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Sasha drags her fingers on the walls of the cave as she trudges across wet dirt and stone, lazily lidded eyes scanning her surroundings in the dimness while her other hand rested on the hilt of her sheathed sword.
She’s been walking the lengths of these caves for a while and, though she knew in the back of her mind that feeling any sort of ease while in a territory she wasn’t familiar with was just asking for trouble, her boredom couldn’t be helped.
Sure, Sasha knew the importance of checking the cave systems right below Newtopia for entry points- knew that for Grime’s invasion of the great city to have any hope of success every possible advantage was essential. They had to check every avenue and squeeze them of all their use. Getting past that wall is near impossible, she remembered Grime telling her, hunched over a spread map. We have to go from below.
That didn’t change how mind-numbing it was walking through tunnel after identical tunnel, staring at mushrooms and stalactites and cracks in walls and searching for any sign of civilization.
The sensation of something damp and slimy interrupts the rough, chill, and dry one that Sasha had been occupying herself with, and she tears her hand away from the wall without even looking at what she’d touched, screwing her eyes shut with how hard she cringes. Stupid. Why did she try touching the wall with her ungloved hand?
Despite her revulsion, the girl doesn’t make any noise. Weak points weren’t all they were checking for after all- who knew what sorts of predators made this cave their home? No one had been eaten or attacked or even stalked by something while on their expeditions into the system so far- the worst that they had experienced was Percy tripping down a sandpit and nearly breaking his neck, and he had climbed back out with no issue- but they all knew better than to trust something because it seemed safe. Not in Amphibia. In this aspect at least she’s managed to stay alert.
Sasha scrubs her hand on her chest plate without opening her eyes, shuddering. When she finally does open them it’s only to give the wall a fearsome glare that it, being stone and muck, can’t appreciate.
The slime (among other things, including piles and piles of frog and newt skeletons stripped bare of muscle, hollowed-out exoskeletons of a multitude of huge insects, and what she’d been told were old egg casings, eugh ) was evidence of something that used to call these tunnels home- Barbariants, Grime had called them. Though evidence of their former existence covered the caves like a blanket, they had no reason to believe that there were any currently living there, which Sasha is glad for. She wasn’t at all excited to meet ants the size of wagons.
She’s also glad for it because it gave her the opportunity to defect from the group and walk the caves on her own with the excuse of covering more ground. Braddock insisted that they should stay together, but Sasha--
Sasha just needed a break from them, sometimes.
Yes, she owed them a lot, and yes, a real fondness for the two soldier toads was beginning to eke itself out from underneath the saccharine sweetness she had used to get them closer to her, and yes, she had found a real loyalty to Grime growing alongside that feeling. But that didn’t change the fact that the way they looked at her, lately, was something that she couldn’t stand. Usually, they only did it when they thought she wasn’t paying attention but she saw it all the same, those eyes telegraphed something too close to pity (concern, kindness, care) for her liking.
She ( didn’t deserve) couldn’t stand looks like that. They didn’t belong on her body- made her feel too small for her skin, itchy all over, like she was a balloon swollen with air just seconds from exploding. Eyes like those in a place where she couldn’t escape them, at a time when all her mind had to chew on was a tedious, unfulfilling task, it brought her thoughts to places-
( I won’t let you push me around anymore, fail and nothing will ever be the same, they’re my friends! )
Sasha felt a surge of anger so pure and vitriolic that it would have staggered her if she wasn’t unmoving, and for a second she’s sure it’ll eat through her chest and expose her heart to open air. It doesn’t.
Sasha keeps walking.
Before she can take more than two steps something thumps dully in the corridor behind her.
Sasha goes completely still. In one quick motion she unsheathes her sword, turns around on her heel. She glares into the utter emptiness behind her and sees no movement.
...That sound wasn’t her imagination.
Dropping into a defensive stance, Sasha creeps back down the natural inclining hall until she approaches the entrance of the cavern she’d just left. The dirt and stone give way to sand beneath her feet and streams of warm sunlight spill through small holes in the ceiling, making her blink from the sudden brightness of it.
Maybe the source wasn’t something with teeth and claws that meant to make Sasha it’s next meal. Maybe it was only something harmless skittering across the stone, or a pebble falling from through a hole above.
Assumptions like that get simpletons killed, Grime’s gravelly voice reminds her in the back of her mind.
Sasha searches the cavern slowly and methodically, looking down every corridor entrance and into every crevice. Even when she begins to think she wouldn’t find anything, she doesn’t give up. It’s only when she peeks behind the final corner that her heart, thudding hard against her ribcage all the while, is finally given reason to leap entirely into her throat.
Immediately throwing herself around the wall, Sasha lands in an offensive stance- then kicks powerfully off of her heel to throw herself at the revealed Barbariant.
There’s no time to think, if she could catch it by surprise she could end this encounter quickly, and-
Sasha jerks to a stop an inch before the creature, her sword stilling in the air right above the overgrown insect's dull antlers.
The Barbariant gives no reaction at all. Not even a twitch of its antennae.
Didn’t Grime say their stupid horn things were supposed to glow?
Sasha eases away from it to get a better look and what she sees confirms her suspicions. She’s staring at a corpse, lying on its side haphazardly as though it were a ragdoll that had landed hard after being thrown from… Somewhere. But where…?
Scritch, scritch, scritch. There was the sound again, but instead of a thump this time it was more like… sand shifting.
Narrowing her eyes suspiciously, Sasha rounds the dead ant and nearly falls headfirst into a deep sandpit just like the one Percy had tripped into days ago, grains of sand tumbling away from her shoes and down, down, down into the very bottom of the hole.
Jeez. She thought Percy had been exaggerating when he told her how deep it was. (They were? Was this the exact hole he'd found or were there more than one?)
It’s only because she’s watching the sand fall that she spots the movement of something at the bottom-most part before it sank below the sand and disappeared from view entirely.
So these caves weren’t empty after all.
Sasha hums. Then she sticks out one leg and uses it to shove the ant carcass over the edge of the pit, sending it tumbling down, side over side down the sandy wall.
Before it could hit the bottom (and crush whatever was alive down there like the girl had hoped), two huge inky black and hairy mandibles jut out of the grains and snap around the Barbariant’s thorax like scissors, crushing hard exoskeleton like it's nothing more than paper and forcing a chill up Sasha’s spine.
...Ah. Okay.
The mandibles lift until they reveal the spade-shaped, bristly black hair covered head they were attached to- alongside dark beady eyes that latch onto her with a desperation that can only be attributed to pure hunger.
Sasha meets its gaze with her sword risen and teeth bared. Instead of flinging itself out of its hole to attack her as she expects, it-- it starts vibrating, and the force of its movements shakes the sand apart beneath it. As she watches, the earth swallows both corpse and creature alike, until it was like they were never there at all.
Sasha blinks in confusion and doesn’t lower her sword. That… didn’t make sense. No creature in Amphibia ran away from what it considered a free meal. Alarm bells ring in her head and she backs away from the pit’s edge, scanning her peripherals as though expecting something to leap at her from behind a wall until the sight of a puddle trembling across the room catches her eye. Sasha stops.
The water … trembling.
Sasha looks at her feet.
The sand was moving. Shifting like a living thing, bumps appear and disappear and right around her feet especially the ground is sinking in--
Every hair on her body stands on end and the lieutenant stumbles backward with a yelp, just barely dodging those same scythe-like mandibles stabbing out of the ground and slamming together around thin air where her body had been just a second before.
Her heart pounds in her ears so loudly that she barely hears the cry of pain that the creature releases when Sasha instinctively lashes out, slashing her sword at one of its knife-sharp jaws and hitting, metal shattering against the armored plating and making it shriek in fury and in pain.
Even as it shook off the blow, slicing its jaws through the air towards her and forcing her to dodge again all Sasha could think was, anticipation and something like excitement crackling across her skin like electricity, finally, something to do.
Battle was the only thing that cooled her boiling blood, the only thing that made her thoughts really quiet as she lost herself in the dodging, the swinging, the death-defying, the winning.
She almost grins.
Almost. At that moment, her enemy recovers enough to shove it’s head back out of the sand in its entirety this time, then six spider-like legs, then a swollen, hairy white abdomen the size of a house- it rises and rises and keeps rising until it towers over her, until it easily dwarfs the Barbariant corpse by a mile, until Sasha is forced to think, oh. I'll die if I fight this alone.
Shit. Maybe Braddock was right about staying in the group.
All of the bravado within her is replaced with frustration (with fear) and Sasha turns and sprints in the opposite direction, plunging down a pitch-black hallway as fast as her legs will take her. Behind her the creature howls, and she hears the sound of its hard abdomen scraping across the stone and the pounding of spear-like legs stabbing into the ground as it skitters to give chase.
She runs harder. For a long, long time.
She didn’t know how long her sprint lasted before she stopped hearing sounds behind her, but what she does realize as she slows to a halt, chest heaving for breath as she hunches over with her hands on her knees, is that this hallway was previously unexplored, has no glowing mushrooms to light her way, and that she’s left her phone back at camp.
No light sources.
She tries to squint through the darkness but it's useless- She can't even see her hand in front of her face.
Sasha groans lowly, pressing a sweaty palm to her eyes to try to massage away the headache growing behind them. Great. Just great.
Whatever. She’ll just keep walking the way she’s already going, and hopefully she’ll eventually find… something. Some kind of light, or her toads, or a way back to the surface.
And so Sasha walks. Until she comes to the slow realization that her feet aren't the only ones she can hear- and really, Sasha thinks as she freezes for the second time in as many hours, raises her blade against the dark, she would just love to stop hearing things today!
Her ears strain to listen to the quiet. But no, it isn't quiet. It's-- the near-silent shuffling steps of someone with two feet (at least it isn't six), the whine of a bowstring pulled taut and then the snap of it released--
With a thwack! something spears into the ground in front of her feet, making Sasha startle backward. When she looks down it's an arrow embedded in the stone but it's strange- for a second the head glows so brightly it hurts her eyes to stare at it directly before the light gentles, becomes softer but still so intense it illuminates her entire body from her boots up.
What? No, her thoughts are racing enough, she doesn't have time to be wary of this too. Sasha tears her eyes away from it and peers into the darkness it materialized from.
A hooded figure her size edges into the light, their arm raised and pointed at her warily. Sasha can see the glint of the arrowhead attached to some mechanism - a crossbow? - wrapped around their limb. They were too tall and gangly to be Grime or any of her toads. Maybe a newt?
Sasha stiffens, her face twisting up in a snarl as she dropped into another fighting position- offensive this time. She didn't know how far the creature behind her was and faced with a long-ranged weapon she was in the weaker position, but maybe if she used their close quarters to her advantage --
“Sasha?” the figure says in a voice that makes Sasha’s grip go so slack around her sword that she almost drops it.
...No way.
Sasha blinks hard like she’s clearing her gaze. She'd had this dream before and there was no way it was real this time, but as she stares and stares through the soft yellow light the figure across from her pushes her hood off her face, revealing her short black hair and her familiar friendly round face, and sure enough it’s Marcy standing before her staring right back, her own eyes as wide as moons.
Sasha's voice is trapped in her throat. Through the haze of shock, the first thought she can muster upon seeing her best friend, one of the people she’s thought of every single day since she got to this place, is what the hell is she wearing?
It is at that moment, when all of their focus is taken by each other, that the wall behind Sasha caves in.
She does not get a warning. What she does get is dust and stones that pelt her like rain and an ear-splitting roar that was like nothing on Earth but everything on Amphibia- Sasha whips her head over her shoulder and sees the horrific monster tunneling out of the wall to stand enormous at her back, all six of it's stabbing legs raised and looking to all the world like instruments of torture that it meant to bring down into her flesh. They plunge downwards aiming straight for Sasha's spine.
Sasha does not see as Marcy leaps across the divide between them but she does feel it when she takes Sasha's free hand (Marcy's hand is so warm in hers when was the last time she touched another person not for so long not since Anne -- ) then rips her forward right as the legs fall, only splintering the stone instead of tearing the blonde in two.
Marcy takes off down the hallway with Sasha in tow. Sasha stumbles after her at first but finds her footing quickly, forces her aching legs to pump faster and faster - they have to get out of here and she has to lead the way, but she has no clue of where this vein goes and --
Marcy yanks her off their course and Sasha veers to the side, growing blinder and blinder the further they get from the glowing arrow stuck in the floor, but Marcy is surefooted despite the dark, leading her in this direction unflinchingly. Sasha has no choice but to follow her.
Marcy’s weight jerks abruptly, downwards in a really weird way that pulls Sasha off balance and makes her trip forwards. She hears the snap! of jaws closing where her head was seconds before as she shoots her arm out to catch herself on the ground-
But there is no ground to catch herself on.
And Sasha keeps falling and falling and falling, plummeting face-first through the void for what feels like forever, wind stinging her face and vertigo making her head spin and her stomach sick, the only tether that she has to reality is Marcy’s hand tightly gripping hers throughout it all until she lands with a deafening splash in icy cold water, breath punched from her stomach.
The darkness is different, all of a sudden, heavy and freezing and crushing from all sides. It takes her a long suspended moment to understand why it’s changed and where she is, and a moment more to begin to attempt getting to the surface.
She flails her limbs in a mediocre attempt to swim, but her body is weakened from previous exertion, and with how she’s bogged down with her armor, her sword, her clothes, it’s hard to move. She doesn’t even know which way is up.
I’ll sink, her mind whispers, too oxygen-starved to even imagine screaming, I’ll sink!
And then she realizes that Marcy is beside her, still holding her hand, still tugging her in some direction- forward? Upwards? Sasha has no way of knowing. She follows.
It turns out that that direction is upwards. Sasha breaches the water and immediately wrenches forward with a couple wet, hacking coughs- her chest heaving desperately to breathe in the cool dank air.
Gasping, she looks upwards. She still can’t see but she can hear the monster above scrabbling uselessly at the- at the hole that they both just tumbled through, too big to slip through itself, and it’s efforts are so powerful for a moment that they seem to make the entire place quiver, shakes pebbles and dust loose from the ceiling and sends them cascading down into the pool around them with tiny splashes, before it calms to less of a piercing wail and more of a dull roar.
Sasha treads the water. All she can do is try to recall what lessons she could from the swimming class she’d spent more time skipping than attending, but she haltingly manages it. Wouldn’t whatever that was just dig through the walls and follow them here?
After a couple of coughs of her own, her friend (her friend ) pipes up from her side as though she’d read her mind, “D-Don’t worry!” Marcy’s voice is terribly chipper for someone who should feel as half-drowned as Sasha does. “Antlions are awful swimmers. It’ll be too scared to follow us somewhere with this much water.”
Sasha blinks and looks over to the voice’s source. “A-Antli-- AUGH! ”
Two luminous and yellow feline-adjacent eyes, pools of sickly yellow amber with black slits as pupils, peer back at her through the gloom right from where she’d assume Marcy should be.
Terror rushes her, and for a split second Sasha drowns in it. There’s something on her face- there’s something in the water with them and it’s eating Marcy’s face! She raises her soaking wet sword from the water with a shriek.
“Oh!” Marcy says, grabbing Sasha’s swinging arm like there isn’t some kind of messed up worm chewing on her eyeballs right now, “Hey hey hey, it’s fine -- Oh gosh I guess the design really is too scary in the dark -- These are just my night vision glasses! They’re made of Scorpileo eyes!”
Sasha hears splashing, and suddenly the nightmarish eyes tilt upwards, the motion identical to someone pushing their glasses (or goggles in this case?) upwards on their forehead. The eerily glowing frames illuminate their surroundings just a little- and now that they’re not covering it up and Sasha isn’t so blinded by pure adrenaline and fear, she can see Marcy’s face isn’t being attacked by some overgrown flesh-eating insect at all. It’s completely fine, if a little muddy and scarred, and it’s alight with monumental relief and joy.
“See?” Marcy says, giggling as she pushes her soaking wet hair off of her forehead.
“O... Oh.” Sasha limply lets her sword splash back into the water.
“Now c’mon, let’s get to that shore over there. I can’t give you a proper hug while I’m swimming.”
Once they’re on the shore, Marcy hugs her tight and long. Despite the fact that she’s just been completely submerged in icy water her face is warm in Sasha’s shoulder. Sasha, shaking, returns the grip with just as much force, if not more.
Marcy is here with her. She still has one friend left.
They have to part eventually and when they do, to Sasha’s secret embarrassment a jolt of alarm strikes her like lightning because for a single moment she can’t feel Marcy at all and she’s cold and alone in the dark.
But it’s alright because she isn’t alone for long. As soon as they’ve let go of each other Marcy slots her hand right back into Sasha’s like it’d never left, squeezes like she doesn’t mean to let go for a long time. The warmth returns with her touch.
They lurch further up the shore to fall against the wall. Right before they sit down Marcy hops up and smacks some mushrooms hanging upside down on the ceiling, making them light up a gentle blue that chases away the oppressive gloom.
As Marcy lands and they collapse together to catch their breath, backs smacking against the stone, Sasha looks around.
Most of this cavern was taken up by a large, still underground lake. The water, disturbed by their fall, lapped in gentle waves at the stone shore just a few yards away from their feet. The ceiling was made of a different material, a glass-like black stone that twinkled brightly just from the low mushroom light. Sasha hadn’t even known there were underground lakes in this system. How did Marcy know about this one?
Scrabbling from above does it’s best to shatter the quiet, but it’s so far away that all it can do is scratch the surface- Sasha muzzily lifts her face to look up and can barely see the- what had Marcy called it- the Antlion moving in front of the hole in the ceiling, it’s movements like nothing more than a shadow moving behind a windowpane for how far away it is. How little it can hurt them now.
The longer she’s able to sit and gather herself, the more one fact sets in; she really could have just died. She didn’t know an escape route like this existed. How long would she have been hunted if Marcy hadn’t found her first?
“Y’know,” Marcy says, startling Sasha out of her thoughts, “I thought all the Antlions would’ve moved on after the Barbariants left since they’re their main source of food, but I guess a couple must’ve stayed behind! They don’t even leave their traps t’ hunt, usually, so the one you found must’ve gotten real, er...”
The room shakes again. A roar spills through the ceiling.
Marcy winces and laughs nervously. “Desperate. It’ll probably take a bit for it t’ give up so we’ll have to stay down here for a bit before we can go. ...Unless King Andrias notices I’ve been gone and sends some newts to get me, I suppose.”
Sasha blinks owlishly. “I’m sorry,” She says, cocking her head with a slightly hysterical smile, “King who now? ”
With a laugh, Marcy starts to tell her story from the very beginning. How she started as a weird monster who’d popped up out of nowhere in the middle of the capital, how she was brought to the King himself, and how they began to work together and help each other until she got to where she was now; Chief Ranger of the Newtopia Knight Guard. Not to mention --
“You--” Sasha sputters, “Anne found you?! ”
“Mhm!” Marcy grins. “Oh man, she’s gonna be so happy to hear you’re alright. She’s been real worried.”
The resentment that’s long made itself home in Sasha comes alive at what shouldn’t be a barb but feels like it, flashes hot in the pit of her chest. “Ha!” She laughs dismissively. “I doubt that.”
Marcy winces again, harder than she did when the Antlion roared moments ago. “Ah, yeah… She did tell me you guys had a fight.”
Sasha sneers and rolls her eyes. “Understatement of the year but yes, we did.”
“...Y’know, Anne told me her side of the story but I didn’t get to hear yours.”
Sasha perks up hopefully, looking over at Marcy with wide eyes. A more genuine smile slowly grows on her face. Finally, a chance to explain where she was coming from to someone who’d listen!
This time it’s Sasha’s turn to talk and talk, gesturing wildly with her free hand as she told Marcy about her decidedly less novel time in Amphibia- how she started out in a filthy toad prison, how she’d convinced them she could be useful to them so that they’d let her go and help her find her friends, and how she had been right about to get the stupid old geezer that they wanted, right about to get them one step closer to getting home, before Anne waltzed in and ruined it all.
About the fall of Toad Tower. How Anne chose a bunch of frogs over her.
When she’s done she looks at Marcy expectantly. “She’s being totally unreasonable, right?!”
Marcy grimaces, eyes darting away guiltily. “Ehhhh…”
Sasha stiffens, not quite believing what she was hearing. That didn’t sound like the complete and total agreement that she should have, had always, heard from Marcy.
“I don’t…" Marcy’s smile becomes apologetic. "Not understand where she’s coming from?”
“WHAT?!” Sasha screeches, fingers curling in a fist so tight it shook with fury as she stares at Marcy in disbelief. She feels like tearing her hair out. What the-- Why did this keep happening? Why didn’t anyone understand her?
Instead of looking properly cowed by her anger, Marcy sighs hard through her nose, leans back to knock her head against the cave wall. Sasha watches as she tilts her chin up and stares up at the dark, glassy ceiling glittering as it reflects the mushrooms’ cyan shine. The light pooled in Marcy’s eyes, on her hair and on her skin in a way that made the girl herself seem to glow- and it’s harder for Sasha to hold onto her anger, looking at her friend who she hadn’t seen for so long- especially when she looked like this.
Sasha tries to grip the fleeting feeling tighter.
And Marcy finally finds her words and begins to speak. “Y’see, the thing about Anne is… she’s a real chaotic good type, y’know?”
It was infinitely easier for Sasha to stay angry when Marcy was speaking in weird nerd words. Sasha screws up her nose. "Is this another Critters and Cravens thing?”
“Creatures ‘n Cav- y’know what, it doesn’t matter right now. What I mean is, Anne -- she follows her heart. When it comes down to it she’ll do whatever she thinks is right even if everyone around her, common sense, rulebooks, anything tells her it’s wrong. Especially when it involves protecting her friends.”
Sasha narrows her eyes as she folds her legs to her chest, wrapping her free arm tightly around them and resting her chin on one of her knees. She didn’t know where Marcy was going with this but that… was true. It was one of the things Sasha really liked about her. It made her feel… safe.
I-It was so dumb though, whenever someone was messing with Anne specifically she had no hopes of defending herself. Her protection was only for other people.
“Like the time she kicked that kid who kept bothering you off the monkey bars and he broke his nose,” Sasha murmurs, staring into the still grey pool before them instead of at Marcy.
“Yeah!” Marcy chuckles fondly and it makes Sasha ache, suddenly. When was the last time she’d heard either of her friends laugh? “Or the time she almost like fist fought that substitute teacher for saying that nasty stuff to ya, when you were wearing that short skirt.”
Sasha snorts. “Mr. Dean! He was such a creep.” She couldn’t help but smile a bit too, remembering. “I didn’t even get the chance to say anything before she was… God, who even knew Anne could get that angry, she got him freakin’ fired. ”
“Yeah, but only after she got into astronomical amounts a’ trouble!” Marcy doesn’t laugh quite so much this time, smile waning. “...Even if the world we’re in’s changed, I think that’ll always stay the same about her. It’s just that this time…”
There’s a sudden silence from Marcy’s side of the wall that makes Sasha chance a look over to her, just in time to see the girl’s head loll to the side towards the blonde to fix her with a look so cold and unreadable that Sasha’s heart skips a beat.
“You’re what she had to protect her friends from.”
"Wh--" Sasha forces a chuckle through the prickly, off-putting feeling Marcy's expression gives her, skeptical smile shaking artificially at the corners. "What? We're her friends! Why should I care about some bunch of frog freaks she's been hanging around with?"
"Because she cares about 'em." Marcy's voice is resolute, like the nonsense she's spouting is the simplest thing in the world to her. And maybe it was, but Sasha didn’t want it to be, because it hurt.
Marcy continues, pressing harder against Sasha's festering wound- either not knowing or not caring how much it pained her. “She cares about them, and we care about her. If you’re her friend I think that’s supposed to be enough.”
“Wh-- Don’t you dare imply that I don’t care about her,” Sasha replies, venomous and low.
“Well you sure have an awful way of showin’ it,” Marcy spits right back, eyes cutting sharply across the short divide between them, and is Marcy angry? At her? And she’s saying--
Sasha shakes her head mutely- Marcy may as well have slapped her across the face for how stricken and outraged she’s made her feel. She and Marcy were best friends too, but Anne was so, so special to her. The very first friend that she’d ever made, the one that she’d managed to keep her entire life. Anne never once betrayed her or let her down or got caught up in the useless drama that other kids always seemed ensnared in. Had never once left her behind. Sasha loved her more than anything.
And now here Marcy was, saying she didn’t care about her.
Sasha’s utter frustration grabs her entire middle and squeezes so hard that she can barely breathe for a second. “What the hell else am I supposed to do to show it?! I’m doing everything I can to get us home and she’s-- and she’s--!”
Marcy doesn't get it, those frogs don't matter-- And Sasha has to pause to take a second to grit her teeth because she’s yelling, she thinks, her blood is boiling beneath her skin, and she’s so damn furious she can’t see straight. She takes a deep breath and lets it out, then continues, oh so patiently, “They are not her friends, Marce. We’re her friends, they’re not even people! She can do this-- this petty rebellion whatever she’s doing when we’re not stuck here. And once we get out of this stupid cave and back to Newtopia and I can talk to her again, I’ll tell her exactly that. And I’ll make sure she gets it this time.”
The last sentence makes Marcy’s fierce expression waver for a second. Not like she was backing down but like she was… pained. Like Sasha had accidentally touched an open wound still weeping blood.
Sasha narrows her eyes at her. “What?”
“Sasha,” Marcy says wearily. “Anne’s not in Newtopia.”
Sasha blinks once. Twice. “But I thought.” Sasha stops, trying to wrap her brain around that. Marcy had to be joking. “I thought you said she found you?”
Marcy looks back up at the ceiling, and Sasha could tell that she was forcing her expression to be flat. Her eyebrow was twitching the way it always did when she was trying to hide how she felt. “Yeah, she did. And then she went back to Wartwood with the Plantars.”
Oh.
Oh, this… This was rich.
Sasha can't help but bark out a laugh that’s dripping with contempt, a black sheet of grim satisfaction wrapping around her heart. “ Ha! She left you for those freaks too! Now I really don’t get why you’re still on her side, doesn’t it suck?”
“God, would you quit talkin’ about them like that?!” Marcy snaps, whipping her head around to glare at her.
(Do you ever stop talking?!)
For a second Sasha sees A-- sees someone else scowling in Marcy’s place, and the whiplash of it kills the embers of her anger and short-lived triumph. She has no choice in the silence that falls over her.
Marcy is shaking her head like Sasha is the one being stupid. “You keep- You keep talkin’ about them like they’re animals or something- or like they’re characters in a video game and they’re not. They’re people. They have- have histories, and architecture and culture and families, and they’re real, and Anne loves them.”
Loves them? The idea is ridiculous, but for some reason, she can’t open her mouth to say as much- there’s an entirely new determination to Marcy’s expression, she had never once looked so serious back on Earth and it frightens her, makes her voice unsteady when she tries to talk. “B-But,” Sasha hates herself for stuttering. Hates that she’s allowed Marcy of all people to put her on the back foot.
“ Nothing about this is fake.” Marcy interrupts her acerbically, lips twisting. “Even when we go back home- nothing from here’s just going to- go away. N-Not the things we saw, not the scars that we have, and not the- the fact that you tried to kill someone, Sash!” Marcy’s voice becomes more and more tremulous throughout her rant until it finally gives, breaks so hard on Sasha’s name that she almost thinks she’s about to cry; and Marcy looks over at her with such- such betrayal and disappointment and disbelief that it stops Sasha dead in her tracks, kills every response she'd been trying to come up with in her head.
But she doesn’t get why it bothers Marcy- the both of them, so damn much. Yeah, she was going to give the red old frog to the toads- she had to to get them to help her. Who cared if he died? The act had about the same amount of weight as crushing a bug under your foot on the sidewalk.
...Didn't it?
“A-And you know the worst part about that? The fact that you really were about to commit freakin’ murder ?” Marcy lets out a shaky breath and rubs her eyes with her palm, her expression much older than it should have looked on a girl thirteen years old. “Anne isn’t even mad at you. I think I kind of hate you for that. Just because she can’t.”
I think I kind of hate you for that. Every single part of Sasha pauses. Her breath. Her heart. The shock that falling into a pool of freezing cold water from 30 feet up was nothing compared to what she was feeling after hearing that. Her stomach twists sickly.
Marcy hates her.
Marcy hates her.
( But Anne doesn’t? )
Nothing makes sense. Sasha doesn’t understand how things could have gone so wrong. Ever since the fall of Toad Tower- no, ever since her feet hit land that didn’t belong to Earth, her life has hurtled down the drain. There were only two humans other in this entire messed up dimension Sasha had-- and they both-- they both --
She can’t… haha. Sasha can’t do this right now. She can’t do this ever, actually.
Dazedly, Sasha murmurs, her mouth acting outside of her consent in some instinctive effort to get this conversation somewhat back in her own control, “Okay, th-there’s no way that Anne isn’t-- you didn’t see how she was.”
“No, I’m serious. Last time I saw her she didn’t want to get back at you, or tell you off, or fight you again or anything. She just wants to find you and make things right with you and take us all home.”
Sasha shakes her head to clear the cloudiness in her mind. “T-That’s what I want too!” Sasha says, humiliatingly pleading, as she put a hand to her chest and ignored the panicked jackrabbit pace of her heart that she could feel within. “I don’t get why I’m the bad guy here, apparently!”
Marcy's glower deepens. “We both know that’s not the problem.”
“ No , we don’t! I don’t get it, why are you both acting so weird? You never used to be like this back home. Neither of you are listening to me!” Sasha’s voice cracks, not even her walls can withstand this kind of assault, and she has to blink hard to keep the frustrated tears stinging behind her eyes from falling down her cheeks.
Nothing at all was how it should have been. Marcy wasn’t supposed to be angry at her. To hate her. Anne wasn’t supposed to leave. Sasha wasn’t supposed to be in a situation like this, where she was following someone else’s lead instead of heading the charge, where she was desperately trying to get control over a situation instead of having it the whole time. They weren't supposed to be here, and her girls certainly weren’t supposed to have changed so much as soon as Sasha had taken her eyes off of them.
She had lost her world already. Why couldn’t she keep her friends?
Marcy's face softens somewhat, but the fiery gleam in her eye doesn't dim. “I’m not going to just sit around and wait for you to tell me what to do, Sasha. Not like I did on Earth. If I didn't make my own decisions I’d already be dead. And if I let you tell me what to do just now, with that Antlion? We’d both be. We’ve had to adapt. All of us. I can’t just assume someone’s going to take care of all my problems for me, and you can’t just… just push me around. Or Anne. All it sounds like to me is she got tired of it just like I did.”
Got tired of it. Just got tired of it. Was that what this was? They were both tired of her? “I just…” Sasha closes her mouth with a clack of her teeth, still narrowing her eyes against tears that were trying their damndest to spill. “I don’t get why that means she would choose them over us. The Plantars or whatever.”
Marcy huffs out a sad laugh. “While they were all in Newtopia I got to watch them for a little. Anne seemed really… happy. With them. There was something different about her-- she laughed more, I think. And they knew things about her that I didn’t know. Things I don’t think she’s told either of us. They were always taking care of her, and she was always taking care of them. She was like… more of herself than I’d ever seen her.”
… Haha. What was that supposed to mean? That she was… happier with them?
“And it’s not like… she doesn’t care about us- I know she does.” Was Marcy trying to convince Sasha or herself? “But. Well… Who’d blame her for staying with them when they made her feel like that? When, i-if you really think about it, all we do is… Burden her, kind of. Haha. Right?”
“Burden her?” Sasha echoes, lifting her head.
“Well yeah, I mean…” Marcy’s thumb runs over Sasha’s knuckles as she scratches her chin thoughtfully, and with a jolt Sasha realizes that they’re still holding hands. “I mean, we did some stuff for her, remembering her birthday and hanging out with her and buying her stuff sometimes, but I think that's like… the bare minimum. She always did a lot for us. Y’know? Going along with whatever we wanted, watching your shows and reading your magazines, reading my books and playing my games- and she’d always look out for us, though I-I guess she did that for me more than she did for you. After she left I had a lot of time to think about it, sift through all my memories an’ such to collect as much data as I could from what I could remember, and I might be a little off since I’m only incorporating the years I’ve personally known you guys but I think it was only about twelve percent of the time that Anne ever got to decide what we did. Give or take. The other eighty-eight percent was you or me, though mostly you. I wrote down the math in my notebook if you wanna see.”
That couldn’t be right. Sure, she liked to lead a lot of the time, but there wasn’t anything bad about that, was there? Surely that didn’t mean that Anne fell to the wayside quite that much.
But Marcy had never been wrong about before. Not about this sort of thing, anyway.
Sasha feels hollow. “No thanks.”
“Yeah, I figured. I was working on crunching the numbers for how much she’s been there for us emotionally versus how much we’ve been there for her, but I doubt it’s that much higher than the twelve percent. I’m not really good with that stuff so I didn’t really even try very often, and you… Uh.”
“Ignored her,” Sasha mumbles roughly as she curls into a tighter ball against the wall. Or talked over her.
( Do you ever stop talking?)
“...Yeah.” Marcy shifts uncomfortably. “But it was like she didn’t even care that we barely did anything for her. Or at least she acted like she didn’t. It wasn’t like she ever stopped trying to help us, even when it would’ve made sense for her to. The only logical conclusion is that she’s been a better friend to us than… than we ever were to her.”
No matter what they were experiencing, through their very highs and their very lows, Anne had always been there. She may have not always known what to say, and she may have gotten in over her head, but her loyalty never, ever wavered. She was a fixed pillar in their lives that always, always, always lifted them higher than they ever thought they could be, that never asked for anything but a few laughs and some partners to watch awful reality TV with. She just made their lives better, on a whole.
Sasha didn’t even think she and Marcy would have become friends if Anne hadn’t been there to help their first conversation along far enough that Marcy piqued Sasha’s interests- made her find out that she was actually a pretty cool person to be around even if their personalities were almost complete opposites. Anne always liked to joke that she and Marcy were night and day.
If that was true… than Anne was the twilight that bridged them together. They needed her to be complete.
It was so funny. It was such a joke. Sasha soaked up Anne’s attention like a flower did the sun and hadn’t even realized that she wasn’t a sun at all, just a girl who had could be pushed too far, a person who needed more than Sasha, who supposedly cared about her, had ever thought to give her. Not until it was too late. Not until she was already gone.
Sasha fights hard to swallow the knot in her throat, and instead of blinking back her tears she accidentally pushes them over the edge, sending a couple cascading down her cheeks. Shit. She scrubs at her eyes roughly, gritting her teeth against the keening she could feel trying to fight its way out of her throat. Shit. Did Marcy see that?
She glances over and finds that Marcy is not looking at her, is zoned out on some far off point in the dark, and in fact doesn’t look much better off than she does. Her eyes were wet too, though the look on her face was more somber. Thoughtful. What did she have to think about so deeply? It wasn’t like she had done what Sasha had. It wasn’t even like Sasha had pushed Marcy around very much. She’d never been very invested in fitting Marcy into the mold of what Sasha thought someone should be, had considered her a lost cause from the very start-- so all she did was roll her eyes when the raven-haired girl went on about her latest interest, some lame game or cartoon or book.
...But Marcy had watched her do what she did. And sometimes she had even joined in, helping Sasha convince Anne to do whatever plot she had come up with.
That was just what they all did. Wasn’t it? That was how their friendship was.
How it was supposed to be. How Sasha thought it was.
And, y’know, it wasn’t even like she wanted to hurt Anne. She didn’t even know she was doing it, it wasn’t on purpose. All she wanted to do was have fun with her. To have her be by Sasha’s side for as long as she could.
Best friends forever.
God.
At least I’m not alone in this, she thinks as she listens to Marcy’s breath shudder on the exhale beside her, at least Marcy did it too.
It’s a selfish thought to have. But Sasha is slowly coming to realize that she has been selfish for a very long time already.
(Something I should have done a long time ago.)
That phrase, in particular, haunted her. How long had Anne felt like that? Was the feeling born months, years ago?
...Had it been there the entire time they’d been friends? And Sasha hadn’t cared enough to notice?
The antlion's movements were inaudible, now, it was either resting or had given up and gone away somewhere during this heartrending conversation, and Sasha suddenly wishes that it would come back.
Because without it there is only the plink, plink, plink, of water dripping off stalactites into the lake below, the distant howl of an underground wind, and the raw and searing truth that she has finally come to to keep her company. And she can't run from it, stuck in this cavern, hand in Marcy's hand. Not like how she could with the toads, how she sprinted in the other direction to find anything else to do when any attempt to puzzle her way towards the questions that ate at her every single day (why why why them over me I just wanted to take you home weren’t we best friends) landed her in what Marcy had handed her here on a silver platter. Trying to understand it ate her alive, sucking out her bone and marrow and leaving nothing but empty space behind.
It burns to even try to swallow, because it throws how awful a friend Sasha’s been all her life into such clear, sharp relief, and there is no better proof of that fact than the immediate aftermath of her and Anne’s duel.
Even after Sasha had tried with everything she had to kill someone Anne cared about, Anne put herself in mortal peril to keep Sasha safe, threw herself to the ground on instinct to catch her before she fell to her certain death. She probably hadn’t even thought before she did it. Had never even considered that she didn’t owe Sasha anything, certainly not that amount of reckless loyalty and devotion.
Sasha remembered that moment often-- had nightmares about it, more like-- The harsh wind stinging her face, the dizzying sensation of what felt like a mile of distance between her and the ground yawning below her dangling feet, the bone-deep certainty that she would not survive a fall from that height, the bleeding crimson of the sky and the moon.
Anne’s hand holding hers in a vice grip even as she herself was slipping off the side, like she wouldn’t let go even as they were plummeting to the ground together, how the only thing she was focusing on was reassuring Sasha that she would be okay, just look at me, everything’s going to be fine, I got you.
And wasn’t that how it always was? Anne always had them.
When had Sasha ever had Anne?
Even back then on that very night, no matter how much she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, Sasha knew that she didn’t deserve that care.
She had realized it then, but accepting it is an entirely different beast. And it’s one that tears her apart ever so slowly, piece by shaking piece.
“It’s not like it didn’t hurt me, that she left,” Marcy whispers, and Sasha didn’t expect her to speak but she doesn’t have the energy to jump anymore. “I-It hurt really bad, haha. But I’ve had a lot of time t’ think about why she did.”
Don’t say it. Please.
“...We just didn’t give her enough reasons to stay, Sash.”
It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t be. Sasha tries to think of several different ways to think of the situation, anything other than what Marcy’s just told her, but none of the ways she paints it makes it hurt any less. Something keeps fracturing inside of her.
“...You didn’t even try to make her stay with you?” Please, Sasha thinks and ignores how her voice hitched on the words she spoke, tell me you’re just as selfish as I am.
“I tried at first but in the end, I couldn't… I couldn’t ask her to do something like that.”
Sasha doesn’t respond and Marcy glances at her sideways, contemplating her with a bitter smile.
“You couldn’t either. Right?” She asks. “You said you tried, but--”
“I let go,” Sasha finishes, and gives Marcy’s hand a desperate sort of squeeze. Marcy squeezes back. “Yeah. I let go.”
“...We’re going to have to do better, I think. Or else she’ll find other people to be around, like she has now, even after we go home.”
Sasha squeezes her eyes tightly shut. She doesn’t think she can think about this anymore. She can’t think about how she’s been an objectively awful friend and how she’s been that way for a long time and can’t ignore it anymore; or about how Marcy apparently hates her but hasn’t let go of her hand, and about how Anne should too but doesn’t for some reason. She can’t think about what will happen to them in the future, after they get out of this cave.
“Hey,” Sasha says as she lets her head fall on Marcy’s shoulder, too exhausted and empty to even open her eyes. “Tell me about how your Scorpileo goggles work.” Back at home, Marcy used to take any opportunity that she could to ramble about the things she liked. Sasha used to do her best to zone out during her impromptu lectures, but she desperately needs it now. “...Please.”
There’s a silence.
And Sasha feels Marcy shift how she’s sitting, and for a second Sasha is utterly terrified that Marcy will pull away, but no. All she does is move to put her arm over Sasha's shoulder, pulling her closer.
And Marcy, quietly, haltingly, does as Sasha asked, her voice echoing strangely in the silent hollowness of the cavern they sat in together.