Work Text:
“I’m not a witch...”
Luz pulled out her notepad and drew a circle, then a pattern within the circle. She tapped the center of it, allowing light to fill the glyph.
Amity raised an eyebrow, then both when she saw the spell.
Luz held up a small mote of light, sighed softly, and smiled. Amity was taken off guard by the human using magic. Something thought impossible, proved impossible mere moments ago.
“But I’m... I’m... I’m five foot four and I forgot the line. Sorry!”
“Cut!”
The entire set buzzed with activity. The director was going over the last shot with the camera crew while extras milled about in the background. An assistant came over with a script in hand and knelt down beside Maria de la Cruz, the actor portraying Luz Noceda in the Disney Channel Original Series The Owl House .
Across from Maria sat Hailey Neuville, Amity’s actor. She sat back, absentmindedly scratched the back of her ear, just below where the prosthetic ear tip was attached. It had been a long day of filming.
Hailey was amazed that Maria could read a script so many times and still forget the most important lines. But, then, not everyone had as tight a memory as Hailey; she was known to recite an entire scene from memory with only a glance at her lines.
But, hey, she was the rookie and Maria was the prodigy, so maybe all those famous scripts filled up her head.
Would something like that happen to Hailey someday?
Hailey’s mind drifted off while a prop handler reset the small mechanism that lifted a little blue ball up after Maria pressed the button hidden underneath the notepad.
“Alright, I think I’ve got it this time,” Maria said. She attempted to reassure the production assistant with a smile and a wave. “I’ve got this! Do you got this, ‘Amity’?”
Hailey blinked herself back into reality, looking over at Maria with a neutral expression. She smiled and shrugged. Maria silently responded with a thin smile, then a roll of her eyes when she thought Hailey wasn’t looking.
“Alright, everyone, we’re almost done for today,” the director called out from her chair. “Scene ten, take five... positions!”
Hailey was already up and headed over to her mark.
“Action!”
“–and how are you getting along with your costars?” the interviewer asked.
“Everyone is pretty good, all things considered,” Maria answered, her chin in her hand.
“Do any of them compare to you, though?”
Maria looked to her left, then her right. She smiled a sly smile and raised her hands as if to say ‘I can’t say that, but, you know.’ She rested her chin on her hand, her eyes dancing about like she was pretending to think while her head tipped side to side like a metronome. Finally, she gave a genuine smile and a laugh.
The studio audience laughed at her amusing antics, as did the interviewer.
“Maria de la Cruz, up-and-coming star of the brand new series The Owl House , airing...”
Hailey rubbed her hands together, trying to keep warm. Whoever decided to do a location shoot on top of a snowy mountain for episode twelve was a sadist, she had decided.
She had never met that person, but she was sure of it.
Absolute sadist.
Mountains, she was familiar with, but snow was a new concept for a southern California girl. She had decided she didn’t like it.
She was currently at the ‘base camp’, a group of cabins up the mountain where everyone was staying during the multi-day shoot. She had the benefit of unlimited hot chocolate, at least.
“Hey, Mittens! Catch!”
Hailey ducked, her hot chocolate briefly hanging in the air before falling back into the styrofoam cup in her hands, as a snowball passed over her head. She took a sip as the snowball hit someone sneaking up on her from behind in the face. Hailey smoothly rose while the victim of the snowball landed on her butt in the snow.
“Ow! What the heck, dude! You were supposed to aim for her legs!” Christian Weiss said with his green wig off-kilter from his fall.
“What are the odds I’d actually hit them?” Carmen Weiss said with a shrug.
“Zero,” Haily said, putting one hand on her hip as she looked between the twins. “Are you two having fun?”
“Yes.”
“Absolutely.”
Hailey let out a sigh. “I’m sure wardrobe enjoys you returning everything with so much damage.”
“Of course! We’re their favorite disaster zone,” Christian said.
Carmen walked over and helped her brother up. “At this point I think it’s a competition between us to find out whose costume is most damaged at the end of the day.”
“By the way,” Carmen said offhandedly as she dusted off Christian, “they’re shooting a scene with everyone in a bit, so you should probably head over to wardrobe.”
“Alright,” Hailey said. She stood still for a second to let another sip from her hot chocolate warm her up. “Let’s–”
“SHIT!”
Maria’s single shouted expletive echoed down from the shooting location up the mountain, followed by the sound of something splintering into pieces upon impact with the ground.
“Hm, I don’t think that’s good,” Christian ventured.
“No, no it doesn’t,” Hailey agreed.
“–and so, due to Maria’s injury, we’ll be changing the shooting schedule. I know we’ve had the schedule locked for a while, but something was bound to happen at some point, so we’ll have the new schedule posted by morning.”
“Director, what about the non-Luz scenes?”
“Those will take priority, followed by scenes that we can shoot with Luz sitting down or otherwise from the waist up. Let’s get to it, everybody!”
Maria laid in bed, moaning in pain. A familiar favorite anime of hers played on the TV across from her bed; she never went anywhere without the discs on hand, plus a compact player that she could take anywhere.
There was a knock at the door.
“Come in...” Maria said, raising her voice so that the person on the other side could hear her.
Hailey rounded the corner, a gift basket in her hands.
“Ugh, not you,” Maria groaned. “Come to laugh at me again?”
Hailey’s brow furrowed as she placed the gift basket on an open table. She took a deep breath, letting the implicit insult fade off.
“Actually, I never laughed at you. That was the twins.”
“Sure, and the moon’s made of cheese.”
“Wait, is it?” Hailey had to stop and think for a second. Was that actually possible? It sounded unlikely–
“No!” Maria scoffed. “God, how absentminded are you?”
“Well, I’m not the one who insisted on doing her own stunt,” Hailey said as she sat in the chair next to Maria’s bed.
“I could have done that.”
“And yet.”
“I could have! I’ve done the same thing a million times!” Maria snapped at Hailey, but quickly shrank back when she saw the look of surprise on Hailey’s face. “I could have... Why are you here, anyways?”
“Oh, well, everyone else, including Christian and Carmen, wanted to send well wishes during your recovery. So, after a lengthy debate, we all got something for a gift basket, and signed a card.” Hailey began to unwrap the gift basket, taking stock of everything. “Let’s see... Rhys donated a book of poetry, the twins sent a high-end moisturizer... at least I think it’s high-end. Uh, what else do we have...”
Hailey passed one item after another to Maria, from a bag of cheap candy from Wendie–Eda’s actor–to a strange contraption that even Hailey couldn’t make heads or tails of given by Alex–King’s voice actor. There was more, the whole cast had pitched in, but Hailey had to pause as she heard a sniffle from the bed.
Tears ran down Maria’s cheeks. Her eyes were shut tight, as if to stem the tide, but the flow was ceaseless. Every now and then, a cough would wrack her, like she was trying to dislodge a massive lump in her throat.
Hailey... wasn’t sure how to deal with this. Maybe Ryan’s twelve-piece set of candles? Wait, why that many candles? They aren’t small, so–
Focus, Hailey!
“Uh... are you... uh... I...”
Maria shot up, as if she just realized Hailey was standing there. She quickly rubbed her eyes clear and took a deep breath, pausing the tears. She looked up at Hailey, but couldn’t hide what had been seen, nor the tiny wet spots on her blanket from where the tears fell.
“Do you have any idea how old I was when I got my first role?”
“I...”
“Four. I was only four years old. One after another I got roles after that. I was called a natural talent, a once in a generation prodigy.” Maria rubbed her forehead and sighed. “But then I started to grow up and suddenly I wasn’t as perfect as everyone expected me to be.
“A flubbed line here, a mistimed action there, and I started to feel the disappointment of every adult who watched me build. So I redoubled my efforts, but it wasn’t enough!”
Maria slammed her fists into the bed, sending the gifts into the air and onto the floor. Hailey was taken aback by the sudden activity. Maria winced and clutched her shoulder. Hailey took notice and stepped out while Maria continued, lost in her memories.
“The longer I go, the more I can see my own flaws, everyone’s flaws! I have to be perfect! Anything less and I’ll lose everything!” Maria’s face was once again stained by tears that she tried in vain to sniffle away. She snapped to face Hailey. “What am I supposed to do?!”
Her face fell as she looked at empty air.
Her gaze snapped to the entrance as she heard the door open, then close. Hailey rounded the corner once more, this time with something wrapped in a towel in her hands.
“Why did you... why did you leave?!” Maria snapped. Her face blanched. “Who did you tell? I never should have let you in here!”
“Relax,” Hailey said with a gentle smile on her face. She sat back down beside Maria, who appeared distraught. “I just went to get this.”
Maria looked down at the object in Hailey’s hands. It looked rather cold.
“An ice pack?”
“Yep. Now, I can’t solve your problems, but, maybe it’s alright to mess up? Like a couple weeks ago, during the Covention shoot. You forgot your line, but it was fine. You laughed it off.”
“I was mortified by that! I skipped dinner as punishment! And you were so flippant about it at the time!”
“Yeah, because it doesn’t matter.”
Maria looked at Hailey like she had just grown two additional heads and breathed lightning. “Of... of course it matters! This is our job! We have to do it to the best of our ability at all times!”
“That’s the thing, perfectionism is the eternal enemy of completionism. In demanding a perfect performance from yourself and only yourself, you put yourself off-balance from the rest of the cast. You’ve got to trust your co-stars, like they are trusting you.”
Maria pulled her legs into her chest and wrapped her arms around them. Hailey sighed and settled into the chair.
After a minute of silence, Maria asked, “So, what, I should purposely mess up?”
“Do what you think is best. But for right now, I think you should start by putting this ice pack on your shoulder.”
Hailey held out the ice pack.
Maria looked at it, then gingerly took it and pressed it on her shoulder. Instantly, her shoulder felt better and her demeanor melted.
Maria and Hailey continued to talk, no longer actor to actor, but person to person, long into the afternoon. Before long, they each felt that they had found a new understanding–maybe even a friend.
Or perhaps, one day, something more.