Chapter Text
"Sashy? Hey Sash you don't have any appointments today do you?"
Sasha groaned as her eyes rolled open, taking in the long haired girl leaning over her, shaking her slightly. "Marcy? What time is it? Wait, what day is it?" Sasha peered past her friend, realizing she was not in fact in her bed as she should be, but in the living room on the couch.
"Uh, it's Monday, a little after Ten in the morning, are you okay."
Sasha stood up with a groan, a blanket that wasn't her own sliding down her body. "No, no, I have Mondays off."
"That's good" Marcy said smiling, before taking a seat on the cushion Sasha just sat up from.
"So, did you wake me just to take my spot?"
"N-no, I was worried about you missing an alarm or something since you weren't in your room."
"I never put any back if I have to work the next day" Sasha said, referring to the empty bottles making residence on the coffee table. Marcy nodded, and let out a slight yelp as Sasha lowered herself back onto the girls lap.
"S-so" Marcy began "Do you often pick a couch over your bed?" She asked, hoping to pull the story from the still groggy blonde.
Sasha took a minute to wipe the sleep from her eyes before responding. "Nah, I was just doing some casual drinking on my own, guess I had a little too much."
"What's the occasion? '' Marcy joked, a bit of concern breaking through the question. Surely it didn't have anything to do with Marcy, with what they discussed the night before, at least she hoped not.
"No occasion, just wanted to have a few" Sasha replied, opening a single eye and taking in the nervous state of the girl. "You okay Marce?"
"You uh…" Marcy started with a nervous chuckle, struggling to get out the words. She was trying to be more open with them, she could ask this. Even more than that, she needed to know if opening up was the wrong choice. "You weren't drinking because of last night, were you?"
A look of confusion passed across Sasha's face, how would Marcy know about… It hit her suddenly. "No, no, Marcy, I wasn’t drinking because of what you told us, I was just…” Sasha found herself conflicted. She didn’t want to talk about high school, she didn’t want to talk about amphibia, she… she knew better, hell maybe they all did. She wanted them to talk about what was troubling them, the past or the present, so that it didn’t turn into a problem like it had for them in the past, like she knew hiding from your feelings, from your problems did, but in the back of her mind a worry rang out over her sense, her years in psychology. This wasn’t perfect, but it would be better to have something imperfect than nothing. That’s what she was really afraid of after all, losing them. She was afraid in amphibia after toad tower fell, she was afraid when they returned and Marcy had to leave, she was afraid in high school when it finally did fall apart on her, and she was afraid now that they’d finally made their way into each other’s lives again it would all come crashing down. Sasha glanced over to the bottles, and back up to the worried look on her friend's face. Sasha was lost in thought for too long, Marcy surely knew something was wrong. She couldn’t keep this up forever, and if who she was drove them away, maybe that was what was best for them.
“Hey uh, Sash, you okay?” Marcy questioned as the blonde looked up, past her and to the ceiling. It had felt like ages since Sasha let her response trail off but realistically couldn’t have been more than a minute. Sasha’s eyes focused in, and up on Marcy’s face though her blank expression remained the same otherwise. After another moment she sighed and began speaking.
“Alright, so, last night after you went to work on your comic me and Anne wound up talking for a bit.” Marcy’s pulse quickened immediately but she didn’t speak a word, letting her friend who was looking past her yet again continue. “Anne asked me if I was alright, if I was… struggling with anything from back then.’ Sasha picked her words carefully, doing her best to keep her emotions in check. She’d always had trouble with that. “I said, of course we’d all been through a lot, but I thought I was handling myself alright.”
A moment passed. “Are you?” Marcy asked. Sasha sat silent for a moment before responding.
“It was a lot Marcy.” Marcy flinched slightly. “It was good, and it was bad, and it meant so much to us, means so much to us still. I don’t know where i’d be, who i’d be without it all, but…”
“But?”
“I miss Grimes, for all his rough edges he wound up a better parent than what i’v got back here. He’d say it was all my influence but” She chuckled at the thought “Somehow we wound up making each other better, and I never got to say goodbye to Percy and Braddock, never got to patch that up like I did with you two.” The names were only vaguely familiar to Marcy, they never really talked a lot about amphibia after they got back, maybe something lighthearted, usually to do with the plantars or their short time in wartwood, always a happy memory, which seemed in shorter supply for them than Anne. “And… and we fought a war, an actual war with someone who wanted us dead.”
Sasha’s calm demeanor was slipping now, the sadness and rage making their way back into her voice with a tremble as she continued. “And the most fucked up part? He succeeded.” Tears were beginning to fall now down Sasha’s face and onto Marcy’s pajamas. “I had to watch you die. We both had to watch Anne die.” Sasha pulled herself up from the stunned Marcy’s lap, arms wrapped around herself as she faced away. “Maybe it didn’t take but I lost both of you and it could have been forever.”
Marcy sat stunned for a moment, listening to Sasha’s light sobs nearby. What could she say, after all, that was all her fault wasn’t it? In an instant her mind was running a million miles a second. She brought them all there, she went behind there back to talk to Andrias, she got stabbed because she wasn’t paying attention, heck you could even argue if she hadn’t found the temples they may have been able to stop the moon without Anne’s sacrifice. Marcy closed her eyes tight, it didn’t matter, this wasn’t helping, she needed to focus on Sasha. Slowly she set a hand down on her shoulder. "I'm so sorry Sasha, you shouldn't have had t-"
Immediately Sasha turned, moving to embrace her friend, sobbing into her shoulder. Marcy sat stunned again, before tightly returning the embrace. "We're all okay now Sash" Marcy said softly as she held on tight.
After a moment Sasha pulled away, sniffling still. She looked to the floor as she began to speak again. “It's not just that Marce. After you moved, we all, grew apart… I made new friends, I have those friends still but, I missed you both. I don’t want you guys to leave again.” Saying this she chuckled for a moment “Like it matters what I want.”
“It matters to me.” Sasha turned to look at Marcy, staring at her, a deep sympathy and sadness in her own eyes. “I know, how scary it can be, to think you’ll be alone, but that’s also why I can tell you i’m here because I want to be.” Slowly Marcy reached out and took one of Sasha’s hand, stroking it lightly. “That’s why I can tell you i’m so happy to have you in my life again.”
Sasha furrowed her brow, watching her hand in Marcy’s. “What about high school.” She didn’t want to bring it up, that feeling of abandonment she’d felt from them both, but either out of desperation or spite her lips moved on their own.
Marcy didn’t flinch away, though her eye’s lowered to their now interlocking fingers as she thought back. She was much too far in to back out now, and this was much too important. “I was distant in high school because, I felt like, I didn’t deserve the chance that you two gave me. I, really messed up back then and I just, I thought i should at least give you both the opportunity to bow out, have your lives without me in it.”
“Well you should have asked” Sasha nearly shouted, her emotions taking control “You should have trusted our decision to keep you in our lives.”
“Yeah” Marcy responded, her voice still calm with hints of sorrow “I can see that, it just took me a while to, and this kind of hammered it home, but sasha don’t you think you have to say the same for you.”
Sasha stayed silent, her emotions boiling over her, anger, sadness, regret, and behind it all Sasha desperately trying to pull herself back, think clearly about this. Instead all she could think of is,that her situation was different.
“I know you think it's different because it’s you, right?” Marcy asked, still holding Sasha’s hand. “It isn’t Sasha, and I won’t make you ask, I want you hear, if you’ll still have me.”
Sasha’s eyes flew open, and her mind began to clear. She pulled Marcy’s hand to her forehead, still unable to look up to her. “Of course I want you here, dummy.” Her voice broke with the emotions behind it, but even now it was starting to settle. “You make my life better by being in it, with all of your nerd tal and clumsiness. Nothing you’ve done could take away from who you are, Marmar.”
“Sash…” Marcy could feel her own emotions welling up. What she’d been keeping down out of guilt or obligation wellin to the surface. She squeezed her eyes shut, slowly moving her own head against their intertwined hands. “I love you, thank you for being in my life.”