Chapter Text
Marcy’s last moments had not been pleasant ones.
She’d looked down at the fiery sword protruding from her chest and knew this wasn’t something she’d recover from, that this was it. As she apologized to Anne and collapsed, she thought that would be the end of it, but dying was a lot slower than she anticipated.
As her vision blurred and her limbs grew numb, she watched as Sasha rushed over to her, screaming something she couldn’t hear. She tried to reach out to her and say something, anything, but all she managed was wheezing and gurgling as blood poured from her mouth.
This isn’t fair, Marcy thought. In all the books she’d read, dying people always got some dramatic or meaningful last words. Marcy certainly didn’t want her last words to be apologizing for the actions that had left her laying on the floor twitching in a pool of her own blood in the first place.
Guess people don’t always get what they want, she thought as the world grew black.
All in all it was a 0/10 death, she did not recommend.
And then she woke up in a white void with a wooden desk and chair in the middle, and all Marcy could think was I did not see that one coming.
Unsure of what she was supposed to be doing, she sat up and examined the frog-like carvings on the desk’s wood. As she reached out to touch it, the room seemed to ripple, and a tall red amphibian in a top hat and suit appeared, clutching a cane.
They waved the cane, and a chair appeared in front of the desk. “Have a seat, Marcy Wu.”
This must be Amphibia’s version of the Grim Reaper, she thought as she sat.
“Are you aware that you are dead, Ms. Wu?”
She nodded stiffly, and the amphibian grimaced. “It’s always a pity to see young ones here before their time. I’m talking to you today because I’m in a bit of a conundrum regarding your death, miss. You should be in the human realm’s afterlife, but you didn’t die there. It’s going to take Death checking his inter-dimensional mail, which is even rarer than a human dying here in the first place. Of course, the simplest option would just be sending you to our afterlife but…” They shrugged.
Marcy fiddled with her hands, absorbing the information and considering her options. “Is there any way I could go back to Amphibia somehow?”
Seeing the amphibian’s raised eyebrow, she hastily clarified, “I don’t mean coming back to life or anything! I was just wondering if I could...be a ghost or something? I still have lots of unfinished business, after all.”
“I suppose it’d be less unusual than sending you to the Amphibian afterlife. Good luck in your endeavors, young lady.”
They snapped their fingers, and the world dissolved.
When Marcy awoke again, she didn’t realize at first why she’d respawned in a random field. But then she spotted Sasha in the distance, carrying her body.
At the sight of her, Marcy felt a flash of pain followed by determination. She had to make things right.
_____________________________________________________________
Sasha felt numb.
Her entire body ached from the fight with Andrias, and her arms ached from carrying Marcy’s corpse for such a long distance. Blood soaked through her wound onto Sasha’s arms, and after a while the smell felt sickening. But the physical pain was almost a welcome distraction from the turmoil in her brain.
Every time there was a lull in her thoughts, the events of the day began to play on repeat in her head. Marcy’s last pained gurgles in particular haunted her; she’d been trying to say something, but Sasha would never know what.
Grime had been silent for most of their walk, but as they reached the edge of Newtopia, he spoke.
“We should rest, Lieutenant. It’s getting late, and we need to talk.”
Sasha did not particularly feel like talking, but she sat anyway.
“Firstly, we need to figure out what our game plan is after the disastrous results of the rebellion and...everything else.”
“I know that at some point we have to fucking eviscerate that blue bastard,” Sasha growled. But how’re we gonna accomplish that when half of our army’s been blown up, the rest have probably been captured, and- and…”
“And your friend is dead,” he said with surprising gentleness. “We’ll only be able to give her a proper burial at Wartwood, I’m afraid. I don’t know how humans honor their dead, but I know some old toad rituals; hopefully Wartwood has the available material for a funeral pyre. Until then, I can try and see if I can find something to keep her body safe in Newtopia.”
Oh right. She’s...she’s gonna start decomposing soon. Because that’s, yknow. A thing that corpses do. And she’s a corpse now.
After she continued staring into space without responding, Grime turned to her. “Do you want to talk about it, Lieutenant?”
“I just...I don’t understand,” Sasha whispered. “24 hours ago the thing I’m holding was a living, breathing person! 24 hours ago, everything was great, the future seemed so bright...how did it all go so wrong?”
Grime sighed deeply. “War is a cruel thing, Sasha. Things can change faster than you ever think. I was just about your age when I first lost a friend in battle. They told us that it was dangerous, and though I thought I’d mentally braced myself, nothing really prepares you for just how devastating it feels. I’m headed to Newtopia now, but if there’s anything else I can do to help you just let me know.”
Sasha lay down on the wiry grass and listened to his footsteps recede. She turned to the corpse laying next to her and stared into its blank eyes, and tried to wrap her head around the concept of never again listening to Marcy ramble about something inane, or getting one of her enthusiastic hugs, or telling her she loved her and watching her face light up like a Christmas tree. I can’t. I refuse to just let her go, there has to be something I can do! Marcy had that one frog friend with the zombie...
She was snapped out of her pondering when a sudden, fiercely chilly breeze began to swirl around her and a moth fluttered onto her nose. She raised her arm to swat it away, but froze when she heard an achingly familiar voice call out.
“Sasha? Can you hear me?”
Sasha stood up on unsteady legs and rushed towards the source of the voice. In the forest gloom, she could just barely make out Marcy. The rational part of her whispered that there was no way that was actually her, considering her corpse was only a couple feet away, but that was drowned out by the rest of her brain as she ran towards her.
“Oh Marce, you have no idea how good it is to see youuuuuuuuuu?”
Sasha felt a rush of cold air as she realized she’d run straight through her. She turned to look at Marcy again, and she realized something wasn’t quite right. She was see-through, fading at the edges, and her eyes had turned entirely black except for a white dot in the center. Worst of all was the ragged bloody hole in the middle of her chest.
“...Are you a ghost?”
Marcy nodded.
“FUCK!”
Marcy tilted her head like a confused puppy. “Not sure why that’s so surprising. I mean, you were there. You saw me die and everything.”
Glancing behind herself and floating closer to where her body lay crumpled on the forest floor, she commented, “You’ve even been dragging around my cadaver, dude. Also, this is slightly off topic but staring at your own corpse is the most unsettling thing ever.”
“Not as unsettling as your dead girlfriend coming back to haunt you and then acting like nothing’s wrong. How’re you being so nonchalant about this?”
"Oh, you just missed the first couple hours of me breaking down," Marcy said matter-of-factly. "One of the great things about being dead is you can be as loudly mentally ill as you want and nobody can hear you."
"I can hear you."
"You hear me being mentally ill all the time. Nothing new there.”
Despite herself, Sasha began to giggle, and after a moment Marcy did too.
Suddenly, Sasha stiffened as she heard rustling in the undergrowth, but relaxed as she realized it was just Grime; he was dragging a wagon full of ice behind him with a puzzled and almost fearful expression on his face.
“Who’re you talking to, Sasha?”
“Oh, just Mar-- I mean. Nobody.”
Grime’s face grew taut with horror. “Oh no. This is how it starts.”
“How what starts?” Sasha asked.
“Oh boy, lore!” Marcy said eagerly.
“I never used to believe in the dolor comedenti, ” he whispered. “I thought they were made up by the older toads to scare us tadpoles. Until two weeks after my first battle. Since then I’ve seen it happen time and time again. Someone will lose a person close to them, and then they start talking to themselves, speaking of their loved ones returning. After that they disappear.”
Grime turned to Sasha. “I’ve found some of the bodies, but not all of them. They aren’t pretty. I’m worried for you, Lieutenant.”
“Oh!” Marcy said, looking faintly disturbed.
Sasha’s gaze slid to Marcy warily, and the ghost snorted.
“I am absolutely sure I am not secretly a soul-sucking parasite, Sash. Does this look like a face that can deceive you?”
“It’s a face that can and has deceived me, multiple times.”
“Ok, fair,” Marcy conceded. “How would I go about proving my identity, exactly?”
“What were you trying to say to me before you died?” Sasha asked softly.
Marcy stared at her for a couple moments. “I...I forgot.”
Sasha rolled her eyes. “Alright, that definitely sounds like the real you. How is it that you can remember obscure Vagabondia Chronicles lore but forget words the instant they leave your mouth, you dork?”
“I may be a dork, but I’m your dork.”
Grime watched the half of the exchange that he could hear with a furrowed brow, and resolved to keep a close eye on Sasha over the next couple days. While Sasha was occupied, he placed the human girl’s body inside the ice wagon and closed it, and hoped things would be better in the morning.