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The phrase "a million things left unsaid" hadn't made much sense to Emira.

Like, of course there were always going to be things she forgot to tell someone, secrets that she'll probably take to her grave, but that's just sort of how life went, right? 

And anyways, she never really had a million things to say normally, if someone took a wordcount of all the things she said in her life that weren't like, answers to questions in school or 'yes, mom's the number would probably only be in the mid 600-thousands, to be honest. Remove all duplicate phrases and you were probably only scratching the surface of 200k. 

But the day she sees Boscha slowly limping back into the school, tears streaming down her cheeks and onto the floor, taken taken taken taken taken, is the day that it finally registers in her brain that her siblings may never see her again.

She cries for so long, curled up in the basement of the school, that it's a surprise when anyone finds her.

It's another witch, dark brown hair that almost looks purple, and their uniform is pale blue and red, illusion and bard track. (Em's pretty sure that a lot of people started seconding the bard track just so that they could learn to play normal instruments, but she doesn't want to risk doubling in bard getting banned just because of that abuse of not taking extracurriculars.) She's pretty sure that the witch's name is... Vivi? Viv? She thinks she heard Viv somewhere, but that's a little too short to not be a nickname, so Vivi for now.

Vivi joins her on the cold floor, not even commenting on Em's tears against her perfect appearance, just sitting there as a warm and stable presence.

When Emira finally get's control over the waterworks, she tries to walk away, but Vivi stops her. Her golden eyes lock onto a pale brown, and something draws her back into staying. 

"Why are you even here?" She asks Vivi, retaking her spot on the floor. 

"Sounded like you needed a friend," Vivi hums. "I guess I did too."

"You don't even know me!" Emira explodes, because honestly it makes no sense why this person would care about her.

Vivi, for her part, stays mostly unbothered about the whole thing. "Well, I know of you. I know that your mother owns Blight Industries. And I know, from Boscha, that your sister left you in the dirt."

Emira stops, loudly. "Amity would never!" She screams, fresh tears burning her cheeks because Mittens wouldn't, she wouldn't.

Again, Vivi only hums. She's beginning to get on every single one of Emira's nerves. "Figures. If you don't think that, though, why do you believe it?"

Em stops.

"Your siblings would never leave you, right? So stop sitting around sobbing or they might miss you when the time finally comes."

It sounds like the witch speaks from experience, and it's making it hard for Emira to be upset. 

She gets a penstagram from someone she doesn't know last night. There's nothing identifying about the account, the name is an Azura reference which makes her stomach squeeze, and the profile image is just a picture of a blue-tipped flower which petals turned blood-red at the bottom.

All it says is "You're welcome."

She wakes up to the news that her brother's in the healing wing of the facility.

Emira doesn't think she's ever run so fast in her entire life.

She's a healer, too. Even if she hasn't been on the track for as long as some of the other's in this building, she practised it in secret for long enough for her to have a fairly good grip on what she needs to be doing.

Then again, when she steps in a room and sees what's essentially a black and blue, breathing corpse, it's hard for her to do anything but sit and watch as the other students at her grade level work their hardest to make sure her brother makes it to the next moonrise.

When they ask Ed how he knew to come to Hexide, without any proof there was still an active rebellion, his response is "The wind told me where to go."

It's cheesy as all hell, about the opposite of the Blight children, except maybe Mittens with her girlfriend. 

But Edric is insistent that it was the song of the wind, and Emira knows enough about the various ways magic presents itself to keep her mouth shut. 

It's all she can stand to do, really.

It's two weeks post-Day of Unity when she finally finds Vivi again.

Vivi's completely alone, hiding out in the untouched secret halls of the once-detention students. Not a lot of people know about them, making for a great hideaway from Boscha, but Vivi felt like too much of an enigma to know about a place like this, but at the same time an enigma would be right at home, here.

"You ever wonder about that human?" Vivi hums, drawing something on a notepad. "She managed to be at least top half of every single class she took, except like, bard and potions I'm pretty sure. How did she manage that without magic?"

Emira's not really sure if Amity would allow her to spill about the glyphs, her girlfriend, or really anything about Luz to be honest. The whole human thing, it turned out in the end, is a lot more important now that the human is gone.

"Dedication," Emira responds after a while, and she decides to leave it at that.

When she's in Ed's recover room, he's as annoying as ever, but she can't bear to be away for more than a couple of hours at a time unless she was sleeping, not including the times she fell asleep at his bedside.

Ed can't really use his scroll, so he occupies his time by humming out vague melodies of songs he knows, memorising them until he can recite the whole thing from start to finish by memory.

He smiles through every note, of course. 

Sometimes he'll surprise her with one of dad's favourites from before Amity was born, something jazzy and cheesy with a joke written into every verse just for the sake of it.

It makes her smile, even if she feels guilty about it afterwords.

She decides, one day, maybe a month and a half since everything went to shit, to dig through Luz's locker.

Em had gone through Amity's a long time ago, taking every selfie and treasuring it, scanning it three-times over onto both she and Ed's scrolls to make sure they were forever immortalised, but after looking at them for so long the meaning of it is beginning to fade.

When Amity had been younger, she'd been becoming a picture perfect copy of mom Odalia. Willow Park had been the first to fend that off before she'd been brutally cast aside, and from then on her dear Mitten's sweet and dorky side had been overshadowed by some easily aggravated Boscha-the-second. 

Luz had seen that mask, taken one look, and ripped it apart without much fanfare. Actually, a lot of fanfare, loud and sparkly and hiding the fact that while she was changing the inner-workings of the isles she was also slowly but surely moulding Amity back into who she once was, who it turned out she still was somewhat.

Luz Noceda, girlfriend to Amity, probably knew Mittens just as well as Ed and Em themselves, it'd been so long since Amity had allowed herself to be her true self.

So yeah, maybe Em just wants one picture of real Amity. The one whose favourite colour wasn't green, but lilac. The one that wore high heels even though she couldn't stop herself from tripping over and over and over again. The one who laughed so long she began to snort before turning a shade of red so bright it was a wonder her head didn't explode.

But the photos are all gone, the locker is damn-near empty.

I'll apologise later, Emira thinks as she pounds on the artificial demon mercilessly. 

When the siblings finally reunite, Mittens is as bright as the sun.

Emira is too happy for the bad thoughts to come, not until her little sister is whisked away by Boscha.

She sinks to the floor, overtaken by thoughts of where have you been why did you leave us why did you dissapear why― and it's hard to make them stop.

There's an inexplicable wind, making her shiver, but the wind carries a song, one that lulls her back to herself.

There had to have been a reason. She spends most of her free time with a human on the boiling isles, something was bound to happen to her at some point. It just was bad timing, is all.

They don't get the chance to talk until everything's over.

It's the actual Owl Lady's voice that comes over the Emperor's speaking line, declaring that the collector had been taken down and that all of the 'Collected' were freed, and instructing everyone to return to their homes. 

There's a cough, a pause, and then, "Oh! And to, uh, many parents! There are a collection of injured students hiding at the Hexide School of Magic and Demonics in recovery, so you may wanna check first. Our priority is making sure that everyone is safe and accounted for."

A beep, then silence.

Em pulls out her scroll, her father's already sent her piles upon piles of messages, the first of which all various swears and angered rants about Odalia. it seems to imply that yet again, she sided with the bad guy to save her own skin.

It didn't work out well for her, it seems.

Em: Me and Ed are part of the group hiding out at Hexide, Ed's injured. 

Em: Word has it that Amity was on the team with the human that went up to storm the Collector's hub, you know anything about her whereabouts?

The first message get's a read, the second one is only delivered. Figures, Dad was never the best organised, he probably read 'at Hexide' and bolted before he processed the fact that Amity wasn't there.

Amity wasn't here.

"Mittens, where were you?" Emira asks, tears streaming down her cheeks.

Ed had to be put back under a bit ago, he was infuriating his injuries too much earlier in the chaos. He deserves to be awake for this but Emira's not in the mood to risk her brother's safety, she's on the healing track after all.

Amity's current dress has a weird quality to it. It feels almost like it was woven with spider silk, but three's an almost static-y quality to it, and spider's silk is always a little sticky when you first get it.

"The- the-"

"Take your time, Amity," their father says softly. "As much time as you need."

Amity gasps, and slowly retreats from her sister's arms. 

Luz is somewhere off with the Owl Lady, but the way her hand twitches seems to imply she really needs a reassuring squeeze.

"The. I was in. Titan, dammit! I was in the human realm."

Everything seems to stop.

"What?" Their father gasps, drawing back a bit.

Amity gulps before she pushes forward. "There... there was a big fight on the Day of Unity. A whole underground rebellion with three of the coven heads and everything. Wait, sorry, right, you all knew about that. Anyways, it went wrong. Dad, after we left you at the draining spell, we went to confront Belos, he was hurting Luz, it was... god, it was terrible. And- and, we did it, we unleashed the collector, he said he would help! And then- and then that monster turned on us and we had no other choise but to flee back into the human realm and regroup. Or, maybe we did, but it was what we went with."

"And then you got stuck," Dad finishes for her. "You couldn't come back without the help of magic which didn't exist there."

"How'd you guess?" Amity chokes. 

"Because I know you wouldn't have let the human realm stop you otherwise."

Amity chokes on a sob and leans into her father's shoulder.

And Emira feels like she should be mad at her sister for all of that. That'd she'd vanished when the world had been terrible and left the rest of them to rot.

But all that she can think of is how glad she is that Amity had been out of the crossfire.