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The bright white neon lights wash over the gray-stained tiles of her school hallway, where her soles squeak against it as she urges her legs to run faster. Beneath the crackling of the school’s announcement speaker and the constant buzzing of fluorescents that’s tipping her towards her breaking point, Marcy is running with all her impaired lungs could take and tries to suck it all in before she could get to the safety of the girls’ bathroom stalls.
She hits the paint-chipped blue door open with her whole body, practically throwing herself into the bathroom as she breathes out her shaky breaths and whimpers. Her fingers’ gone numb and cold, and each cell in her brain is screaming danger danger danger and she needs something warm and soft and alive to hold, remind her that she is, too, alive and well—but when she throws herself against the bathroom sink for support, all she feels is the smooth edges of the tiles and how cold they are, how stiff, how dead—
She looks up abruptly and sees a girl with red eyes and tear-stained eyes, disheveled hair, and even worse uniform.
But not ten ten fiery glowing eyes staring back at her. No dark suit and thorned helmets, no sharp glints on inhumanely sharp canines. She’s Marcy Wu, safe and in control.
Or, well, the most she could ever be, anyway.
Her trembling fingers reached for the phone safely nestled inside her skirt pocket—she manages to navigate all the way to the phone through blurry visions, tears brimming in her eyes as she bites her lip and holds them back, refusing to lose—ignoring Anne’s profile on the very top of the list like always because she’s Marcy Wu and she’s ruined Anne’s life enough already. It’s a silent promise she made herself swear the first time she steps into the gates of this godforsaken school again, and the promise she made herself swear every day since. Ignoring the burning glances the brunette gave her and the mini heart-attacks every time she sees the familiar curls of her hair at the end of the hallway, the back of the class, the corner of the school field.
Anne has enough of her shit for a lifetime. Of that she’s sure of.
She focuses on one breath at a time and shuts her eyes closed, tight enough to not let a tear slip, gritted teeth bracing herself upon the long overdue meltdown.
It’s the way that Marcy calls for her that sends her brain into fight or flight before she could understand what was going on.
It’s the way Marcy calls for her—small stuttered voice calling her name like she was her only beacon of hope—that sends her numb legs running before she could even reply back to her, flashes of scenes hurtling into her brain and she’s forced to watch it all unfold in her head all over again.
“ Where?” Was the only thing she could stutter back, breaths wheezing as she kept on running forward without a sense of direction.
“ Bathroom ,” Marcy replies, small and timid as ever, accompanied with muffled sobs.
It was all that repeated in her head as she ran through the once familiar, monotonous hallway of the school before her body slammed against the bathroom door with too much force, sending its hinges creaking against its breaking point. She sees Marcy’s figure curled into herself in the corner of the bathroom, and all she could think of is not her not her not her. It’s the very same sight that her head reminds her of every day and night, the way that… being, faltering when she calls Marcy’s name with strained, desperate breaths; curling its body into itself as it fights Marcy inside her own head.
And Marcy had won; it’s a tale as old as time. But the question has never failed to linger—what happens if she hadn’t?
It’s the scene her head has been playing in her nightmares ever since.
Now, Sasha shuts her eyes so firmly until it hurts—but the pain is good. The pain tugs herself back into her head, back in control; she has Marcy to take care of, Marcy to soothe, to tell that everything’s okay even if it isn’t. So she moves forward, hesitant and careful, hands drawn in front of her as if she’s approaching a wild animal, as if she’s expecting Marcy to lunge towards her with bared teeth any time now.
Marcy doesn’t. Of course she doesn’t.
Instead, she flinches at the slightest touch, her whole body trembling, bitten lip muffling the sobs trying to rip out of her chest. She looks up for a split second to let Sasha see her bloodshot eyes like a confirmation—that her eyes are tinted red and brimming with tears but they’re brown regardless, that she’s Marcy.
And Sasha trusts her. Sasha will trust her even if she isn’t.
Those words were what she repeats in her head as she tugs Marcy closer into her arms and try to coax Marcy’s fingers to stop pulling on her hair—that she’s Marcy Marcy Marcy, you’re okay, you’re Marcy, spoken out in soft shushes before she could even realize that she doesn’t know what she’s doing. Because she’s not Anne and she can’t be Anne and she will never be Anne, her hands are made to fight battles and bloodshed and not—
—Goosebumps were lining up her skin before she heard it; footsteps, chattering, laughter, and then her heart leaping to her throat as the bathroom door slams open and makes a loud bang sound against the wall.
The chattering dies down abruptly, a split-second of silence before it's replaced with quiet murmurs, and then she feels Marcy’s fingers tighten on her school sweater as if silently asking her to protect her.
That sets her off.
“What are you looking at?” She turns back and snarls before the little clique gathering around them could have a chance to explain themselves, hostile and angry because it’s all she ever knows how to be.
A girl steps up, eyebrows furrowed. “We—we wanted to know if you’re…okay?”
Once upon a time, Sasha would know her way enough to tell the difference between genuine and insincere, but everything has changed her and now all she could see is red, like a cornered wolf. “We’re fine. Go—go away.”
“She doesn’t look fine—”
“Are you sure you’re—”
“Should we call a teacher—”
“ No!” She yells at them, because there’s too many hands touching at what they don’t know a single bit of and she doesn’t need more of them, standing up to shelter Marcy like a cat arching its back as it hisses— “I said leave us alone!”
“Dude,” Another girl deadpans, now sounding rather truly annoyed, “we’re just trying to help—”
“We don’t need your help!”
“Well Marcy looks like she needs better help than yours, so—”
It happens too fast—a hand reaching out towards Marcy, her head screaming danger danger danger, everything she sees is all read and she’s yanking the hand away before it could touch Marcy, before Marcy could even brace herself. Sasha doubts that she still has her gem powers despite the music box being confined in the safety of Anne’s scientist friend’s lab, but the way fire burns in her veins like rivers of flame, flowing into the tips of her packed knuckles; the way that all she sees is red, this is what you’re born for, Strength. This is all you are worth for, and this is all you will ever be—
The bathroom door swings open once again. A split-second of chatters from the hallway anchoring her back from her maddened rage before the still silence replaces the air between them once again as the door awkwardly swings back closed on its creaking hinges, a squeak of halted footsteps—
“What the fuck, Sasha?”
She doesn't remember anything next . Only the part where everything feels numb and she feels like she’s back in ground zero again, back before her return to Wartwood, back before the rebellion army, before the battle that tore her eye as a reminder. A reminder that she’s changed, a reminder that she has to. That she doesn’t want to be the same girl who was blinded by the false promise of glory, of legions who will bow at her command, of a world where she and Marcy and Anne will never have to be hurt ever again because they’re in control and so they’ll be okay—a little girl’s fairytale.
It was all she has ever truly wanted.
She remembers slamming a door, just like her mother had because that’s how Waybrights are and she’s doomed from the start, she always has been. Between the cold tiles of the bathroom walls, her shaky sobs, the trembling of her body—she just hopes that Anne could give Marcy better. They deserved that much, at least.
A hazy shadow casts against the bright tiles below the gap of the cubicle door, and she flinches away with an escaped gasp, swallowing back the escaped sob that tore out of her chest. A hand carefully reaches out between the gap, fingers wiggling welcomingly like a child inviting her to play together in the park. Not a hand knocking harshly on the door, asking her where she is and what she’s doing there and how they’ll be late to wherever and oh what a scaredy-cat you are—
“Sash?” A quiet voice. Shoe soles scraping against the grimy floor. “ Hey . Can you hold my hand?”
Her words were composed. Gentle, yet firm, reminding her of the promise she swore under the scarlet hue of the moon— promise me you won’t let go of my hand ever again. They hadn’t looked at each other then and they don't look at each other now, but Sasha doesn’t say no to her. She doesn’t think she ever could anymore.
It’s a promise she’s always dreamt of fulfilling ever since. To have a hand to hold. A hand to not let go of.
So, Sasha reaches out to hold her. Anne shifts her hand so she could intertwine their fingers between each others’, soft and warm, letting out gentle squeezes from time to time as if to reassure her; I won’t let you go again, either.
“I’m sorry.”
“I know you are,” Anne says, still firm at first, but her voice softens at her short facade because who is she kidding? “But I’m not angry. I understand.”
She feels herself getting anchored back into her body with each stroke of Anne’s thumb on the back of her hand, as if mulling over each scar marring her skin. “C’mon. Let’s get you out of there.”
Sasha lets go of Anne’s hand for another split-second to open the cubicle door with a sharp click, letting it swing open awkwardly as it reveals Anne’s figure standing in front of her, Marcy clutching her hand behind her like it’s her lifeline. It feels like drawing a breath of fresh air when her hand intertwines with Anne’s again, like little kids skipping on the ice-cream stained sidewalk—Anne gently tugs her forward, out of the safety of the tiny bathroom cubicle, but Anne has always meant safety to her and Sasha thinks she might start thinking of her like it again. Of her as warmth and safety instead of all her mistakes and regrets and all the amends she never had the chance to make.
“Right,” Anne huffs out, squeezing both of her girls’ hands tightly before she gently leads them out of the bathroom, like a gleaming beacon of hope, “let’s get ourselves out of here. Don’t know about you guys, but I know I’ve had enough of school for a week.”
She glances back at the two of them before she takes another step forward, as if asking for permission—and Sasha takes it. Her hand, her warmth, whole.
She doesn't think she’ll ever let it go again.
Anne takes them to Thai Go instead.
If she ever knows one thing for sure about Marcy and Sasha, as unstable as they are, is that they could be so wallowed in their own guilt, so hard on themselves for all the wrong reasons—and that they definitely hadn’t been eating right for the week. She could see it from the corner of her stolen glances at lunch, Marcy barely touching her noodles and reading a book as a distraction instead. She’s never even seen Sasha in the cafeteria since they got back to school at all. It’s a bit funny, actually, all of this hide and seek—every time she caught a glimpse of them it’s like they’re trying to run away from her, trying to hide before she finds them, like they didn’t want her to tell them that they still want them despite everything.
Sometimes, Anne thinks if it’s the other way around—if it’s them that doesn’t want her instead, putting all her good-person complexity aside. But Sasha and Marcy hadn’t let go of her hands the whole time she had practically snuck them out of school and dragged them all the way across the city to Thai Go, and she tries to take it as a good sign.
The front door jingles too loudly against the silence that she’s been carrying along when they stepped inside, their halted footsteps squeaking against the freshly-mopped floor. The restaurant was relatively empty after the lunch rush hours, save for the mountain of dirty pans and pots piling up on the sink, and her mother looks up from her place on the counter to give them that look, which she still doesn’t know if it means good or bad even after years of being her mother’s daughter.
“It was me,” Anne tells her before her mother could say anything, gently tugging Marcy and Sasha behind her as a feeble attempt at trying to protect them. “ I made them skip school, please—please be mad at me.”
Her plea don't soften the look on her mother’s face—instead, her mother walks around the counter and over to their place near the entrance, footsteps echoing against the empty restaurant, and she could feel her friends visibly cowering behind them, Sasha’s hand squirming inside hers as if she wants to yank her hand away and run out the door. “Yes, I’ve figured out as much, Anne.”
Anne winces.
“I excused you three from school today when they called and told them you all got a bug from a sleepover.”
Her eyes widened. “You did?”
Her mother raises her eyebrows. “Would you rather I didn’t?”
“No,” she recoils. “Thank you. And… I’m sorry.”
“This is going to be the last time you three will do something like this again,” Her mother says, all stern and final, “understood?”
There’s a chorus of murmured yes mom and yes Mrs. B, along with a split-second of Anne thinking that maybe it was a bad idea that she brought them here, maybe she’s made things even worse and maybe this isn’t a safe place anymore, everything’s changed and she should’ve known that, and maybe she should let go of Sasha’s hand because what does she deserve anymore—
—And then her mother’s face softens, shoulders sinking out of her facade, a hand reaching out to hold them with a gentle smile on her face. “Alright, you three look like the saddest puppies I’ve ever seen. Come, sit down, I have some leftover soup from lunch.”
Anne almost has to drag her reluctant friends towards the round table near the counter, tugging them gently to follow her while her mother walks over to the kitchen with a lighter atmosphere around her, clearing the thick air that they had been carrying along.
Sasha sits down and finally lets go of her hand, quick and afraid like her touch burns, and it’s not fair, Anne thinks, but she’s still not sure she still deserves anything anymore. Maybe Sasha isn’t sure, either. She watches Sasha fiddling with the hems of her skirt instead, keeping her head down instead of happily chattering about the latest school gossip with her mother like she would before—but she’s here, now, they all are; everything’s changed, and she doesn’t know how to deal with that. All Anne ever wants to do now is to tear the fabric of space to go back , back where Sasha’s laughing away the burden weighing down her shoulders and Marcy’s tapping her hand noisily at the plastic lining of the table with a smile on her face but now Sasha looks like she’s seconds away from fleeing the space on her side and Marcy’s tugging on her hair like she’s trying to rip them off—
“—o-oh, Marcy, sweetheart, don’t— Anne ,” Her mother’s voice shakes her back to her surroundings, nudging her head towards Marcy with a concerned expression before disappearing into the break room. She turns to Marcy’s side at that, scooting closer towards her, and remembers—
The first time she did this was in a sunlit park.
Watching Marcy crumble into herself, head pressed against her knees, small fingers buried in her hair as she trembles with sobs too big for her little body to contain. Anne remembers carefully scooting her chair over to her side, gently prying her fingers off her hair, coaxing her to breathe. It’s what she does now, too, mirrored to its core, practiced over and over throughout the years, wrapping Marcy’s body and squeezing out all the tremors out of her like it would fix everything. The little girl hunched over Marcy’s body in the park still hopes so, at least.
“Marcy, sweetie,” Her mother’s voice greets them again, soothing and calm, and she hears the soft whispers of sand against quilt placed on Marcy’s lap, “would you like to hold him? He's a little stuffed dog named Paddie. Short for pad thai, because it used to be Anne’s favorite food when she was little,” her mother tells her with a pouted smile, “now it’s just bubble tea.”
That earns a slight smile out of Marcy even as it disappeared fast, far drowned in her discomfort. Her shaky hand hesitantly reached down to feel the floppy felt ear of the dog, running her thumb along its fur, and she breathed out another shaky breath as she hunches herself down yet again, pressing her face against the stuffed dog, her stiff frames slowly easing.
“You know,” her mother continues, her fingers gently running along her hair to smooth it out, “I filled them with sand to keep Anne calm while I was working at the restaurant when she was little. If Paddie didn’t exist, we would not have a restaurant by now.”
That earns a small laugh out of both Marcy and Sasha—Anne pretends to put a look of indignance on her face, scoffing as she made a sound of complaint, but a smile was tugging on the corner of her lips—at least she knows that embarrassing stories about her childhood would still make her girls laugh. It’s a small beacon of hope that tells her maybe, maybe they haven’t changed past the point of no return after all. Maybe there was still space to make amends, to set things right. That she’s not too late. At least she hopes, hopes, hopes she isn’t.
There's a steaming bowl of soup placed in front of her before she could finish hoping; her mother gently tilting her jaw to press a kiss on her cheek, telling her to eat in Thai. Her mother rubbing Marcy's back and murmuring to her that she should have a little whenever she's ready, no rush. Her mother sitting down beside Sasha to whisper "I put extra shrimp in yours, but don't tell Anne and Marcy,"—which made them both giggle out of the sheer surprise of it all.
"Hey, I heard that!" Anne exclaims with a sideways smile, watching her mother reaching out a hand to stroke Sasha's now short, choppy hair and wonders if she ever misses it. She knows she does, sometimes.
Her mother raises her eyebrows at her. “Not to out my daughter as a snitch and a lesbian—”
“ Mom—”
“—But Anne’s been telling me you’re not eating lunch at school.”
The way her mother says it never fails to make her swallow thickly and look away—it felt too personal, watching her mother murmur rather sadly instead of disappointed, watching Sasha lean back against her shoulder defeatedly. It felt like prying at something that’s not hers to see.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha murmurs back, an apology that tells them she’s sorry to worry some stranger’s mother more than she’s sorry for herself. Sasha’s never truly sorry for herself.
“Don’t be,” her mother chides gently, “it’s just, you’re a growing girl, you know? Who else am I going to work out with if you’re too weak because you’re not eating well?”
Sasha nods at the small nudge she gives her. “Okay.” A small token of agreement. They’ve been with her long enough to know that it won’t be enough.
“Oh, I’ve missed you,” she sighs softly, tucking the stubborn blonde strands behind Sasha’s ear. “I’ve missed both of you.”
And it was at that moment that Anne realized; when they went missing, her mother hadn’t only lost one daughter—she lost all three.
“You know, I packed Anne extra spring rolls to school for you two,” her mother quickly recovers from the brink of tears, shaking her head as she shifts her gaze towards her own daughter with a teasing smile. “Did she give you any or did she just keep it for herself?”
“I did not!” Anne scoffs again, offended, but with a smile on her face regardless. “It’s just really damn hard to find them these days! It’s like they’re running away from me all the time!”
Sasha cracks a smile from her mother’s shoulders at that. “‘S true, Mrs. B.”
“What am I going to do, chase them down the hall with a tupperware of spring rolls?”
Marcy giggles from her seat, turning her face from the stuffed dog to look at them.
Her mother crouches down to whisper in Sasha's ear. “She’s afraid of you, you know.”
Anne slams her spoon against the rim of the bowl, groaning. “ Mom!”
The corroded ladder creaks under Sasha’s weight as she tries to reach for Anne’s hand, letting the other girl pull her enough so she could climb her way up to Thai Go’s roof.
“C’mon, Mar-mar,” Anne calls, poking her head into the trapdoor that leads back downstairs, and Sasha feels like she could cry. Mar-mar. She hasn’t heard that in a while. Neither Anna-banana. Neither Sashie, nor Sashimi, mashed-up versions of her name as a term of endearment, something she used to take for granted. Something she used to groan at in response, laugh at dismissively. Now, standing right here on the roof of Thai Go, Sasha thinks she wants to hear it a thousand times more.
They helped Marcy climb up together, and it had been easier because she’s way lighter and the way her weight feels like a little kid has always scared them—but Marcy’s face has more colors than she had earlier, the red blossoms on her sunken cheeks returning, somewhat resembling the marigold blooms that used to grow on her backyard—and they try to take it as a good sign, one step at a time.
The space behind the glowing Thai Go sign is sheltered with a striped awning, lined with folding camping chairs and bean bags and fairy lights that they had put up long ago—Anne doesn’t remember when, exactly, yet she still could picture it so clearly; the way Marcy got herself tangled, waddling around with the lights clinking against each other, and the way she hadn’t been tall enough to reach up and hang them so Sasha had to grab her by the waist and stand on her tiptoes to raise her up, and they were laughing and laughing and everything felt okay.
Now, they’re in the future and Sasha has her arms around waist, distancing herself from her as if she’s afraid, and Anne would have laughed at the irony if she could. The sky above them is clouded with rolling gray clouds and uncertainty, and Marcy’s too fucking quiet and she’s never quiet but they’re in the future now, all foreign and changed and turned around.
So she settles herself down on the dusty mat and hopes they do the same; hopes that they could see the past in her eyes and walks over with a smile like they always would, skipping their way over, plops down with their body against hers as she makes a noise of complaint.
Now, Marcy and Sasha did none of those things—but they do sit down, keeping a respectful distance from her like she’s a stranger. Not Anne. Not the Anne they knew of. That Anne is over with, dead and gone, left in the past without a chance of returning—but so are they. So is the world around them. Her head spins with the jumbled up words and her tongue is aching for something to say, anything at all, are you really gone and can we please go back to when we were happy and are we still friends—
“Do you guys miss Amphibia?”
Her question was met with silence, at first.
And then Sasha shifts beside her and answers, "sometimes." She's leaning on the leg that’s drawn against her chest, playing around with a scabbed cut on her knee. “I miss Grime. And Wartwood. I never had something to miss before.” She finally turns to her, head on her knee, cloudy blue eyes gazing right into hers. “Do you miss Bangkok?”
“Yeah,” Anne tries to swallow back her smile, because they’re talking, they’re finally talking after six weeks of excruciating silence and god Anne please don’t make this weird— “I guess I do, sometimes. When my mom and dad talk about their childhood there, it’s like I’m yearning for something I’ve never even had. Does…” she shrugs awkwardly at her, “does that make sense?”
Sasha gives her a small smile. “Yeah. I think it does.”
She turns to the silent girl on her other side. “What about you, Mar-mar? Do you ever miss Tamsui?”
Marcy mimics her shrug, holding out her right index and makes an oval shape against her palm twice. Sometimes.
“I see,” Anne hums at the same time Marcy points at Sasha, wordlessly asking, you?
“I…” Sasha thinks about it for a while, a frown growing on her face. “I’ve never really been to… I don’t know. My dad rarely ever mentions Germany anymore. He used to—he used to tell me that we moved to America so I can be American so I have to act like it.”
Anne winces. “I’m… sorry.”
“It’s not… ‘s not all that bad, I guess,” she shrugs half-heartedly. “My mom… I remembered when I was little, it was summer, and she took me back to this small town in Russia. It was summer there too, but it was cold, and I think there was a—a funeral. There’s this big church with pews that smelled like glue and there’s sparkly tinted glass paintings on the windows and for some reason all the clocks are stopped. There’s… people circling a casket filled with flowers and I think that was the only time I’ve ever gone anywhere.”
Sasha looks up, and Anne feels her chest hurt with her. Her voice was small when she asked them, “can you miss somewhere you’ve only been to once?”
“Yeah,” Anne replies softly, “I think you can. How else would we miss the past?”
She shifts to raise a hand over her mouth, trying to fight it off—the need to hear Sasha's voice again, telling them stories, the urge to pull them both into her arms and let them lean on her, run her fingers between their hair—but can’t. Her cheeks are warm and flushed red, feeling herself slipping deeper into a place that keeps calling her name. It feels something like desire. It feels all too familiar. "I’d like us to not be something of the past,” she murmurs, her arms empty and open and wanting . “I want my future to have you two in it. Would that be… okay?”
“I’d like that too, I think," Sasha replies softly, "if you'd have me.”
“I’d always have you," Her voice breaks with a sob, but Sasha is scooting over before the tears fully tip over; Marcy follows her suit, settling her head on her lap like she always would way before—except that she's here, now, they both are; tucked under the safety of her arms and she doesn't think she'll ever need anything else.
The humid wind bristles its way through some faraway branches, carrying the message of rain, and the city noises drowns into muffled nothingness all around them. No pasts to mull over, no futures to worry about. Just the waves of Marcy's hair and the soft isle of Sasha's palm pressing against her in a way that tells her I won't let you go.
Marcy holds out her thumb and pinkie and presses them against her chest twice, and it felt like more words than enough to fill the Sasha and Marcy shaped void in her chest.
Me too.