did…you see someone else?"

"I…no, no, of course not," Camila said slowly. "I think I need to lie down…" She walked out of the room, and the connection started fading.

Posterity strode up to the mirror, snarled at Amity and Luz, and then said, "Don't come back! Don't you dare come back! I won't let you take what's mine!" The connection faded.

There was silence in the room, and then Avery asked the question on everyone's mind: "What the hell just happened?"