Chapter Text
Marcy was only thirteen and prone to fantasy, two things that usually kept people from giving her thoughts too much weight - but she'd always had the impression Sasha didn’t like her very much.
It wasn’t anything specific that she did - Marcy saw how Sasha interacted with other people, and she was always so open with her annoyance, one could hardly misread it for anything else. But she also saw how she interacted with Anne, who Sasha clearly liked, and it was different from how she acted around Marcy.
For one, Marcy and Sasha never spent time with each other if they could help it. Sasha never called Marcy when she was bored to ask if she wanted to go get ice cream, nor did Marcy ever think to reach out to her other friend when Anne was too busy to hang out. But Marcy treasured her solitude, and only broke it when someone else gave her reason to; Sasha, who was always the one taking initiative in their group, had every chance to make that happen, and she never did.
She and Anne, however, hung out on their own all the time, as Marcy’s presence or lack thereof didn’t seem to make much of a difference to them. Marcy rarely managed to get a hold of Anne alone these days - she’d call Anne up, and Anne would say Meet us at the new pizza place that just opened, or We’re at the mall, Sasha needed new shoes; she’d try to talk to her after class, and there Sasha would already be, hanging off Anne’s arm and talking her ear off about some school gossip Marcy wasn’t involved in.
One time she caught Sasha staring at Anne when she wasn’t looking - Anne staring down at her phone, typing out a quick message to her parents; Sasha leaning forward on the wooden table, as if straining towards her, studying her gestures while absentmindedly chewing her straw.
Marcy was overtaken by something, then; it felt like the strike of a match, quickly lit and just as quickly going out. This was where Marcy’s most stupid lapses in judgment usually came from, and this time, they pushed her to get up on the table between them, in a desperate attempt to redirect the attention of both onto her, only for her to get too excited, slip, and bring the whole thing down, along with their drinks.
Marcy would’ve fallen and broken her neck, had her body not instinctively angled towards Anne during the tipping over, expecting her to catch her as she always did. Sasha, on the other hand, ran in the opposite direction.
“What the heck, dude?” Anne scolded her, but she still scooped Marcy up in her arms before getting her back on her feet - Marcy yelped in pain when she touched the ground. “Why would you do that?”
If there was any reason Marcy ever did anything, she didn’t know it. Sometimes her body just went on autopilot, and she obeyed it. There was something it needed, presumably, that it knew she could get no other way.
When Anne wrapped an arm around her to carry her, sparing her from leaning on her injured foot, Marcy thought she knew what it was. She almost leaned into the touch.
Sasha chose that moment to pop up again in front of her, and Marcy wanted to scream. She already monopolized so much of Anne’s time, and Anne had been her best friend first - but these days, Anne only paid attention to her when she was hurt. What else could Marcy do, but take advantage of that?
But then Sasha shoved Anne out of the way and took Marcy from her, taking care to support all her weight.
“Jerk,” she muttered, her words at odds with the hands softly brushing Marcy’s hair. “Stop tripping over your feet.”
One thing was for sure - she’d never been close enough to Sasha that she could smell her perfume. It was sweet and fruity, and a lot like bubblegum, and she was so warm, too. Marcy could’ve fallen asleep right there. “Uh-huh.”
Anne scoffed, laying a hand on Marcy’s shoulder. “Yeah, fat chance of that.”
“Shut up,” Marcy murmured, burying her head deeper into Sasha’s neck. She tried swinging from side to side, like a baby koala off a tree branch - she’d so missed her friends’ touch, so much it was making her giddy - but failed because she had something baby koalas didn’t, which was a probably sprained ankle.
Sasha, still caught up in protective friend mode, lifted her up without breaking a sweat and carried her on her back the whole way home.
There was a second instance where Marcy could be sure to get her friends’ whole, undivided attention - and that was when Anne and Sasha, at least once a week, found themselves at each other’s throats.
It was always over something small - some injustice Anne perceived on Sasha’s part, some note of rebelliousness in Anne’s demeanor that Sasha refused to accept. This time, it was Anne not letting Sasha cheat off of her in a test when Marcy had been ordered to sit as far away from them as possible, leaving the other two to fend for themselves.
“You weren’t letting me think,” Anne insisted, tailing a furious Sasha out of school. “And time was running out.”
“You didn’t need to think. You just needed to tilt your page a bit to the left so I could see it.”
“So you could’ve gotten us both in trouble, you mean.”
Sasha scoffed as she sped up, putting more distance between her and Anne (and Marcy, who was struggling to keep up, her least favorite subject being PE for a reason). “For someone who gets you out of trouble on the daily, you could have a little faith in me.”
Most of the time, Sasha just wanted to be chased and be apologized to. Maybe she’d want that tomorrow; but she clearly wanted to get away now, and if they didn’t let her, she would’ve blown up on them. Things always got ugly when Sasha was mad.
If Marcy had been a worse person, she probably would’ve seen this for the opportunity that it was and let Anne dig her own grave. Maybe it would’ve been for the best - not just for her, but for all of them. Instead, she grabbed Anne’s shirt and pulled her back.
She still didn’t know why her gut churned at the idea of Sasha and Anne together, but she also didn’t know how to feel about the idea of them apart. Sasha had become such a huge presence in their lives, and Marcy had grown so used to having her around Anne that hanging out with her didn’t feel real unless Sasha was also involved. At some point, the two of them had gotten mixed up in her head - she couldn’t think about losing one of them without also losing the other.
This was nothing to ruin their friendship over, and she told Anne so.
“Why am I always the one who needs to take a step back?” Anne complained. “Why don’t you ever tell Sasha that?”
Marcy sighed, because Anne wouldn’t understand even if she tried explaining it to her. She worked off emotions, and was therefore easier to appeal to; Sasha, on the other hand, was immovable in her decisions, so trying to reason with her would’ve been fruitless. Marcy didn’t care who was in the right or in the wrong - she just cared about getting the best possible results.
Sasha agreed with her method, too. She got to find out when, for the first time ever, Marcy showed up at her house alone, a few days later, with one question:
“Why did you treat Anne like that?”
She’d always been so scared of Sasha’s judgment, or Sasha’s wrath, which were the same thing. She didn’t want her to think she was questioning her - she was really just curious, and maybe wanted her own thoughts to be validated.
Thankfully, Sasha just rolled her eyes. They were red-ringed and puffy, like she’d just finished crying, but with no tear tracks to show for it. She made hot chocolate for Marcy, and they drank it together, on her couch in the middle of a huge, empty living room. Sasha’s house was almost always empty.
“You know I’d do anything for you two, right?” Sasha spoke up, suddenly, whispering into her cup. “I think I show that every day.”
“Of course.”
“So I don’t think expecting something back is asking for too much.”
“No, of course not.” Just last week, when Anne and Sasha had gone to the mall, they’d scoured every shop for a pair of shoes Sasha actually liked, until, at the end of the day, Sasha had just looked down and asked Anne for hers. But Marcy refrained from reminding her of that.
“See, you get that, ‘cause it’s just logical. I could ask you to let me copy your homework and you’d do it without a complaint.”
Again, Marcy wasn’t sure that was true, but Sasha was clearly leading the conversation in a definite direction, and it would’ve been rude to ruin her plans. Plus, it felt nice to be spoken about like that, like You’d do everything I asked you to was the finest compliment Sasha could ever give her. By the end of that sentence, with that expectation created and lingering in the air between them, Marcy was no longer sure she wouldn’t.
“But Anne needs to be told these things in a way she understands. So I let her know that she’s hurt me.”
“That must be hard for you.” Sasha frowned in genuine confusion, and Marcy realized what she’d said probably could use some elaboration. “You know! ‘Cause you’re always so-”
She made a face which she hoped resembled the idea of cool, collected girl Marcy had in her head. It made Sasha laugh, if nothing else. Marcy had no idea how deep Sasha’s hurt truly ran, but she had a sneaking suspicion it went further than Sasha would ever feel comfortable admitting, to her or to Anne.
“It is a bit, yeah. Sometimes -” Sasha paused, considering her next words or maybe her next move, because she ended up taking Marcy’s hand. The touch was tentative, gentle in a way she’d never associated with Sasha; it was as new as Marcy’s own sweaty palms, as the flutter in her chest. “Sometimes I wish she was more like us.”
This too, Marcy guessed, was supposed to feel like the highest compliment. She wasn’t sure it succeeded, and it must have shown on her face, because a flicker of surprise crossed Sasha as Marcy voiced: “But then she wouldn’t be Anne.”
Sasha soon looked down and away again, eyes caught on the rubbing motion of her thumb on Marcy’s - but there was a certain upturn of her mouth, a softness in her smile, that told Marcy an understanding of some sort was starting to form between them. “No,” Sasha agreed. “No, she wouldn’t.”
So maybe Marcy had a crush on Anne. That realization, having come seven years in the making, didn’t hit her as hard as it should have, due to the fact that Anne was her best friend, and would never hurt her, and that the years she’d spent pining were proof she could keep her feelings at bay for at least seven more, anyway.
The issue wasn’t even that she also had a crush on Sasha. If the YA novels she read were any indication, love triangles were a fact of life - and though they didn’t usually involve a girl being torn between two other girls, books were becoming more and more diverse by the day.
No, the real issue was prom was only a week away, and she held two envelopes in her hands.
She didn’t think it was fair that her love choice came with a deadline. She would never have the time to go through the character arc she needed to understand what she wanted from life, and who could give it to her, and get to the mythical Oh. moment where love would reveal itself at just the right time, in just the right place.
Besides, for all that her heroines lamented wanting both of their love interests equally, Marcy was always able to guess which one she’d pick in the end - either because the narrative had a special regard for them or because they happened to come up more often in the main character’s musings. But Anne and Sasha were always paired up in Marcy’s head as they were outside of it.
Sometimes she’d be lost in her own world, thinking about Anne’s smile, and there Sasha would be, demanding Anne's attention and thus succeeding in redirecting Marcy’s, as well; and sometimes she’d be looking at Sasha and picturing what it would feel like to kiss her, and then Anne would make a joke, and they’d all be laughing, and the warmth in her chest would sneak through the spaces between her ribs to fill the rest of her body, right to her fingertips.
That didn’t mean her individual relationships with them were interchangeable, or even similar; but they fulfilled the exact same purpose in her life and occupied the same space in her thoughts, which made it nearly impossible for her to pick just one of them, and try to cut out the other.
She considered the blue envelope and its contents, then the red one. Finally, she put both aside and started writing on a new, single piece of paper, trading personalized declarations of love for efficiency. A simple “PROM?” did the job just fine, requiring none of the emotional vulnerability but preserving all plausible deniability - after all, friends with no romantic feelings for one another asked each other to prom all the time. And since she’d decided right then and there that, for that very reason, they couldn’t turn her down - since just the thought of them rejecting her in any way, or possibly all ways, made her feel sick - she purposely left out “No” as an option.
It was all pretty reasonable, she told herself the next day, walking through the hallway to Anne and Sasha’s lockers. 100% guarantee of success. She was only gripping the piece of paper so tight because her hands were too clammy, and her hands were only clammy because it was an abnormally warm February. The fact that Sasha was coming into view, all bundled up from head to toe, meant nothing; Marcy and Anne had always suspected she was secretly cold-blooded.
“I’m telling you, the heating is broken,” she was complaining to a smug Anne, who occasionally broke off Sasha’s rant to offer an Huh-huh and Sure it is. “This is ridiculous. Marcy, you saw my last blood test.”
She didn’t miss a beat. “Values were mostly in the human norm, with a 0.7% chance of you being an as-of-yet unidentified cryptid.”
“Open your heart to us, Sash.” Anne draped herself over her, in pure Anne fashion, arms wrapping around Sasha’s middle as if to provide additional warmth. “We’ll keep your deepest, darkest secrets.”
“Yeah, like Gabby promised to keep Carlos’s secret. Leave me alone,” Sasha laughed, trying to - literally - get Anne off her back. It was a bright sound, and more affectionate than anything Marcy was used to hearing from Sasha.
Marcy felt lost on all accounts here. “What’s Carlos’s secret?”
“You don’t know Carlos’s secret?” Sasha asked, at the same time Anne said: “Nope, not supporting this, we shouldn’t even know-”
“Carlos asked both Bridget and Johanna to prom. Like, unbeknownst to one other. Guess he didn’t want to keep all his eggs in one basket.”
“Well, that seems messy,” Marcy said. “He could’ve at least been open about it.”
“I mean, why would he? That’s such a cheap move. I can’t imagine ever being okay with it.”
“Yeah, like - just pick one, dude,” Anne agreed. “Doesn’t bode well for your future relationships if you admit to cheating before you even start dating. That’s bound to backfire on you.”
Marcy suddenly wanted nothing more than to get out of there. Out of the school, out of Los Angeles - out of existence, maybe. She wished for the ground to swallow her up and for that thing in her hand to have never been written.
She’d been so stupid. And greedy, and selfish. Of course she couldn’t have them both - what kind of pipe dream was she chasing where that was allowed, where things worked differently for her than they did for everyone else? She should’ve been grateful her friends stuck around for her, no matter what a mess she was, and yet there she went, threatening to burn the one good thing in her life to the ground because she wanted too much.
She felt sick inside. She wished for all the ugly feelings that were stored inside her to be relocated to one limb, so that limb could be amputated and she’d never have to think about it again. But things were rarely so easy for her.
“I’m so glad I can skip the whole promposal thing this year,” Anne sighed, looking at Sasha with… gratitude? “Any jerk who asks me, I can just tell them I’m going with one of my best friends.”
Marcy’s eyes flicked between her friends. Sasha’s eyes did the same, but they stayed on Marcy a bit longer. “One?”
“Sasha asked me.” Anne's smile was completely oblivious to Marcy’s internal turmoil.
“You weren’t planning on going to prom, were you?” Sasha frowned, as if the thought had just popped into her mind. “I mean, you never mentioned it, and last year we had to beg you to come-”
Marcy remembered the past year’s disaster. Anne and Sasha had planned to spend a nice night, just the three of them having fun together, and Marcy had ruined it for them by getting overwhelmed only an hour in. There were so many people, and she couldn't hear any of them talk under the blasting music; she’d just followed her friends around like a lost puppy for the whole night, laughing when they laughed and freaking out when they disappeared in the crowd. Her anxiety had been rising and rising until it became noticeable, and her friends had to leave their most anticipated night of the year early to walk her back home.
She didn’t know why she’d hoped this year would’ve been different. Maybe she was expecting the thought of her feelings being returned to carry her through the night, or maybe her friends had been right not to count her in their plans at all. They still could've asked to let her know she was wanted, that she hadn’t ruined everything last time.
“Nope. No, I wasn't planning on it.”
The invitation in her fist was all crumpled up. She’d tear it to shreds in a garbage can as soon as the bell rang and Anne and Sasha were out of view.
Marcy hadn’t forgotten about Anne’s birthday, though she had gotten distracted by a book on magic music boxes for a moment there. In fact, it was Anne she was thinking of when she’d decided to spend her afternoon at the library instead of joining her friends after school.
Despite their not-so-excellent grades, Anne and Sasha would have a good future. They were extremely smart in ways standardized tests couldn’t measure, and they’d have no issue making the connections needed to find themselves in a position of leadership some day.
But Marcy, who’d been taught to believe standardized tests were the only true guarantee of success, only had her brain. She’d always been too busy reinforcing that idea for herself to pick up any important life skills - like the ability to look people in the eye, or hold a conversation - and so this was all she had to show for herself. She couldn’t afford to not even be good at it.
She didn’t want her friends to carry her through life forever. She was already such a burden on them. She wanted to get to a place where she could give something back - where she got home after class and they came home tired from work and she could take care of them, just like they regularly took care of her.
She was only thirteen. She shouldn’t be thinking about this stuff - the future she pictured for them wouldn’t come for at least five, maybe close to ten more years. But the prospect of it did more for her motivation than her parents’ expectations for her did, and it made her feel better about Anne and Sasha having fun without her for one afternoon, because she was working hard to be with them for the rest of her life.
And then her father called her back, and told her that time was being cut short.
Marcy had never been very good at getting what she wanted. Whether she was just very unlucky, or whether she had trouble reaching out and taking things for herself, she’d never know; but what she lacked in assertiveness, she could usually make up for in thorough planning. Her life this far had been nothing but a work in progress, a careful building towards the day all her efforts would finally pay off.
She hadn’t planned for this. In a matter of weeks, she’d be pulled away from Los Angeles and left to fend for herself in a new school, and Anne and Sasha would finish what they’d started and drift away from her entirely.
She couldn’t wait five more years. She ran out of her parents’ home now and kept running until she couldn’t anymore, begging her brain to come up with a solution - but all her brain did was laugh at her, because she’d finally found the thing it was useless at.
What are you going to do about it? It taunted. What are you going to do?
There was a familiar music box, sitting on the shelf of a thrift store and caught in her line of sight like a sign from the universe. Marcy wasn’t going to let this one, too, pass her by.
She refused to be left behind again.
Marcy couldn't remember the last time she and Anne had been close like this.
Maybe it had been when they were babies. Anne had always been very free with her touch and affection, and Marcy hadn’t yet learned to feel guilty about hers. But this was definitely the closest they’d been in the years since they’d met Sasha - just the two of them, spending every waking moment together and having their own private little adventures on the side.
Part of Marcy said this was exactly how things should be - how they should’ve been all along. That this was all the confirmation she needed to know that stealing the box was worth it. Anne’s arm was wrapped around her waist, and she kept poking her in the side when Marcy went on a tangent about Wartwood architecture, or farming techniques, or Amphibia history. Marcy couldn’t help it that everything in the small town was fascinating, in a way Newtopia could never hope to be. She wanted to take root here, build a nice house, and never leave.
The other part of her couldn’t wait to go out and look for Sasha.
“I miss her,” she murmured, as she played with Anne’s fingers. They were sitting by the water fountain in the town square, and Anne was looking at her intently, though she’d clearly tuned out of the conversation about five minutes earlier. That caught her attention again; she didn’t need to ask who Marcy was talking about, because the subject of Sasha always hung in the air between them, unspoken.
“Me too,” Anne said, and she tightened her grip on Marcy’s fingers in that peculiar way of hers - like she could have crushed them, but chose to hold them gently instead. “But Marcy, when we find her, she might not be the Sasha you remember.”
“I’ve changed too,” she said. It had been a surprise to her, how taking that first step towards independence had only led to her taking more. There had been days where she’d almost forgotten about Anne and Sasha still being out there, looking for her - and when Anne had left her alone in Newtopia, chosen to run after the Plantars over staying with her, Marcy wondered if it had been just the same for her.
Maybe they’d needed this time apart to become who they were meant to be. Now Marcy sometimes caught Anne blushing at her - like right now - and she didn’t know what exactly was doing it for her, but she would’ve liked to, so she could keep doing it forever.
Forever. That was such a nice word.
“Yeah, but you’ve changed for the better. Sasha - if anything, she’s just grown more into herself.”
“Is that a bad thing?”
Anne scoffed. “When it comes to Sasha? Yeah.”
Anne had told her, in not so many words, what had happened at Toad Tower. None of what she’d said was actually surprising to Marcy. Sasha had always been so unapologetically herself, even with her flaws; it was Anne who had wanted to believe she was something else entirely.
Marcy envied Sasha. All she had were secrets upon secrets that kept piling up.
“She loves you,” she whispered, leaning back on Anne’s shoulder. Anne held her there, her free hand tangling into Marcy’s hair, and Marcy had to close her eyes against the setting sun and - something else. “I know she’s difficult, but she’d never do anything to hurt you.”
“I know,” Anne sighed. “I guess - maybe that’s not enough for me anymore.”
Marcy wanted to ask if she could ever forgive Sasha for what she did, but she decided not to. She was too afraid of the answer.
Marcy had seen this before.
Well, not this exactly - not this hallway, empty except for a piece of paper she was desperately trying to avoid; not this nightmarish version of her friends, towering over her and spitting every one of her fears back at her. But the idea of it was written across years of her life, details and impressions she’d mused on for way too long morphing into a Frankenstein monster of her psyche.
And it sent us to a place where we’d never have to grow apart. Where the three of us could be friends forever together.
It was a scene that might as well have taken place in Andrias’s throne room - and yet, it felt significant that it didn’t.
“How could you, Mar-mar?”
How could you? I’ve been missing my parents - my life!
“You betrayed us.”
That’s such a cheap move. I can’t imagine ever being okay with it.
It was a nightmare, yet none of it was fake. This was what had happened, would happen, when she told them everything. “No, I know what I did was super dumb. I’m so sorry-”
Sasha wrenching her hands away ten seconds into Marcy’s confession, looking at Marcy like this was crossing a line. Like this was the one thing that was too atrocious for even Sasha Waybright to forgive. Anne, the kindest person in the whole world, following shortly after, backing away from her like she was a disease.
She’d only said a fraction of what she wanted to.
“It’s too late. We want nothing to do with you, ever again.”
Marcy looked up at the creature they’d merged into like she’d watched them turn their backs on her. She’d been, and she still was, the thing keeping them together, by sole virtue of her being the thing they stood united against. Anne had sworn off Sasha’s friendship, had nearly tried to kill Sasha on the turrets, and still they agreed on this, the mess she made, and were immediately willing to put their issues behind and trust each other again.
Marcy had read about this. How according to the Greeks, humans used to have four arms, and four legs, and two heads - how the gods had then cut them apart, and the two halves were left looking for each other forever, and that was how soulmates came to be.
There were different versions of the myth, of course - some stating that these legendary humans were always half male and half female, others stating any gender combination could occur - but they were only ever split into two, and it was only two who could become one again.
I just didn’t want to be alone.
Shame rolled down on her like a crumbling building and buried the rest of her words inside her the moment her knees hit the ground.
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The last Christmas before Amphibia, you helped the Boonchuys set up the tree. Anne did most of the heavy-lifting, carrying the tree from her parents’ car into the living room; you were trusted to take care of the lights, though you’d almost caused a neighborhood-wide black-out the previous year; and Sasha hung garlands and tinsels around the house. The latter may or may not be connected to the mistletoe Anne found on her bedroom door, but if Sasha knew anything about it, she didn’t say.
After dinner, the Boonchuys left the three of you watching movies on the couch, wearing your fluffiest pajamas and drinking hot chocolate. You were wearing a Christmas hat, and despite Sasha’s rule of sleepovers going until sunrise, you fell asleep before anyone else on Anne’s shoulder. They chose not to wake you, and you kept hearing their polite giggles, their whispers, well into the night.
You keep holding on to small kindnesses like these to prove to yourself that they care. Yet they watched you die, and they didn’t come rescue you. It would have been fruitless, anyway - but they didn’t even try.
Your heart may love them as much as you wish, Marcy Wu, but they will never love you back.
Don’t you think it’s time to say goodbye to those childhood friends of yours?
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