Chapter Text
Marcy doesn’t really like to think about the day she died. Or the day she was possessed. She supposes no one would, really – she’s read enough about trauma to know the way it affects the brain, how sometimes being reminded of the events can activate the sympathetic nervous system and make it seem like it’s happening all over again. Trauma is a funny thing. Sometimes, for a few minutes, when she’s hyperfocusing on video games or reading about whatever her obsession of the day is, it’s like nothing ever happened. But other times, it feels like her world is ending for the third time.
For the first few weeks after coming home, it didn’t really seem like that big of a deal. Yeah, Amphibia happened. Yeah, she died. Yeah, she was taken over by a creature straight out of a science fantasy novel for months on end and forced to nearly kill her best friends. But it wasn’t not like she could really remember it – all the memories she had were hazy, far away, like they’d happened to someone else. A different Marcy locked deep in her consciousness.
But her back hurts. And sometimes her legs go numb. And sometimes she can’t walk too well because she either can’t feel her legs or it feels like her back is on fire. So her parents make the wise decision to take her to the doctor. It’s a regular checkup with her pediatrician, just to make sure something isn’t seriously wrong. And she’s fine up until the doctor starts taking her vitals. The moment he comes near her with his stethoscope, her heartbeat quickens and her body tenses up. But she’s fine, it’s fine. It’s just some basic vitals. It’d never been a problem before. So she soldiers on, ignoring her body’s signals as she is wont to do.
She calms down fairly quickly while waiting in the lobby while the doctor talks to her parents– pulling out her Switch as she sits in one of the lobby’s padded chairs. But she can’t help but notice her reflexes are slower as she plays a game she knows like the back of her hand. She feels floaty, detached. And Marcy’s always been a space case. She knows it, her friends know it, her teachers know it, heck, the whole world probably knows it! But this is different. And it’s strange, but it isn’t really a red flag, per se, so she brushes it off.
A few days later, she goes in for her MRI. And all is fine and dandy until she’s in the machine. She tries to stay still. She really does. But her back is aching and the space is so tight and it feels like she is suffocating in there and she needs out she needs out she needs–
“Stay still.”
Things. Kind of go blank after that.
She comes to with her dad holding her down and her mom standing in the corner with tears streaming down her cheeks. Apparently she’d screamed. A lot. And broken the MRI machine. And given the nurse a concussion.
The car ride back to the motel is is tense, silent. And her parents barely talk to her the rest of the night.
It’s scary, that loss of control. But Marcy Wu is anything if not resourceful. She’ll figure it out. She has to.
Right?