Work Text:
It’s a warm, sunny day. Sprig had initially wanted to spend the day with Anne but she had said she wasn’t feeling well. Something about crumps? Cramps? Human stuff. Hop Pop was taking care of her. So instead, he sits in Marcy’s wagon, absentmindedly flipping through her journal as she attends to some maps at the table. One particular page catches his eye.
“Hey Marcy?”
“Mmm?”
“Why do you have so many drawings of Anne and Sasha in here?”
Marcy darts up, eyes immediately on the page Sprig is on. There’s notes on caterpillars and moths, their diets and what habitats they inhabit, and in the margins, sketches of Anne and Sasha, surrounded with flowers and stars.
She immediately rushes in, snatching the journal from Sprig’s hands. Sprig blinks, taken aback by her sudden outburst.
“Whoa.”
“I-It’s nothing! Don’t worry about it, Sprout!”
“It’s Sprig.”
“Right.”
She slumps down to the floor, holding the journal close to her. She extends it out in front of her, and flips through it until she finds a drawing of her and the girls. She lets out a wistful sigh and lets the journal fall onto her chest, still open on the page of her standing between Anne and Sasha, their fingers intertwined.
Sprig watches her, confused. He thinks back to a conversation he had with Anne, where an inappropriately timed question about Anne’s feelings for Marcy had nearly sent him flying out a window. Anne had explained to him why a relationship between her and Marcy would never work out.
“I thought Anne said you don’t get crushes.”
“This is different! She’s right. I don’t get crushes, but with Anne and Sasha, it’s just different! It’s like: they’re my best friends! And I love them, I do. To be honest, I don’t even know if the feelings I have for them are romantic or not. It’s just-” She struggles to find the right words. “I can’t picture my life without them. They…they mean a lot to me.”
There’s a flash of guilt in her expression, but Sprig doesn’t read too much into it. He reaches out to her, hand extended, and after a moment, she hands him the journal. He opens it and finds one of Marcy’s drawings of Anne. She’s striking a pose, stance wide, arms in the air, with a big goofy expression on her face.
“Yeah, Anne’s pretty cool.” He hands her back her journal. “Can’t say the same for Sasha though.”
She laughs. “She’ll come around to you.”