Chapter Text
Even after ten years apart, they always came back to each other.
It was a slow start building a new relationship after everything that happened in their past, but once those bridges were mended, all the old wounds finally healed, it was a quick snowball into creating a life together. Marcy could do their webcomic anywhere once their lease was up, and with Anne and Sasha under the crushing debt of student loans, it just made sense to find an apartment together instead of living on their own. Especially after all their desperate, admittedly long overdue confessions finally came to light. It took a lot of long, convoluted conversations before everything was ironed out, but everything just felt right afterwards.
It felt right to have dinner together, teasing Marcy about being banned from the kitchen after they somehow lit cereal on fire. It felt right to laugh as Sasha yelled at horror movie characters for stupid decisions. It felt right to tell Anne to leave her muddy boots outside after she spent a day in the field.
Still, no matter how perfect things sometimes seemed, those feelings didn’t mean their past never caught up to them.
----
“Hey Marbles, can you get me a mixing bowl from the cabinet, please?” Anne called.
“Yeah, I got it!” Marcy replied. They quickly saved their progress on their comic update, adjusted the messy bun they had tied their hair into, and went to the kitchen. Anne stood at the counter, chopping up vegetables for dinner, her long curls held back by a blue bandana. She flashed a smile, mismatched eyes glinting. Marcy leaned down to kiss her cheek and steal a piece of a carrot. “How does it feel to be the short one now, Anna-Banana?”
“You are barely two inches taller.”
“That’s still taller.”
“Mars,” she said in warning.
“I’m just teasing.” They opened the cabinet, having to stand on their tiptoes because Sasha was still the tallest and for some reason they let him put away the dishes. “Which one do you need?”
“The little glass one.”
“Gotcha.” They tilted a set of bowls to grab the smallest one from the middle and pushed the rest back onto the shelf. “Here.”
Anne turned to take the bowl as Marcy passed it to her. Right before she grabbed it, Marcy’s entire body froze.
The room fractured. Every facet held a conglomerate of strange overlapping colors and distorted shapes, snapping around to different points and never focusing on one thing for more than a few moments, except the three main ones in the center. They separated just enough to cut Anne into several pieces.
The bowl shattered on the floor as Marcy collapsed with a scream. Phantom whispers and shrieks and insults and lullabies collided in a hellish song in their ears, until they could barely hear Anne frantically calling for Sasha. They pressed themself back into the corner of the lower cabinets, slamming their head off a handle in the process as they screwed their eyes shut and clutched at the sides of their head. They couldn’t understand the words tumbling from their own lips. They pressed the heels of their hands into their eyes like they were trying to force them back into their skull.
Blinding pain surged through their chest, following the path between their scars. They felt a presence over them and shrank back. The voices dampened just enough for them to finally hear their own words, nothing but a desperate broken record of “stop it” over and over and over again.
They heard the light tinkling of glass shards being swept aside. Sasha’s voice broke through, muffled and wavering. “Marcy? Marcy, look at us.”
They shook their head. They grabbed the lip of the counter and dragged themself up, trying in vain to stand on legs that didn’t work. A hand landed on their arm. They ripped away from the touch.
Just go away! they wanted to cry. This is what I get.
The voices grew louder.
They curled in on themselves, tremors wracking their body as they clutched at their chest, gasping for breath. They didn’t know what was worse: eyes open or closed. Keep them open and their vision was torn to pieces, split between thousands of minds looking through one pair of eyes that would never fully belong to Marcy again. Keep them closed, and they saw destruction and blood and Anne looking horrified and furious and Sasha on the ground and they heard him screaming and-
This was their punishment for all of that. The lies. The betrayal. Trying to get the three of them stranded in another world just so they didn’t have to face anything less than a perfect reality. They didn’t do it for their girls, they did it for themself, and this was the life sentence they deserved for a crime like that.
Leave me alone. Let it drag me back like I deserve. Stop trying to make me forget what I’ll spend the rest of my life paying for.
“Mars, please . Baby, you’ve got to look at us.”
There was Sasha’s voice cutting through the static again. He touched their arm, and his voice had redirected their focus enough for this attempt to be successful. They didn’t lean in, but they didn’t pull away, either. When he nudged at their hand, they refused to take his, but they stopped clawing at their chest and simply pressed their hand over their scar instead. It was something, at least.
“That’s it, Mars, that’s it,” he cooed. His touch moved from their arm to the side of their face. His thumb smoothed across their eyebrow. It had become a calming technique since they moved in together whenever these episodes reared their ugly heads. None of them knew quite why it worked, only that it did. Marcy opened their eyes, flitting back and forth on their own accord, and took a moment to blink the twitch away. It left their vision blurry and dull, but they were able to make out Anne and Sasha kneeling before them. The pair smiled as Marcy fully uncovered their face. “There’s our girl. Are the lights too bright?”
“No,” Marcy said, barely able to force out any sound.
“How does your head feel?”
They paused to focus on it. “I-I think I hit my head on the cabinet.”
“Let me see.” Sasha tilted their head to the side and touched a spot on the back. “You might have a little bump. It’s not bad.”
“M’kay.” They hid their head in their arms. “I’m sorry. I don’t… I don’t know what happened. I-I-I didn’t mean to break it, something just-”
“Marbles, hey, it’s just a bowl. We can buy another one. It’s okay,” Anne assured them. She took their hand and carefully disentangled their arms, tilting their chin up to meet her eyes. “Don’t blame yourself for those episodes. They’re not your fault.”
Marcy sniffed, wiped the gathering tears from their eyes, and nodded. “Okay.”
“Here, give us your arms,” said Sasha.
Marcy let them hold onto their elbows and help them to their feet, guiding them over the broken glass with a gentle “careful, careful.” Once they were away from the glass, Anne and Sasha held Marcy close between them, letting them stand but providing the support they needed if their legs gave out again. The trio stayed like that even after Marcy was confident in standing on their own. Sasha took their hand and kissed their palm. One of Anne’s arms came up under theirs and gripped their shoulder. She pressed her lips to the top of the scar on their back, mumbling against their skin.
“We’ve got you, Marcy,” she promised. “Always.”
“I love you guys.”
“We love you, too.”
----
Anne stumbled out of her car and trudged to the front door, fumbling with her keys. Frog, she could hardly see straight. More tours every week, more deadlines from the scientific journal she was newly contracted with, more studies on the animals to be added to the exhibits. It was becoming a superhuman effort just to claw her way through it all each day.
She just had that last paper to finish for this edition. After that, the journal would be on the back burner for a while. Summer was almost over and the tours would start to thin out. This was just a weirdly big edition of new specimens. It was all going to lighten soon. She just had to make it through these next few weeks and everything would be fine. Two, maybe three, maybe four weeks wasn’t so bad. If she just broke it up into individual days then it was easier. Only four Fridays, right? Just like how an hour was only fifteen minutes four times over. She could get past Friday four times over just fine!
She rubbed a sore spot on her side as she kicked off her boots. That ache in her chest was coming back, an intermittently chronic stitch that would ease up if she held her breath for a minute just to stretch the muscles around her ribs. It’s just the stress, she told herself. What was the word Sasha used? Psychosomatic. Right. That’s what it was, just a physiological reaction, like when her heart raced before she had to give a presentation to the board of directors at the aquarium. It would go away when her workload eased up.
Sasha was lying on the couch when she walked in, feet tossed up over the arm. “Hey,” he said with a wave. “How was work?”
“Hey, Sash.” She blatantly ignored his question as she tossed her bag on the kitchen table. Sasha looked up from his phone at that. She knew what he was going to ask. Yes, normally she hated when any of them did that, but she was too exhausted to care at the moment. She just didn’t want to be carrying it anymore. “Where’s Marcy?”
“On the balcony.”
“Are they seriously smoking again? I thought they were quitting. They already have enough problems with their lungs from…”
She let her voice trail. After close to thirteen years now, she still didn’t like to hear what she was about to say spoken aloud. Marcy did have trouble breathing sometimes from the trauma to their chest, not enough to warrant any serious medical treatment, but smoking still didn’t really help that.
“They are in the process of quitting,” Sasha corrected. “They’re down to two a day, that’s a major cutback from where they were. It’s not a good idea in their case to go cold turkey. That would cause more problems than it would fix.”
Anne scoffed. “You sound like you’re talking about a patient.”
“No, I’m talking about Marcy, and you know I’m right because it’s Marcy and we know Marcy.”
“Still psychoanalyzing, Sasha.”
“What’s your damage today, Boonchuy?”
Anne shook her head, going to grab a drink from the fridge. She didn’t have the energy to argue with him over some smartass remark. It was just work talking, that’s all it was. It was just the stress bubbling up.
She stared out the window as he stood in the doorway to the kitchen. “Anne,” he said. He waited for a response and sighed when he didn’t get one. “What’s going on?”
“I’m just tired.”
Frog, that headache that started when she woke up was blossoming into a full blown migraine. She grabbed at her ribs as the spiking pain came back. Her heartbeat did the weird clenching stutter thing it sometimes did, usually when she was pulling extended all-nighters or ingesting too much caffeine. She leaned on the counter and lifted a hand to her head.
“Anne.” Panic crept into Sasha’s voice. “Anne, hey, what’s going on? You have to talk to me.”
Anne knew that tone. It was the same one he got after Marcy had one of their episodes or woke up screaming and thrashing in the middle of the night. He let it slip when it was just the two of them, when he didn’t have to keep up a calm demeanor lest Marcy get riled up apologizing thinking they had done something wrong. They were getting outside help for that habit, at least, and it was helping, but it was still slow progress. It didn’t stop Sasha from panicking once Marcy wasn’t in the room or awake to see it.
She took a deep breath. She didn’t want to freak him out by being a little extra irritable after a long day. That would only cause problems and it wasn’t fair to him. She turned back to face him, ready to apologize, tell him she was just tired and needed a nap.
The moment her hand left the counter, her eyes rolled back in her head, and she promptly collapsed.
“ Anne! ”
It seemed only a minute later than she came around, lying in Sasha’s arms as Marcy came bolting across the apartment to her side. The room spun behind the pair, but they held steady as they leaned over her, their faces masks of fear and concern. Marcy brushed her hair out of her face and held her hand. Sasha helped her sit up. Focusing on Marcy’s thumb swiping along her jaw and Sasha rubbing small circles on her back, she dragged a hand down her face and sighed.
Marcy pursed their lips. “It’s been a long time since that happened,” they ventured. “How much do you have on your plate right now?”
Sasha may have been the therapist, but if anyone really knew burnout, it was Marcy. Webcomics didn’t draw themselves and when Marcy got on a kick, especially approaching an update deadline, they would go days without sleeping until Anne and Sasha found them slumped over their desk and carried them to bed. Those pits of exhaustion were where everything got worse; more nightmares, more attacks, more random furious outbursts. It wasn’t quite the same, but they both knew it was similar enough to be significant, and Anne knew Marcy saw everything written all across her face.
“Anna-Banana, come on,” they prodded.
“A lot,” she admitted with a groan. Her eyes burned with tears of frustration as the floodgates broke. “I have to finish that paper and we just got like five new tree frog species that we’re making displays for and I’ve gotta stay late to do all of it because I have to do presentations and tours nonstop every single day I’m at work and I-”
“Okay, you’re going to bed. Sash?”
Anne yelped as Sasha picked her up and carried her towards their bedroom. “Wha- Sasha! Marcy!”
“Nope, no arguing on this one.”
“Mars, you hypocrite!”
Marcy smirked. “I’m gonna remember that the next time you get on me for working too much on my comic.”
“You both need to stop overworking yourselves,” Sasha deadpanned.
Marcy laughed, and Anne found it within herself to smile and relax into Sasha’s embrace, wrapping her arms around his neck. The moment he set her down on their bed, Marcy tackled her and trapped her in their arms. She surrendered and curled up against them as Sasha stretched out on her other side, kissing her shoulder and wrapping his arms around her waist. Marcy adjusted to get their arms around both of them.
Anne squirmed a little as she laughed. “Since when am I in the middle?”
“Since you’re the one who needs to chill. Marcy’s the one that usually never takes a break, that’s why Marcy’s always in the middle.”
“That’s not fair reasoning, Marcy’s been in the middle since we were like seven.”
“She does have a point,” Marcy giggled. They pulled back, tilting her chin up as their expression turned serious. “Anne, you know you can’t keep doing this. And yeah, I know, I do it a lot, but when you overwork yourself…” They tapped her cheek beneath her blue eye. “You can’t keep pretending that your powers didn’t have any lasting effects on you. You need to rest when your body tells you, sweetheart.”
Anne sighed and tucked her head beneath their chin. “I know.”
Sasha planted more kisses along the back of her neck. “We don’t want you hurting yourself, that’s all.”
“I know…”
“You have tomorrow off, right?”
“Yeah.”
“Perfect,” said Marcy. “We’re having a day in, just the three of us. No work.”
“You’re telling me that you, Marcy Wu, are going to take a day off from your webcomic?”
Marcy kissed her forehead. “Yes, if it means you’ll take the day off with me. I actually need to give my hand a rest, anyway.”
“Wait, Sasha, don’t you-”
“Nope,” Sasha quipped, cutting her off. “All my paperwork is finished. You’re not getting out of it that easy.”
Anne grumbled and buried her face against Marcy’s chest. Letting her eyes slip shut, she yawned and kissed the little dip between Marcy’s collarbones. “Maybe I do need a break.”
“Told you.”
Sasha took her hand and intertwined their fingers. “We’re just looking out for you. You’re always looking out for us - you’ve got to let us return the favor sometimes. We’re always here for you.”
“I know you are,” she whispered. The tension drained away as she relaxed into their embrace, warm and safe and secure between them. “Thanks.”
“Always.”
----
Sasha woke up in the middle of the night with his back screaming. Fire burned up the length of his spine, scorching knives driving between each vertebrae as every muscle in his torso went rock hard. His fingers twisted in the sheets, but all he was able to do was turn his face into the pillow as a choked groan escaped him. Tears sprang up in his eyes. He managed to marginally shift the arm he had draped over Marcy.
They mumbled something unintelligible and rolled over out of his grip. Tangled hair falling over their face, one eye still shut, they propped themself up on their elbows and looked over at him. “Sash?” they asked. He shook his head. Marcy squeezed his arm. “Are you okay?”
He turned away from them. He was fine, it was fine, everything was fine. He just had to ride it out. It always went away after awhile if he gritted his teeth and struggled through it. He didn’t need either of them fussing over him when it was something that was just going to pass within an hour. Well, usually within an hour. No big deal.
It wasn’t like Anne collapsing without warning, her body giving out and rendering her legs useless, barely able to move at all without pain. It wasn’t like Marcy’s attacks or their nightmares where they heard the voices of the Core still haunting them, their vision splitting apart like they described, the feeling of a sword through their chest coming back in full force. His ailments weren’t like theirs at all. It was a cramp, for Frog’s sake. Why stress them out worrying over him when it could be solved by lying still for a while? And he knew that if it was one of his patients saying this he would tell them it wasn’t fair to them to shut themselves off and refuse to accept help but this was different .
“Sashy, honey, tell me what’s wrong,” Marcy cooed.
He didn’t want to worry them, but as Marcy stroked his arm and ran their fingers through his hair, he couldn’t help giving in.
“Back,” he choked out.
Without a word, Marcy reached over Anne to turn on the lamp and shook her awake. Anne shot upright. “M’up, I’m up,” she said. “What’s up, what happened?”
“Sasha’s back is hurting again,” Marcy said.
Fucking understatement, Sasha thought.
“I’ll go get the Tiger Balm.”
The bed shifted as Anne got up. Sasha whimpered as a muscle in his lower back spasmed. He hated this. Even when he got the scar, he wasn’t completely incapacitated like this. It was over a decade ago; why were the phantom pains still so bad?
Marcy drew small circles on his trapezius just above his shoulder blade, slowly increasing the pressure to massage away the knots when he didn’t flinch. He took deep breaths and focused on the warmth of their hand. Once they finished with that spot, they pressed a kiss to it and moved to the same position on the opposite side of his back.
Anne returned with a quiet “here” as she handed the Tiger Balm to Marcy. They gathered a glob of the stuff on their fingers and slipped their hands under his loose muscle tank, rubbing it into his tense muscles, watching for any signs of discomfort in reaction. Anne knelt by the side of the bed, resting her chin on the edge as he turned to face her. She combed her fingers through his hair. His eyes slipped shut as the warmth from the salve seeped into his skin.
“How bad?” she asked after a moment.
“Like a seven,” he replied.
“Sasha.”
“Okay, fine, ten, it’s awful.”
“Did you have a nightmare or did you just wake up to it?” Marcy asked. They pressed their knuckles into a spot beneath his shoulder blade. He groaned, and they took their hands away. “Sorry.”
“No, it’s okay, that felt good.” He sighed as Marcy returned to that spot. “I woke up and it was like this. I’m sorry I woke you guys up, too.”
Anne tapped his cheek to get him to open his eyes. “Sasha, we want you to wake us up when this happens. You shouldn’t be making yourself suffer through it on your own.”
“It’s just phantom pains.”
Anne’s brow furrowed as she watched him with sad eyes. Marcy’s hands stopped on his lower back on either side of the scar. They always avoided touching the scar directly until his muscles unlocked and the pain had mostly faded away. It was a thin line they walked between adding a final comfort or aggravating that old trauma and bringing all the pain back.
“Sasha,” they said gently, “phantom pain is still pain. What would you tell us if we just said the same thing to you?”
Sasha turned his face into the pillow again. A response wasn’t really expected and he knew that; Marcy was just driving home a point. Anne took his hand and kissed his knuckles, tucking a stray lock of hair behind his ear.
“Hey, handsome, will you look at me?” she purred.
A smile finally lit his face. “That is so not fair.”
“It worked, though.” She intertwined their fingers. “You don’t have to keep this to yourself. We know you don’t like to worry us, but we would rather know when these things happen so we can keep track of it, just in case it ends up being something else one of these days. Okay?”
He squeezed her hand in reply. Sharing a smile with her as she pressed their foreheads together, he finally let himself relax under Marcy’s hands. They moved to straddle his hips and pushed his tank top up, switching between working the stress out of his muscles and rubbing slow circles over his skin. Just when the pain was almost gone, they swiped their hand across the bottom of his scar.
He bristled. They withdrew immediately, putting their hands up. Anne kissed his forehead as he took a deep breath.
“I’m okay,” he promised.
“You’re sure?” Marcy asked.
“Yeah, Mars, I’m good. Will you keep going, please?”
Marcy’s hands returned to his back. Placing one hand beneath his shoulder blade to ground him, they ran the other in one slow, smooth, unbroken line all the way up the scar, pausing at the top, and then coming back down again. He closed his eyes as their touch chased all the pain from him, knowing that he was safe and loved and cared for just having Anne gripping his hand and Marcy tracing the length of his spine. For a moment, part of him felt as though the scar were being washed away under their touch, and all the hurt and bad memories with it.
After a few passes, he shifted his arm back, and Marcy knew that was their cue to stop. Fixing his shirt, they leaned forward and pressed a kiss to the top of his spine. They reared back the next second. They made a face as they scrubbed their mouth on the back of their arm.
“Ah, okay, bad idea,” they spat. “I just got Tiger Balm in my mouth.”
Anne and Sasha burst out laughing. Pushing himself up, Sasha flipped Marcy with a yelp and flopped on top of them. He grinned as they giggled uncontrollably, wrapping their arms around him as he buried his face in the crook of their neck.
“Sash, let me go wash my hands!”
“Aw, I don’t want to get up, though.”
“I’m gonna put it in your hair.”
“Ugh, fine.”
He rolled off to let them up. They kissed his cheek before grabbing the jar of Tiger Balm and heading for the bathroom. Anne took their place, and he curled up on her chest, arms settled around her. She scratched lightly behind his ear as he melted into her embrace, tracing the scar on his cheek, drawing little hearts on his shoulder.
“Feel better?” she asked.
“Yeah. A lot better,” he sighed. “I’m sorry I woke you guys up. I know we’ve all got work early-”
Marcy flicked water on him and Anne. “None of that.”
He laughed as Anne wiped the droplets off her face. “Marbles, you got that more on me than on him.”
“Okay, I’ll get a cup of water and throw it on him.”
“Get in here already, you nerd.”
Anne and Sasha caught Marcy’s wrists and pulled them into bed. Anne leaned back with Sasha laying on her chest, and Marcy cuddled up to her side, bumping their nose against her cheek. They smiled down at Sasha as they traced his lower lip with their thumb.
“You’re going to tell us when this happens, right?” they asked.
“I will.”
“And you’ll wake us up if it happens in the middle of the night like this again?”
“I will. Promise.”
“Good. We love you, Sasha.”
“You guys are the best thing to ever happen to me.”
Neither of them responded. He tensed, wondering if he had said something out of line somehow or maybe a little weird, but when he lifted his head, he found himself looking into two grinning faces overflowing with unconditional love and warmth. Both had tears in their eyes as they cupped his cheeks. His face grew hot.
“What?” he demanded. Anne and Marcy shared a look and broke out laughing. “What!”
Marcy leaned down to kiss his cheek as Anne went on giggling. “Feeling’s mutual, Sashy. We love you.”
“I love you, too.”
“Get some sleep, okay?” said Anne. “And wake us up if you need us.”
Sasha nodded. He settled comfortably in their arms as Anne turned off the light, leaning into Marcy’s hand as they played idly with his hair. He drifted off knowing that, in that little scene, all of them tangled up in each other, safe and connected in a warm embrace, he had spoken the most honest sentence of his life.
Their love was the best thing to ever happen to him.