It Started With a Spinny

Saying Goodbye

She closes her eyes. "Amity, I know I don't deserve it, that I have no right to even ask, but: can you trust me?"

"Of course!"

She can hear Amity about to break, squeezes her shaking hands. "Amity, I need to talk to you."

"Thank Titan-"

"But not now."

"... what?"

"If you can give me," she looks down, lets go with one hand to pick up Amity's phone, checking the time, seeing Luz will be getting home from school any minute now! She has to hurry! "Give me one hour, then come back, and we'll talk."

What little colour there is drains from Amity's face. "Talk about what?"

She squeezes Amity's hand again, "We'll talk about what you told me, here on the sofa, about being allowed to be myself. You'll tell me all that again."

"I, I will?"

She nods, "And you'll tell me," she takes a deep breath, "you'll tell me that you know there's something I'm not telling you, about what happened to me, about a mistake I made in the Boiling Isles. A mistake I want to tell you, need to tell you, but I'm too afraid to tell you because then you won't love me any more."

Amity gasps: "Luz!"

"And I know that's wrong, I know-" she stares into Amity's golden eyes, so scared. She drops Amity's phone, holds her cheek. Amity grabs her hand, holds it against herself as she emphatically pushes into it.

Her breath shakes as she smiles: "I know that you love me."

Amity blushes just a little, looking down with a weak smile fighting her trembling breathe: "but I haven't said it yet."

She nods, "And I still know, because I see it in your eyes when you look at me." She strokes Amity's cheek, "And because I feel the same way."

Amity is still smiling as the first tears fall.

"And we'll talk, and I'll tell you what I should have told you long ago, and everything will be okay! Really really okay! And then," she wipes away Amity's tears, cupping her warm cheek and smiling with her as she promises: "then we'll both say it for the first time. And it'll be so perfect, just the way it should be, the way you deserve it to be!"

Amity nods, "Okay."

"Okay."

"So you're not breaking up with me?"

Her hearts stop: "Amity no never I'd, why would you-"

"I'm sorry I just thought with you wanting to talk later and not wanting me any more and-"

She pulls Amity as close as she can, hugging her so tightly, holding her head against her own, holding her against her own guilty hearts and wrapping her up in the tightest embrace! "Amity, Amity I'm so so sorry for making you think that! I lo- I care about you so much!"

Amity's already small voice is muffled: "I care about you too!"

"And I want you to be okay, I want you both - I want us to be okay!"

"I want that too! I love you!"

"A-Amity-"

"I know I should't say it now, but I was so scared, I was so scared I'd lost you, and I don't want to lose you because I love you!"

She sniffs, "Amity-"

"And we can still say it later like you wanted and it'll be the first time - but I just wanted you to know that I love you so much!"

She squeezes Amity tighter, letting herself believe just once, just this once, that Amity's is saying it to her. "I love you too Amity." She sniffs, feeling that pressure again as she holds Amity close, hugging her for the last time.

She takes a deep breath, making her voice level, reassuring, safe, saying as if it's nothing at all: "But you need to let me go now."

"Just for an hour?"

She breathes out shakily, clenching her fists to hide the claws, closing her eyes to hide their colour, keeping her voice carefully level as she nods. "Just for an hour. Then, then you'll come back and Luz will be here ready to talk. And everything will be okay. Everything will be as it should be. Okay?"

"O, okay."

"Okay."

"Okay."

She takes a last, shaking breath. "Goodbye Amity. Thank y-"

Amity kisses her - and immediately pulls back gasping: "I'm so sorry I shouldn't-" And she kisses Amity back all at once, everything breaking, just kissing Amity for the first and last time and Amity gripping her as she grips back and cries into Amity's mouth and pushes her away all at once!

"I'M SO SORRY!"

"Luz why," she stops. Only her arm moves as she brushes Luz's fringe, parting the deep burgundy from the teal-blue. "Luz?"

Vee opens her cyan and gold eyes.

The look in Amity's eyes is straight out of her worst nightmares: her golden eyes wide with disbelief, a moment away from becoming pure horror!

Vee closes her eyes and darts over the side of the sofa, slithering straight for the front door, throwing it open and bouncing off Luz!

Luz drops her phone: "Bah! Vee! Are you-" Luz stops, staring in disbelief. "Ami...?"

She stares down at her pale scaled hands, catching her tears. No no no!

She hears movement, turns to see Amity staring, one arm extended. She recoils with her arms over her face, one pale, one brown, cries at them, pulls at her pink and burgundy and teal hair, hazel and gold and cyan-gold eyes darting back and forth. "I, I..."

Luz touches her shoulder, "Vee?"

She spins around tripping as she recoils away from Luz, from Amity - from the two prison guards standing over her with their jet grey tunics and steal beak masks. They stare down at her through their masks' eye holes, their gold and hazel eyes wide in the dark, until their electrowands crackle to life!

"Vee!" One says as they reach for her.

"NO NO NO!" Vee slithers back across the frigid cell floor, chain bars on the front and back, no corner to hide in so she's curled into a ball as her body convulses in the impact of electrowands over and over and over-

"VEE! VEE!" the word sounds so distant, the hands shaking her feeling so far away, fading as she finally passes out from the pain.