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Sasha’s not even fully paying attention to her when it happens the first time.
It’s not like she meant to tune Marcy out. She’s actually been trying much harder now to make her feel included after the disaster that was Darcy , making herself pay attention and actually listen. It’s not even that difficult to do, either, because Marcy has such a pretty voice when she’s rambling, Sasha thinks she could listen to her for forever and not be bored.
Which is part of her newfound problem.
She didn’t meant to tune Marcy out, but Marcy’s rambling about some new forensics fact she had discovered in the class she’s taking, and her nose twitches every time she gestures on the camera. It’s oddly endearing, and Sasha’s eyes have been fixed on the way her nose twitches, and has she always had freckles around her nose? Has Sasha ever noticed?
“Sash?”
Sasha snaps back to attention, her cheeks heating up as she’s blatantly caught in the action of staring a little bit too hard. Marcy’s looking at her so innocently though, like she hadn’t even realized how badly Sasha had been checking her out.
“Sorry, Marsh,” she apologizes, mustering up her best smile that Marcy’s always been able to see right through. “What were you saying?”
Marcy slow blinks at her, and her nose twitches again, and her hair’s grown long enough now that her bangs are almost brushing her eyes, and Sasha longs to be able to reach through the computer screen and brush them out of the way. “I can stop talking now, I’ve been rambling.”
“No!” Sasha protests, maybe a little bit too hard. “I mean, it was really interesting, that’s all. I didn’t realize forensics was so… mathematical.”
Marcy beams, and she launches right back into her passionate speech like she had been encouraged, and Sasha watches her talk all the while and realizes: oh.
I’m in too deep now.
~~
The thing is, loving Anne is easy.
What is there not to love about Anne? She’s pretty, she’s sweet, she’s kind. She always sees the best in Sasha despite her misdoings, she inspires Sasha, she inspires everyone. Sasha loves her, and she knows she loves her, because loving her is the easiest thing she’s ever done and she thinks that everyone who knows Anne loves Anne.
Marcy included.
Sasha’s not stupid. There was a time she watched Anne and Marcy geek out about the newest few chapters of their favorite manga, and she knew. Marcy likes Anne, and Anne probably likes her back, and they’re the childhood friends that Sasha barged in on, and if she didn’t act fast, they wouldn’t need her anymore at all.
And at the time, she had acted without a shred of remorse. She had pushed her way into the front of the friendship as her other relationships - the ones with her parents, her little brother, her other friends - fell apart. Look at me, she told Anne, and only me. Loving Anne made it a little easier for Sasha to love herself, and she hadn’t cared about the casualties.
She does now, though. That, too, had been Anne’s doing, when she had quietly introduced the idea that they were to partially to blame for Marcy hiding things from them. And Darcy had only rubbed it in their faces, increasing the guilt that pestered Sasha as she slowly realized that by focusing on one friend, she had neglected the other.
The Sasha of old wouldn’t have cared, or maybe she would’ve cared too much and torn herself apart trying to choose between friends, and she would’ve chosen Anne because loving Anne was easy while loving Marcy was daunting. But maybe that’s just because Sasha never let herself love Marcy before.
So it snuck up on her. It snuck up on her, because part of Sasha’s newfound conviction is that if she wants her friendships to work, she needs to be a better friend to Marcy, because she does love Marcy despite what anyone else might say. So much of what she’s accomplished had been in Marcy’s name, and if she closes her eyes she can still imagine the feeling of Marcy unconscious in her arms, half-alive and frail, and the intense guilt of what if this was my fault? What if I’m the one that killed her? What do I do? It’s never managed to fully leave her, always pushing her to try harder, to keep her connections to Marcy even when she had to move, because she never wants to experience that again.
And now that’s backfired because she’s yearning now. Sasha Waybright, despite everything, has never needed to yearn before.
~~
Marcy introduces her to Dead by Daylight.
It’s a multiplayer online game, right up your alley! she had cheerfully told her, back when they first started discussing the possibilities of gaming together. Lots of blood and violence for your tastes; plus, I know how much you secretly love Michael Myers.
Fuck you, Sasha had responded playfully, if only to hear Marcy’s cackle of laughter.
It’s a not a game that she would’ve sought out on her own. For one, it’s not a two-person game; in fact, there’s four players, and when Marcy had eagerly told her that it was just easier to be on a voice call with all four people in the match, Sasha had internally cringed a little because she wanted it to be just her and Marcy.
But it’s fun. There’s a strategy to it that Sasha picks up very quickly. She finds herself eagerly logging onto her computer on Tuesdays and Saturdays, when she could be out partying or doing literally anything else, and playing with Marcy for hours. It becomes their routine, something that is uniquely theirs just like her dance routine with Anne, and despite herself and her initial misgivings regarding playing video games, Sasha… enjoys herself.
It helps that she’s allowed to be a menace in this game. There is nothing quite like tormenting the killer each match with her superb evasion and taunting, she finds out. And she spends a little money to get her character some cute outfits, and spends money on Marcy’s character too, so that they can match. If her motivation is hearing Marcy squeal about it when she joins the voice chat… well.
~~
During the summer, Marcy comes back to LA to visit.
That her parents allow her to travel by herself knowing that she has to rely on her friends for housing… says a lot about the freedoms she’s earned since her stunt in another world, but Sasha’s not going to complain when it means she’s waiting at the airport, hair tied back in a super loose braid, clutching a suitcase and a shoulder bag anxiously as she scans the sea of cars all picking up passengers.
LAX is a monster of an airport, but Sasha didn’t get her license to be a coward, and though Anne says that her family could easily pick Marcy up, she insists.
(Maybe that small, jealous part of her just wants to be the one getting Marcy’s first hug. If so, she suppresses it deep down and pretends it doesn’t exist).
It’s worth braving the traffic for the way Marcy’s eyes light up when Sasha waves at her, and she comes rushing towards her, her eyes sparkling behind the newly-acquired glasses. “Sash!” she exclaims, squeaking as Sasha offers her arms for a hug. “Oh my gosh, it’s so good to see you! I thought Mrs. B was picking me up!”
Marcy is small. Maybe Sasha’s just grown a few more inches, because she doesn’t remember Marcy being so openly smaller than her before– or maybe she’s just remembering wrong. Still, Sasha wraps arms around her for the hug she might have been dreaming about, and she inhales, exhales.
It’s over too quickly, though, because they can’t take up too much time in the airport passenger pick-up line, and Sasha quickly steps out of the hug to take Marcy’s suitcase, dragging it to the trunk of her car.
“Well, you thought wrong,” she answers after the long pause, hoisting the bag into her car as Marcy watches her with an unwavering excitement. “I asked if I could do it instead. That way we could hang out more, you know? It’s a good hour’s drive to Anne’s house.”
“Well, I’m not complaining,” Marcy grins, and as Sasha shuts her trunk, she slides into the passenger seat, and she’s already all buckled up by the time Sasha joins her inside the car. Somehow, it hasn’t quite felt real that Marcy’s actually here until now, when she’s fiddling with the radio as Sasha buckles herself in and starts her car.
“It’s nice to be in LA again,” Marcy says, after a little bit of driving. She’s staring out the window, her legs crossing and uncrossing in her usual brand of fidgety. “Houston is so different. I never thought I’d actually miss it here.”
“Yeah, well, it’s LA, of course you’d miss it.” Sasha jokes, and she rolls down her windows a little, sighing at the feeling of the breeze against her face. “Have you made new friends at all?”
“A couple,” Marcy admits, sounding real shy with the admission. “A couple of my new classmates invited me to join their book club, and it’s been… really nice, actually. I’ve never really been around people that just get me before.”
There’s a silent admission there, in the idea that she hadn’t fit in at their school in LA. Sasha willfully ignores it, because thinking too much about why Marcy felt like an outsider just reminds her of how bad of a friend she had been, and she doesn’t like to think about that if she can’t help it.
“What about you, Sash? Made any new friends?” Marcy finally turns away from the window to peer at Sasha instead, her eyes big and curious.
“A few. The girls in my cheerleading squad are all fake as shit, but I joined the Model UN team this past year and that was… a lot of fun, actually. Solving world problems and all that.”
“Oh, I’ve heard Model UN is fun! Too much public speaking for me, though, you know how I am,” Marcy laughs.
The conversation lasts throughout the entire drive, and by the time Sasha is pulling up to the Boonchuy household, it’s like Marcy never left in the first place. She’s radiant and beaming and there’s very little traces of the girl who had fallen prey too hard to escapism in the past, and Sasha wonders if she had come out of her shell more in the past, would Sasha have fallen in love with her just as hard?
She doesn’t know.
“You should pick me up from the airport next time too,” Marcy tells her, very seriously, as Sasha helps her get her bags. “I liked this.”
I like you, Sasha wants to tell her.
“Maybe I will then, nerd,” she says instead, offering her the suitcase that had been stored away. “I’ll see you soon, kay? I have some stuff to do tonight, but Anne and I have been talking about all the things we’re going to do together while you’re in town, it’s gonna be lit. ”
“Okay,” Marcy smiles, and then she’s lunging forwards, wrapping her arms around Sasha for another spontaneous hug. Sasha startles, and she barely has the time to reciprocate the hug before Marcy pulls away, her cheeks flushed a little as she spins on her heel with her bags, walking up the driveway. It happens so fast, in fact, that Sasha hardly processes it.
You, Miss Waybright, are in way over your head, she tells herself, waving as Marcy knocks on the front door.
~~
If loving Anne has been easy, loving Marcy comes with ups and downs.
For one, Marcy’s not nearly as physically affectionate, which makes the times that she is physically affectionate far more meaningful. She also craves affection though, but she refuses to ask for it, leaving Sasha to pick up on her body language and social cues and offer a hand on her shoulder, or around her waist, or kind words instead of their usual bickering.
She also has lingering trauma regarding her own possession and the horrors that the Core had put her through, both in body and in mind. That, she doesn’t ever talk about, but Sasha picks up on it easily. She doesn’t quite know how to help when Marcy seems deadset on pretending it never happened, but she just resolves to be there for her no matter what.
As her friendship with Anne starts to slowly unravel, Sasha finds herself longing more and more, wanting nothing more than to roadtrip to Texas every time the ache grows too intense for her to bear. She still loves Anne more than life itself, but Anne’s fallen into a different friend group so naturally now that Sasha’s not exerting control over her and insisting on being hers and hers alone, and Sasha’s found her own friends too - ones that she doesn’t push around - and she shouldn’t be clinging too hard to the past, but she finds herself here regardless.
Maybe it’s because despite the years of friendship, she had never really… known Marcy the way she knew Anne. Sure, they had hung out outside of school, and she knew Marcy was always willing to offer her own ideas and cause mayhem… but she thinks they both interacted with each other with guards up, and she hadn’t really cared for what Marcy cared about and vice versa. They loved each other, but she wonders if they really liked each other, or if they would’ve ever become friends if they weren’t mutually friends with Anne.
There’s no use spiraling about the past, though. She’s ready to engage with Marcy’s interests now, and that’s gotta count for something, right?
Besides, it’s not like their relationship has gone… anywhere. With Sasha’s luck, she thinks Marcy still is fully, wholly in love with Anne, and she’s probably been hurt by Sasha’s poor friendship too much in the past to ever consider a life with her… or maybe not, because hadn’t she wanted a future with all three of them together? Sasha doesn’t actually remember that much of Marcy’s speech in Amphibia, it had been far overshadowed by her near-death and Anne’s disappearance and Sasha’s own inability to cope with her own actions.
That, too, she tries not to think about too hard.
Loving Marcy comes with ups and downs, but as they hangout virtually twice a week and text frequently and never lose the friendship that Sasha had never valued in the past… she thinks it might be worth it.
(Besides, she’s in deep now. Marcy teasingly called her princess during one of their gaming nights and Sasha nearly lost her entire composure. This, she’s realized, as she contemplates the idea of spending her life with her, is dangerous ).