Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Dear Mom and Dad,

I’m sorry.

I’m sorry for leaving again, I’m sorry for doing it without really saying goodbye, I’m sorry for putting you through all the pain that I have. It had to be this way. I hope you can understand that someday.

I know if I told you we were leaving that you would try to come with us or stop me from going, and I know it comes from a place of love, but I can’t let that happen. I have to do this. I can’t just leave Sasha and Marcy there, and I have to get the Plantars home. I would never forgive myself if I let you come, either. Amphibia is dangerous, you both know that, and I can’t let you get hurt. I can’t let you go there to die.

I don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side of the portal, but I know it won’t be pretty, and I can’t put you two in danger like that. I know you’ll be worried, but please know that I can handle myself. I know what the possibilities are, what it could be like there, and I know how to fight whatever may come. I’ll be okay, and I’ll make sure the Plantars are okay too. I’ll find Sasha and Marcy and do everything I can to come back to you, I promise, but I need you to trust me in this and understand that I know what I’m doing. I know I haven’t always been the smartest person or made the best decisions, but please believe in me, just this once.

Sprig and I have been meeting with Dr. Jan in secret to research the portal and figure out how to build it. Showing you my ring and telling you about our testing on the boxes was an accident, you were never supposed to know about any of it, and we made sure you didn’t learn of the meetings that came after and the things we discovered. Keeping it all hidden was my idea and mine alone, and I’m sorry that we did, but if you’re going to be mad at anyone for it, be mad at me. We know how to build the portal and have a plan, and we’ve been preparing for it all week. We’re ready. We know the portal will be unstable, and we believe it’ll only stay open for a few seconds before collapsing, so we have to be fast once it’s opened to get everyone and everything through. The boxes and everything will be destroyed in the process, so please don’t try to find another way to follow us, it won’t work.

Don’t be upset at Dr. Jan, either. She wanted me to tell you and say goodbye properly, but I refused. This letter was our compromise.

I’m more prepared this time since we were able to plan, so don’t worry about us not having supplies or anything. I packed some stuff this week as we got closer to tonight, so I have all the things I think we’ll need, enough to last a long time. We have food, water, first aid supplies, clothes, everything. I’m taking all my meds with me and some keepsakes, too. I also packed a bag of Marcy’s stuff from the boxes in the garage in case she wants any of it, so don’t be surprised when you see things missing from them. Anything left of mine or hers is free for you to do whatever you want with. I don’t know how long it’ll be until I can get back, it could be weeks, months, or even years, and I don’t want you to feel like you have to put everything on pause like last time in hopes that I’ll return soon. You deserve to live full, happy lives, and if for some reason you feel like you need permission to move on from me and keep living your lives, this is me giving it to you.

Also, I’m stealing some of our spices. Amphibia has its own spices that don’t taste the same as ours, so sometimes the food just needs a little familiar Earth magic (especially Hop Pop’s cooking, but he doesn’t need to know that). Sorry for that too, I guess. And sorry for stealing the duffel bags, we need them so we can pack all our belongings and supplies and stuff and bring it all with us to Amphibia.

I know this is hard. I know this is horrible. I wish more than anything that we could’ve had a proper goodbye this time, I really do, but I know that it wouldn’t be possible without threatening our plan, and we can’t let that happen when we’re so close to getting back home. If nothing else, please know that I wanted to say goodbye, and that if there was any other way to do this where it was possible for me to say goodbye, I would. Life doesn’t wait, though. If there’s one thing I’ve learned through all this mess, it’s that. Life doesn’t wait, and I don’t want you to put your lives on hold for me on a pipe dream that I’ll come back soon.

There’s so much I want to say, but Dr. Jan will be here any minute to pick us up. If you’re reading this, that means the portal worked, and me and the Plantars are gone. Please forgive me. Please don’t be mad. Please don’t wait up for me in this world.

Please know I love you, even if I don’t return.

Your daughter, your ดอกทานตะวันตัวน้อย, forever and always,

Anne Savisa Boonchuy-Plantar

Chapter Text

“My lord, we’ve narrowed down the most likely location of the Boonchuy girl and her companions using the energy spike detected this morning, as requested.”

“Go on.”

“They’re believed to be within a one-mile radius of the approximated point of entry in the forests of Frog Valley, assuming they haven’t traveled far since the portal was opened. If we send a fleet now, they’ll be caught off-guard, still recovering from their transportation. We will destroy them easily.”

The Core was silent for a moment, staring at the music box on the pedestal before it, the blue gem glowing ever so slightly brighter than before. It chewed its lip and ran a hand through its hair as it contemplated, an unfortunate habit it had picked up from its host and failed to purge despite several attempts, then closed its eyes as the arguing of hundreds of voices within its consciousness grew louder. In mere seconds, it sifted through countless potential courses of action, their possible consequences and outcomes, the ways they would work towards or against its benefit, the tolls they would take on its resources and the things it would gain from them, and when it finally came to a consensus, it opened its eyes, staring once more at the box.

“No.”

“No? B-But, my lord-“

“Andrias,” it glared at him, as if challenging him to continue and see what would happen. Its sharp tone silenced him immediately, though, and he snapped his mouth shut, bowing his head. “You will do as we say, and you will not question us, understood?”

“…Yes, my lord.”

“Good.” It picked up the music box from the pedestal, gently brushing its thumb over the blue gem as it continued. “Send a scouting dragonfly bot to find them and follow them from afar. If they’re in Frog Valley, they’re sure to attempt to find their allies before making the long journey here. We’ll let them go for now, and they’ll lead us straight to the main base of Strength and her little resistance, and when they do, we’ll take them all out at once. In one fell swoop, victory will be ours.”

The gem’s light pulsed, and Darcy grinned.

***

Consciousness returned to Anne slowly, bits and pieces of the world taking form in her mind like dewdrops catching on the invisible threads of a spiderweb in the early morning. The first thing she became aware of was the uncomfortable position she was laying in, partway on her side with her front angled towards the ground, her face pressed against the cold, damp grass and her limbs twisted in odd directions – she was sure she could feel a rock digging into her thigh and a stick scraping her scalp, and her right arm tingled with pins and needles from being pinched between her head and the dirt. With her nose so close to the ground, every breath she took carried with it the strong earthy smell of mud and foliage and the wood of towering trees, immersing her in nature in a way that was simply impossible to replicate in LA, the characteristics of the desperately missed forest undeniable proof that she was really, truly, finally back home.

She slowly blinked her eyes open, the world a blurry mess of greens and browns, and started to push herself up off the ground. The moment she moved, however, the pain lurking in the shadows made itself excruciatingly known, reminding her with bone-deep trembling aches and twitching, cramping muscles that she had nearly killed herself opening the portal what couldn’t have been more than a few hours prior. She groaned as she rolled onto her back, the sound only serving to make her throat itch, sending her into a weak coughing fit that left her chest burning and throat stinging. She tried to focus on breathing through the pain as she took stock of the state of her body, a headache she swore wasn’t there before now pounding in her skull, the fingers on her right hand twitching uncontrollably while her left hand was immobile, filled with barely-there numb static, which she chose not to think too hard about for the time being. Every place that she knew had a scar either throbbed or stung, the worst being, of course, her left arm and her thighs, the deep stinging in the former only making her more fearful over the lack of feeling in her hand and the burning throb in the latter spreading up into her hips, making it clear that she wouldn’t be standing for at least a little while until the pain calmed down.

Every other part of her body was extremely sore at best, and her stomach couldn’t seem to decide between hunger and nausea, cramping and gurgling unhappily with no distinct desire for either of the two most plausible solutions. Even so, she was alive, and she was back home, which meant that she had succeeded.

The sound of movement nearby grabbed her attention, and, with great struggle, she forced herself to sit up, her right arm doing most of the work while her left continued hanging limply by her side, though the numb static was slowly turning into sharper pins and needles, which gave her hope that there wasn’t too much damage; she was glad her jacket and jeans covered the worst of her injuries, she wanted to avoid seeing just how bad of shape she was in for as long as possible. Squinting against the bright sunlight streaming through the canopy of trees, she scanned her surroundings and saw that, like she imagined happened to herself, everything that had been brought through the portal seemed to have been thrown harshly and haphazardly to the ground, scattered around the small clearing they were in. Much to her relief, all the bags were there, and a few feet away she spotted an unconscious Polly laying on her back, her feet twitching and kicking as if she were trying to run, with an equally unconscious Hop Pop face-down next to her, his head lifting from the ground every few seconds from the inflation of his throat as he croak-snored.

She panicked for a moment upon realizing that Sprig was missing from the clearing, but before adrenaline could give her enough strength to stand up and go looking for him, movement sounded nearby once more, and she turned just in time to see him emerge from the tree line. He noticed her immediately, jolting in surprise at the fact that she was awake and staring at him, but he quickly shook it off and walked over to her. He looked exhausted and a bit on-edge, but overall uninjured, which allowed her to relax a little. Standing right in front of her, he didn’t try to hide the way he glanced over her, searching for any visible injuries or other signs of pain – there wasn’t much she could do to hide the twitching and trembling of her limbs, but she tried her best to put on a brave face in hopes of convincing him it wasn’t as bad as it looked, although based on the way his mouth twisted into an displeased frown, she didn’t do a very good job.

“Hey.” He kept his voice low and his tone flat, tired.

“H-ey.” Her voice briefly caught in her throat, and the grating raspiness of it sounded as painful as it felt, making her wince. She waited for him to say more, but instead he turned and retrieved her backpack, digging out a water bottle, opening it, and handing it to her. Her hand trembled as she brought the bottle up and drank greedily, only noticing right then how thirsty she was, gasping for breath slightly when she eventually stopped and handed it back to him, wiping her mouth as he screwed the cap back on and set the bottle down.

“How are you feeling?”

“Sore,” she grunted, her voice still rough. The response clearly didn’t make him feel any better, so she gave a small smile and added on, “Glad to be back home, though.”

“Yeah,” he returned a weak smile of his own, “me too.”

“What about you? Are you okay? Are you hurt at all?” She looked over him again as if injuries that weren’t there the first time she checked would magically appear now, even as he shook his head.

“I’m fine, just a little bruised from getting spit out of the portal. I think I landed on my shoulder weird.” He rolled his shoulder around for emphasis, wincing as he did, but stopped when he noticed her pointed, worried stare. “You’re the only other one who’s woken up, but I don’t think Hop Pop and Polly are far behind. We should try to get moving as soon as possible once they’re awake, it’s already getting into the afternoon, and I don’t wanna be out here overnight if we can avoid it.”

“Yeah,” she nodded, then paused, her brows furrowing. “Wait, where did you go? You weren’t here when I woke up, I just saw you come back. What were you doing?”

He bristled slightly at the sudden interrogation, but responded calmly, knowing she was just worried. “I was trying to see if I know how to get to town from here. Don’t worry, I didn’t go far, I just did a quick loop to get my bearings.” She nodded along, relieved to hear that he didn’t run into any trouble while the rest of them were knocked out. She didn’t know what she would do if she found out he’d gotten hurt while she wasn’t there to help him.

“Okay, well, did you find anything?”

“Eh, kinda?” He waved his hand in a so-so motion. “I’m not super familiar with this part of the woods, I don’t normally go this far out from town unless there’s a real good reason to, but I think I know the general direction we need to go to get back. Hop Pop might have a better idea, too, once he’s up.”

She glanced over at the sleeping form of the man in question, guilt tightening her chest at the memory of their last conversation. Part of her didn’t want to talk to him more than she absolutely had to, still angry at the way he’d tried to directly go against her wishes and repeat one of the worst nights of her life, sabotaging her best shot at getting back home for his own self-interest even when he knew it would hurt her. Besides, there was a good chance he wouldn’t respond anyways even if they did ask for his input, pettily ignoring them like a child – she hated the silent treatment, she always had, she’d much rather be yelled at than treated as if she didn’t exist at all, hypocritical as it was considering all the times she herself had done it to others. It was different when Hop Pop did it, though, because Hop Pop was an adult, a parent, a guardian, and he had a responsibility to be mature and level-headed and the decades of life experience to back it up; she was still a teenager, and even though she knew better, she felt she was allowed to be a little petty sometimes.

Despite her reservations about it, however, she knew Sprig was right. Hop Pop had lived in Wartwood and Frog Valley longer than all of them, and if anyone knew those woods better than Sprig, it was him. She sighed and turned her attention back to Sprig, nodding.

“I don’t know how willing he’ll be to help, but it’s worth a shot to ask.”

Silence fell over them, and a creeping sense of unease began to crawl up her spine, the distinct feeling that something wasn’t quite right, but she couldn’t place what exactly it was. She looked around the clearing and into the trees surrounding them the best that she could without moving too much and causing more pain, ignoring Sprig’s questioning look at the sudden odd behavior, but nothing seemed out of the ordinary, just boring old trees and plants and their scattered belongings. She closed her eyes and strained her ears, listening for any indication that danger was near, the flapping of large wings or the thumping of heavy footsteps or the huffing breaths of a predator sniffing-out its next meal, but all she was met with was silence.

Her eyes shot open as realization hit her like a brick wall.

Silence?

She listened harder and once again searched through their surroundings, however instead of signs of a predator, she was looking with increasing desperation for signs of any life at all. Her stomach dropped and frigid fear invaded her veins as still, she found only silence with not even a breeze to rustle the leaves on the trees. She turned back to Sprig with a frightened look, but he only stared at her with bewilderment and concern, clearly not on the same page.

“Sprig, do you hear that?” Her voice was low, barely more than a whisper, only causing him more worry. He paused and listened for a moment, but didn’t seem to come to the same realization that she had.

“No?”

“Exactly. Where are all the animals?” His eyes widened, and he, too, started looking around as she continued. “Where are the birds? The bugs? The wildlife? It’s never this quiet in the woods unless something really, really bad is about to happen, and we’re sitting ducks Frog-knows how far away from the town or any decent shelter.”

As vastly different as the wildlife was between Earth and Amphibia, one similarity they shared was their collective behavior, specifically when it came to noise. A healthy, happy ecosystem was a loud one, full of the sounds of animals doing what they normally did, from the shaking of shrubbery and pawing at dirt by foragers to the prowling and growling of predators stalking and fighting their targets to the pretty songs and piercing screeches of birds high in the sky. Animals were good at detecting danger, far better than any person, and for it to be dead silent that deep in the woods, they must’ve sensed something truly horrible and gone quiet for their own safety, or, worse, left that part of the forest entirely. Every other animal had either fled or gone into hiding, and yet there Anne, Sprig, Hop Pop, and Polly were, out in the open, two of them unconscious and one in too much pain to fight, all unknowing of anything that might’ve happened in the months they were gone.

They had no way of knowing what the actual danger was or exactly how long they had before it struck, but one thing was certain: they needed to get to Wartwood, fast.

“Can you walk?” Sprig spoke quietly, but with an anxious intensity, his darting eyes once again searching her for any obvious injuries, though now more concerned with how much it might slow them down. Despite the bone-deep pain still pulsing through every inch of her body, she carefully tried to move, stretching her arms, bending her legs, and working her joints. She bit back whimpers as her muscles protested, trembling more and more with every shooting pain, jagged shards of glass scraping and scratching her bones, white-hot fire erupting across her flesh and burning bubbles into her melting skin, pressure building in her skull and trying to squeeze her brain out of her eyes to make room for itself.

It hurt. It hurt more than she could remember anything else hurting. She could do it, though, because her family needed her to, because Sprig needed her to.

“It’s rough, but I think so.” Sprig didn’t look convinced, but she knew she couldn’t waste time trying to prove to him that she could walk without being in agony. “If it gets too painful and I need to take a break, I’ll tell you, okay? I promise.”

He wasn’t too happy about it, but he knew just as well as she did that they shouldn’t wait around longer than absolutely necessary, so he relented with a nod. As soon as he did, Polly let out a small groan as she started to wake up, grabbing their attention as their heads whipped over to watch her. She slowly sat up and looked around, rubbing her eyes, clearly not noticing the two people staring at her as if a bomb could go off at any second. They could see the exact moment she processed where she was, all tiredness vanishing as her eyes went wide and her face split with a massive grin; she leapt to her feet and threw her arms up in excitement, and Anne and Sprig didn’t have enough time to stop her before she began to yell.

“Yes! We’re back! We’re home! Hear that, Andrias? You better watch your blue butt cause we’re comin’ for ya!”

“Polly! Shh!” Anne found her voice first, whisper-yelling to get Polly’s attention. Unfortunately, although the girl finally noticed them, she didn’t get the memo to be quiet.

“Anne, look! We’re back! Woah, what happened to you? You look like you just got run over by Mrs. Croaker’s ladybug!”

“Polly!” Unlike Anne, Sprig abandoned his own efforts to be quiet in favor of getting Polly to lower her voice as fast as possible, yelling loud enough to cut-off anything else she was going to say. She looked at him, and her smile fell as she saw his tense, serious expression and started to understand that something wasn’t right.

“Why aren’t you guys happy? Did something happen?”

Her voice was quieter, smaller, and Anne’s heart ached at the reminder that despite how strong, brave, and outspoken she was, and despite how hard she pretended not to be, Polly was still just a child, and she could unintentionally be oblivious and careless just like every other kid her age. If anything, Anne should’ve been glad that Polly’s first instinct upon waking up was to be happy and celebrate rather than immediately be on-guard and searching for danger – it was a special kind of innocence that had been brutally stripped from Anne and Sprig, but that somehow, someway, Polly had managed to hold onto, and Anne would be damned if she was the one to take it away. She sighed and tried to soften herself, knowing she needed to explain their situation but not wanting to scare Polly any further.

“We’re not entirely sure what it is, but something’s wrong. Right now, we just need to-“ She was cut-off by Hop Pop choking on a snore and shooting awake with a cough, all three of them watching with varying levels of anxiety and fear as he loudly spluttered. As soon as he caught his breath, he looked around, a bittersweet smile taking form.

“Ah, so we really made it back, huh?” He spotted the rest of them staring at him, and his smile made way for a look of concern. “Is everyone alright? Anybody hurt?”

“Opening the portal was pretty hard on Anne, but overall, I think we’re all okay.” She was glad Sprig was the one to answer; she didn’t know how Hop Pop would’ve reacted if the first voice he’d heard was hers, but she was sure it wouldn’t have been good. Even so, though, just the mention of her name seemed to be enough to dampen any joy he might’ve felt over being back, his face darkening as he started to shut down again, and both bitter anger and nauseating guilt tugged at her heart with nearly enough strength to rip it in half.

“Good, I’m glad everyone’s in one piece.” With that, he stopped talking and didn’t appear to have any intention of starting again, averting his eyes to stare at the ground instead. Anne sighed and harshly rubbed her face in frustration, feeling Sprig gently rest a hand on her shoulder and leaning into the touch for comfort as she took a few deep, steadying breaths, shoving down her anger so she could think clearly.

“Okay,” she dropped her hands and straightened her back, sitting tall as everyone turned their attention to her, waiting for direction. “It’s already pretty late in the day, so if we wanna make it to Wartwood before nightfall, we need to leave ASAP. We’re a bit far-out, but we know what direction we need to go, at least. It’ll be a long walk, though, and I don’t wanna stop if we don’t absolutely have to, so if there’s anything you need to do before we start, do it now. Five minutes, and then we leave, sound good?”

Sprig and Polly nodded, and she chose to take Hop Pop’s silence as agreement. With the plan decided, the group dispersed, everyone locating their belongings and doing their individual preparations. Sprig helped Anne get to her feet, which took far more effort and energy than she’d ever admit, and with slow, agonizingly painful steps, she began to move towards where her bags laid on the ground to start figuring out how in God’s name she was going to carry it all in her state. As she went, though, the glinting of sunlight off metal on the ground a few feet away caught her eye and she shuffled over curiously, shock overtaking her features as she realized what exactly it was – there, nestled in the grass, were the other two rings.

She picked them up with a grunt of pain and held them close to her face, inspecting them, frowning slightly at the dark discolorations staining the bands, though her displeasure was quickly overshadowed by surprise when she saw that their gems were still held in the prongs. She’d assumed that they had been completely destroyed when she opened the portal, and yet there they were, albeit broken in several places and completely devoid of color. Looking at her hand, she saw that the gem on her own ring, too, was dull and grey, sporting a large crack down the center. She knew without a doubt that there was no power left in them, but even so, she couldn’t get herself to leave them behind, holding onto them tightly as she returned to the task at hand and went to her bags.

Sprig followed with her backpack, so she started with that, dropping the rings inside before sliding it on with his help, trying not to cry as the weight threatened to shatter the bones in her shoulders, the back of her neck immediately flooding with tension and pressure from the muscles being pinched and crushed, her stinging skin shifting and folding under the straps each time she moved. It was obvious that Sprig noticed her pain, his hands hovering uncertainly, ready to take the bag back if it was too much or catch her if she started to crumble, but there was only so much that could be done; there were too many bags for her to not carry anything, and they couldn’t just leave some behind, so she had no choice but to gather her strength and push through the pain, even if her backpack alone had her knees shaking unsteadily and her eyes watering.

It was a given that Hop Pop would once again carry the bag that he, Sprig, and Polly were sharing, which left Anne and Sprig to figure out which one of them would carry Anne’s duffel and which would carry Marcy’s. Their first solution was to have Anne carry whichever one was lighter, but upon Sprig picking each one up to compare, he found they were practically equally heavy. Anne was strongly against trying to ask Hop Pop to carry one of the bags so that she could take the lighter shared one, knowing they were already pushing their luck with him going along with their plans when he clearly resented it, not that she even wanted his help after the way he'd been behaving and his decision to betray her wishes and rat them out to her parents. Polly was probably strong enough to lift the bags, but she wouldn’t be able to carry either one for very long before it became too much, and that was assuming she’d be willing to hand over Frobo’s head in exchange for a bag.

The minutes ticked by with no solution, and when they reached the five-minute deadline Anne had set, she decided enough was enough and huffed, leaned down, and picked up her duffel bag. The weight threw her off-balance right away, and if Sprig hadn’t been there to catch her, she would’ve fallen to the ground and probably been in too much pain to get up again for a good long while. With his help, she managed to stand up straight, clutching the straps of her bag with both hands and still only barely able to keep her grip. Every muscle and joint from her shoulders to her fingertips was stretched and pulled down by the bag, and she couldn’t stop the tears from rolling down her cheeks as shredding, aching pain engulfed her arms as though they were about to be ripped off entirely – she would almost prefer they be severed, if it meant the pain would end. Seeing her distress, Sprig tried to take the bag back, but she bit her tongue hard enough to taste blood and shook her head, refusing to spend any extra time searching for a miracle solution. She was strong, she could carry her own bag, she’d be fine. They needed to get moving.

With great reluctance, Sprig followed suit and picked up Marcy’s bag as Hop Pop and Polly walked over to join them, and with that, they were ready to go. Sprig took the lead as the only one with any idea of where to go, and the rest followed behind, their pace slow and Anne in excruciating pain, but making progress nonetheless. Every so often, Sprig would jump up into the trees to get a higher vantage point, trying to see if he could get a more accurate feel for where they were. Anne couldn’t get herself to care much – she was far too focused on pushing past the way the world was spinning and tilting violently around her to avoid tripping over her own feet – putting her full trust in Sprig to get them where they needed to go. Time blurred together the longer they walked, losing all meaning as the rapid, heavy beating of her heart fueled the deafening waterfall-rush of blood in her ears, her lungs burning with every heaving breath and leaving her gasping with the suffocating feeling that they weren’t inflating all the way. At one point, Sprig’s muffled voice broke through the white noise, saying something in that gentle, all-too-patient tone he reserved only for her, and although she couldn’t gather enough mind to understand the words, she took comfort in his presence, pushing on as a walking corpse, her limbs threatening to fall off and her skin tingling with nerve-dying decay.

Struggling to even lift her own feet, she nearly missed Sprig’s excited yelling when he finally laid eyes on the town in the distance. She could feel hands on her, pushing her forwards, trying to get her to move faster, but if anything, it only felt as though they would go right through her, puncture her rotten skin and slip through her atrophied muscles and come out the other end in a morbid shower of blood and tissue. She let out an involuntary groaning whimper at the pain, and the hands backed-off, only one remaining with a gentle, barely-there hold to help keep her upright. Her feet had melted into the ground, swallowed up by dirt and strung-up in roots greedily trying to suck her lifeforce away as their fertilizer, her legs buzzing numb to the point that if she stopped moving, she wouldn’t be able to start again no matter how hard she tried. Still, she kept going, one foot after the other, every step feeling as though it may be her last and proving a moment later that, somehow, it wasn’t.

The ground changed, uneven mud and grass and rocks giving way to smooth, well-used dirt road. Somewhere in her mind, she knew what that meant, knew intrinsically from months of walking with one shoe what the road leading to Wartwood felt like, knew what the faint cheers of her family were for, and relief flooded through her at the realization that they were finally, truly back home.

But then the cheering stopped.

The world was quiet, silent as it had been when she and Sprig first noticed the woods were dangerously empty. Something was wrong, something new, something different. She squinted through blurry vision, and after a few long seconds, the image cleared enough for her to see what the rest of her family did.

The town – if it could even still be called that – was in complete ruin. Even just from standing at the entrance, the sign engraved with their home’s name barely hanging on by one rusty screw, they could see the destruction. The buildings were reduced to rubble, the most intact ones nothing more than crumbling walls one good breeze away from toppling down, some with clear signs of fire damage; the fountain in the middle of the town square was shattered, any water in it long gone, the statue that once stood tall in the center laying in pieces on the ground; the ground itself was charred as far as the eye could see, the once fertile, bountiful soil reduced to unusable ashen dust; worst of all, though, was the complete lack of life, and the silence that accompanied it.

Wartwood was a small town, constantly low on money and resources, but it was far more resilient than what met the eye – flaming locust tornado wiped someone’s house clear off the map? The town had it rebuilt within the week (or, if Chuck was around and available to help, within the hour). Burrow bugs infested someone’s farm and ate all their vegetables? Fellow farmers donated their spare produce and helped restore the damage so they could get back on their feet. Giant herons attacked the town, destroyed homes and storefronts alike, murdered neighbors and cousins and siblings and parents? They rebuilt, and they mourned the dead, and they promised themselves and each other that they’d be prepared next time, that they wouldn’t let there be a next time. Wartwood didn’t seem like much from the outside, but one thing was certain: they were a community, and they would never give up on their town or their fellow people, no matter what.

So, what unimaginably horrible thing could’ve possibly happened to force everyone to abandon their home? And if they weren’t in Wartwood, where did they all go?

All excitement over getting back was sucked from the group, wary fear sending ice water chills down their spines as they hesitantly crossed the threshold and made their way further into the town. It was eerily quiet, their soft footsteps seeming deafeningly loud and putting them impossibly further on-edge; they had all come to the same conclusion that the best thing for them to do was go back to where the house should’ve been, knowing they had to see what had become of it, even if it hurt. The shock of seeing the town she’d grown to call home in such a bad state was enough to give Anne some energy back, spurring her forwards with the others, trembling from the horrible combination of exhaustion and fear. The rational part of her mind screamed that it was a terrible idea to go through the town, that whatever had demolished it could still be lurking and they – and especially her – were in no condition to fight it, but desperation to know what had happened, to see the house again, to find some clue of where everyone went, overpowered those thoughts, and she continued on with the rest of them towards their very possible deaths.

The further in they went, the more their hearts broke; Anne couldn’t help but let out a small sob upon seeing Stumpy’s diner in ruins, collapsed-in on itself beyond repair. When they passed by the broken remains of the Sundews’ tea shop, Sprig paused and visibly tensed, staring at the rubble as if he’d find Ivy’s body buried beneath it, and it took a gentle nudge from Anne’s shoulder to get him stiffly moving again. The destroyed pieces of the stalls were scattered, mixed together such that they could only barely be differentiated from one another, and Hop Pop only shook his head sadly when he saw the empty place where their newly-built stand gifted to them by the townspeople used to be, only a barren patch of dirt left in its wake. Polly simply looked devastated at it all, the only true home she’d ever known, the town she was born and raised in, the core of her identity as a Wartwood citizen and a Plantar, all reduced to nothing, and the people she once called neighbors and friends nowhere to be seen. She’d been so, so young when she’d lost her parents, too young to remember much of the details, only the crushing weight of their absence and the confusion surrounding the whole incident that never truly went away – seeing the town now, though, made her understand what a blessing that was because she didn’t remember her parents and their deaths, but she would remember this for the rest of her life, and the idea of carrying the sorrow of losing everything she’d ever known forever seemed impossible.

Still, they pushed on through the pain, through the horror, through the grief and devastation, because they were Plantars, and that’s what Plantars did.

When they arrived to the land where the house should’ve been, they were once again given the shock of a lifetime when they found that the house was, in fact, still standing – damaged, but very much intact. The farmland was charred in most places and dug-up beyond use in others, and Bessie’s stable was nothing more than a pile of splintered wood and scattered hay (they didn’t see any sign of the snail, though, which gave them some hope that she’d somehow escaped unharmed), but despite it all, their chests filled with relief because against all odds, the house itself was still there.

They began to rush towards it, Sprig and Polly running while Anne and Hop Pop followed as fast as their exhausted, aching bodies could go, but they only made it a few feet before they all froze as the ground began to rumble, vibrations travelling up through the dirt as something moved beneath it, something big. Anne only had enough time to drop her bags and pull out her tennis racket while Sprig whipped out his slingshot before the ground split between them, and a massive centipede burst through, cutting Anne and Hop Pop off from Sprig and Polly. It let out an ear-piercing screech as it whipped its head around, looking at both groups and deciding which to attack first; Anne knew just as well as the rest of them that they only had a scant few seconds to get the advantage and take the first hit, but she was distracted by the strange collar the bug was wearing, a thick metal band covered with some kind of purple decoration.

Who the hell was crazy enough to put a collar on a centipede like it was a pet?

The centipede screeched again and lunged towards Sprig and Polly, deciding that they were the larger threat.

“Sprig!” Anne screamed, her throat tearing and burning. She watched, horrified, as Sprig and Polly jumped out of the way just in time for the bug to slam on the ground where they were standing mere milliseconds ago, only for the it to get right back up and go for them again, not giving them enough time to collect themselves and fight back. She knew it was up to her and Hop Pop to fight it, or at least distract it enough for Sprig and Polly to recuperate, but she barely had the strength to hold her tennis racket and stand on her own feet, and Hop Pop didn’t even have a weapon of any kind. Sprig and Polly couldn’t run and dodge forever, but if she and Hop Pop tried to get involved as they were, they’d surely be killed.

They were cornered, stuck between a rock and a hard place, quickly running out of time to act yet unable to see any possible solution that didn’t end in their deaths. Anne wanted to scream, to cry, to shake the cruel universe by the shoulders because it wasn’t fair, they’d gotten so far, they’d made the portal and gotten back home, they’d traveled through the forest and found the town, they’d marched through the destruction and somehow been blessed with an intact house, but now, now, they were going to die just a few steps away from their safe haven, and there wasn’t even anyone left to find their bodies. They had failed. She had failed.

Sasha, Marcy, I’m sorry. I tried my best, but it wasn’t enough. Please forgive me. I love y-

BOOM!

The centipede screamed as its head was knocked to the side by an explosion, throwing it off-balance and distracting it from a very tired Sprig and Polly. Another explosion, and it whipped around to see what was attacking it, the rest of them following its gaze to find a cloaked figure standing on the roof of the house holding what looked like a bazooka with three more figures behind it, their features too shrouded to make out. The centipede, enraged, began hurtling towards its new foes, and the weapon-holding figure calmly, with great focus and control, took aim and shot the centipede right on its collar, shattering it with another massive explosion. The jagged bits of metal fell to the ground, and any relief Anne had felt at the centipede being defeated vanished as it shook its head, unharmed by the blows. Her stomach dropped, icy frost invading her bones as she realized they were still very much in danger, but to her confusion, the bug simply looked around, screeched, and ran away, vanishing into the woods.

She didn’t have much time to wonder what had just happened before her attention was grabbed by Sprig slamming into her, crushing her with a hug. She dropped her tennis racket and wrapped her arms around him, returning the hold with as much strength as she could muster, Hop Pop and Polly sharing their own hug next to them. They only separated when they head the sounds of their mystery saviors jumping down from the roof, turning to face them and give their endless thanks. As soon as she looked at them, though, Anne felt her entire world stop, unable to think or breathe because the person in front of her, the one now hurriedly passing the bazooka to one of the other figures and fumbling with the large helmet on their head, was entirely too human. They were far taller than the average frog but lacked the long tail that a newt would have, what little pale skin was visible through their armor was missing the coat of slime that all amphibians had, and to top it all off, on each of the hands that were struggling with the helmet were five long fingers, one more than the four that most amphibians were born with.

The helmet came off and revealed an all-too-familiar shocked face, wide eyes staring back in disbelief, a pale scar on one cheek and a mole on the other, short (short?) blonde hair shining like a beautiful halo.

No, it couldn’t be true, she had to be hallucinating from the exhaustion, or maybe the centipede killed her and this was her dying brain’s way of easing the pain as she faded from existence, there was just no possible way she was actually standing just a couple feet away from-

“…Anne?” It was a quiet, vulnerable thing, so hopeful yet so unsure, and tears began to pour down Anne’s face because it was too good to be true but she knew that voice almost better than her own, she knew it from the way it defended her from bullies on the playground and in school, from the way it took the lead on make-believe play and hangout plans and how to act and dress and think, from the long nights spent whispering secrets into the dark and the busy days spent pretending such raw openness didn’t exist, from the way it said her name like a curse and a prayer and a pretty thing and the way she always wished it would say it again and again, she knew that voice.

“Sasha?” It was barely more than a breath, but it was enough.

The helmet fell forgotten to the ground with a clank, and in three long strides Sasha closed the distance between them, throwing her arms tight around Anne as if she’d disappear at any moment and burying her face in her shoulder. Slowly, Anne brought her own arms up too, wrapping them around Sasha as her shoulders shook with sobs, incoherent mumbling muffled by her shirt. Holding Sasha after so long of not knowing if she was even alive, feeling her hands grip the back of her shirt and her tears soak into her collar, her hair tickling her face and her form shaking in her arms, hearing her voice and her cries, it was all too much, and all Anne could do was tuck her face into Sasha’s neck and hug her as tightly as she could as she, too, broke down into chest-wracking sobs. Her legs gave out, and Sasha followed her to the ground, refusing to loosen her hold for even a moment.

“I’m sorry,” Anne found her voice, gasping between hiccupping cries. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I tried, I tried so hard to come back but so much got in the way, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to leave, I didn’t mean to take so long, I- I didn’t-“

“It’s okay!” Sasha cut in, her words wobbly with tears, but strong. “It’s okay, I know, I know-“

“No! No, you don’t get it, I tried- I tried to- I’m sorry, please, I’m so sorry!”

“Anne, it’s okay, I promise. You’re back now, you’re here, you’re alive, that’s all that matters. I’m just glad you’re okay.”

All Anne could do was continue to weakly cry, shoving her guilt down as far as it would go and taking comfort in Sasha’s hands, one gently rubbing her back and the other tangled in her hair, holding her protectively. They stayed like that for a long moment, but Anne couldn’t resist the desperate need to see her girl after so long of being robbed of her image and pulled away, just enough to cup Sasha’s face with her hands and really look at her. Sasha brought her own hands up to hold Anne’s there, staring back with the same loving awe, both simply taking in one another.

“You cut your hair.” Sasha blinked, then gave a small laugh, and the sound of it made Anne’s heart flutter. She hadn’t realized just how much she’d missed hearing Sasha’s laugh until she was blessed with it once more, and she never wanted to go without it again.

“Yeah, I did.” Anne reached a hand up, twirling a few of the short strands around her fingers.

“I like it, it looks pretty on you.” She chalked-up the redness in Sasha’s face to her being flushed from crying, continuing to play with her hair as heat rose to her own cheeks. She’d never imagined Sasha with short hair, the girl had always cared so much about her appearance and her hair that the idea of her cutting it all off was never even a possibility, and yet there she was with sloppily-cut hair shorter than Anne had ever seen her have, and God was she beautiful.

She wanted to stay there, to keep admiring Sasha, to keep listening to her talk, to let the moment last forever, but then the front door of the house slammed open, shattering their small serenity as everyone’s heads whipped around to see what was going on, Sasha’s grip on Anne tightening protectively. Running through the door was Toadie of all people, heading straight for them with an urgent look on his face; he came to a stop just a couple feet away, bending over and huffing for breath before straightening to address the group. He visibly paused when he saw Anne and the Plantars, but quickly shook it off, turning his focus to Sasha and giving a short bow of his head in respect before speaking.

“Commander, Grime is looking for you, he wants to speak with you.” Sasha huffed, annoyed.

“About?”

“He didn’t say, but he seemed upset.” Sasha sighed, pulling her arms away from Anne to rub her face, grumbling into her hands before returning her focus to the frog.

“Thank you, Toadie. You can return to your duties, we’ll be right in.” Toadie bowed his head again, but hesitated to leave, looking over at Anne and the Plantars.

“Glad to see you’re all okay. Welcome back, Plantars.” With that, he turned and went back the way he came, disappearing into the house and closing the door behind him.

Sasha hung her head, frustration emanating from her in waves, but after a couple deep breaths, she pulled her emotions back under control and took on a serious, commanding presence. She pushed herself to her feet and offered a hand to pull Anne up too, frowning at how clearly exhausted she was, though she didn’t comment on it. Once she was sure Anne wouldn’t fall, she turned and went to pick her helmet up off the ground; it was only then that Anne got a good enough look at the other three figures to see who they were, smiling at the familiar faces of Mrs. Croaker, Wally, and Loggle. She did a double-take at Loggle, though, her jaw dropping slightly in shock seeing how buff he’d gotten while they were gone, but before she could ask or say anything about it, Sasha started talking again.

“I should go see what Grime wants, and besides, it’s not safe to stay out here like this for long, it’s too exposed. I’ll give you all a quick tour of the base and show you to your room, and after that you’ll be free to look around, familiarize yourselves with the place, reunite with everyone, and whatever else. I’m not sure how much I’ll be around, I’ve got a lot to do, but I’ll find you when I can.”

Anne and the Plantars nodded their agreements to the plan and began gathering their bags back up, Sprig helping Anne get her backpack on before grabbing Marcy’s bag as he had before. As Anne tried to pick up her own duffel, though, she couldn’t stop the whimper that escaped from the sharp, burning pain shooting up her arms, unable to get the bag even an inch off the ground before the muscles in her left arm twitched painfully, then gave-out entirely. Her left hand involuntarily released the bag’s straps, leaving all the weight tugging on her right arm, and she grunted in pain and frustration as the bag dropped to the ground, letting go to clutch her left forearm. Seeing her struggle, Sasha looked at Loggle and nodded her head towards her, and he followed the silent command without complaint, walking over and picking up Anne’s bag for her with ease. She mumbled an embarrassed but relieved ‘thank you’, and he simply gave her a thumbs-up in response before heading to the back of the group with Mrs. Croaker and Wally as Sasha started leading them to the house.

A million questions ran through Anne’s mind as they walked, zipping by in rapid succession, a swarm of buzzing bees all talking over each other as they carelessly flew in nauseating cyclone circles and crashed into one another in the process, not giving her enough time to even process one thought before it was gone and replaced by another.

Toadie called Sasha ‘commander’, but why? And why did she get so frustrated at the mention of Grime? Aren’t they a team? Clearly at least some of the townspeople survived whatever destroyed the town, but how many didn’t? The house isn’t very big, and it doesn’t seem like there are any other buildings still standing for more people to hide-out in. Did we really lose so much of the town that everyone fits inside just one small house? And what was the deal with that bug? Why did it have a collar on, and why did it stop attacking us when the collar got destroyed? Sasha didn’t look too shocked or concerned, does she know something about it? What the hell happened while we were gone?

Where is Marcy? Is she here?

Is she alive?

She didn’t know what she was expecting when they entered the house – maybe a massive crowd of people confined to the limited space, or large curtains and makeshift walls dividing the few rooms in the house into several smaller ones, or a chaotic mess of people grieving and training and trying to make-do with what little they had left – what she certainly wasn’t expecting, however, was for the house to look basically exactly as it had the last time they’d seen it, albeit messier and sporting some obvious damages that she could only assume were from various attacks, completely devoid of people aside from Chuck, who sat between the door and the fireplace with a sword nearly twice as tall as him leaning against his chair and a shield to match resting on the floor, but held upright ready to be used at a moment’s notice. Glancing at the others, she could see that Sprig, Hop Pop, and Polly were just as surprised and confused as she was, but it wasn’t until Sprig’s face fell into a look of absolute dread that the implications of what they were seeing, or rather what they weren’t, set in.

“Sasha?” The girl in question turned to Sprig, one brow raising when she noticed how distressed he and everyone else was. “Where is everyone?”

For one agonizingly long moment, she just stared at him in confusion, as if she had no idea what he was talking about and couldn’t for the life of her understand the question. Then, realization flashed across her face with a quiet ‘oh’, and Anne and the Plantars all waited with bated breath for her answer, hearts pounding like war drums and chests aching with premature grief at the possibility that she’d tell them that everyone was gone, dead, missing, captured, defected to the enemy side, never to be seen again. Instead, she gave them all a confident, reassuring smile, a hint of apology in her eyes for causing them to worry by not fully explaining the situation.

“The house isn’t the base, it’s just the entrance, and somewhat of a decoy to help keep us hidden. If Andrias suspects we’re here and tries to attack, all he’ll find is an empty house, and even if he destroys it, he won’t destroy us. The real base is in the basement, and Chuck here is one of a handful of rotating guards who protect the hidden entrance and watch for any signs of danger. He’s one of our best guards, isn’t that right, Chuck?”

“Tulips,” he replied, tipping his hat with a nod.

“Anyways,” she walked over to the fireplace and looked at them with a knowing grin, “in order to get to the base, we have to go through here!”

With that, she raised her hand and pushed on the painting above the fireplace, pressing the secret button that caused the bricks to split down the middle and pull apart, revealing a long, dark stairway leading deep underground. It was a familiar scene that made Anne’s heart ache, remembering the way Sprig had done the exact same thing on accident all those months ago, back when they were still carefree kids going on adventures and having fun, unknowing of the tragedies to come and the horrible ways they would change because of it. She wished she could go back to that moment and be that happy kid again, oblivious to all the ways she’d soon be betrayed and the people who would hurt her so, her youth not yet ripped from her arms by death and war and self-destruction, long before her innocence would be forsaken in favor of blue-tinted self-righteousness and the desperate, insatiable flame of need to get back to her home and her girls, all-too-willing to burn everything she knew and loved until it was nothing but ash to ensure her success.

“The ancestral tunnels?” She looked down at Sprig at the sound of his mumble, his face scrunched-up in surprise and confusion, and she wondered if he, too, was reminded of that day, if he wished he could go back like she did, if he felt the sharp sting of being slapped across the face by the knowledge that they would never be those kids again.

“C’mon, I’m sure everyone will be excited to see you guys again.”

She waved for them to follow, and the group entered the tunnels, beginning the long walk down the stairs. As soon as they were all in, the bricks slid shut behind them, bathing them in pitch black darkness until a series of lights flickered on, small lanterns secured to the wall with a few feet of distance between each one, giving them enough light to see where they were going. The only sounds as they descended were those of feet hitting stone, bags jostling, and armor clinking, no one daring to say a word. Anne still had a slew of questions, but she didn’t know where she would even start, and there were some that she wasn’t quite sure she was ready to hear the answers to (what happened to Marcy?), so she held her tongue and decided to give Sasha a chance to explain things on her own – she could always ask any leftover questions later. Growing anticipation made the few minutes’ walk feel like a lifetime, but eventually the narrow stairway opened up and revealed the base, and Anne and the Plantars were unable to refrain from gasping in astonishment at the sight before them.

“Welcome to…” Sasha swept her arm out, gesturing to the base with a flourish, “the resistance!”

What was once a labyrinth of tunnels and rooms had been completely transformed, with many of the tunnels’ walls removed to open the space up and make it easier to watch-over and navigate. The rooms themselves seemed to have been cleared-out of the various miscellaneous items and piles of junk that once filled them, allowing them to be repurposed for whatever the base needed most; just from where she stood on the balcony-like landing, Anne could see a group of frogs training in the large space in the center, a small armory full of weaponry to the side that the training group was making use of, a med bay with an arrow-shaped sign next to it reading ‘Stumpy’s’ pointing down, and a room that had become a smaller version of the Grub & Go (though the sign read ‘Grub & Gone’, which she felt was a bit dark, but fitting). There were hallways and ladders branching out leading further into the base, and peeking down the nearest one, she saw more rooms that seemed much smaller than the stores and had scraps of fabric hanging down to act as doors, which she could only assume were bedrooms. She wasn’t delusional enough to think they’d be getting private rooms, and the idea of sharing a bedroom with Hop Pop while things were still so tense between them with no reconciliation in sight made her stomach squirm, but she pushed the thought away and focused on Sasha instead – she could deal with that problem later.

“This is the main hall; as you can see, it’s where we do most of the group training, and it houses the armory, med bay, and Grub and Go. If you ever need medical help or more supplies, this is where you’ll go. There are a few smaller training areas throughout the base for individual and specialized training, but they’re first-come, first-serve and tend to be in high-demand, so you’ll likely be doing most of your training here in groups.”

Sasha didn’t give them time to ask any questions before she started walking again, trusting the others to follow as she briskly headed towards a nearby room with a red curtain for a door. Despite the main hall being quite busy, no one seemed to notice them, too focused on their own tasks to pay any attention to the newcomers, which Anne was grateful for. As excited as she was to see everyone again, and as much as she wanted to reconnect and get caught-up on everything that had gone down in her and the Plantars’ absence, she knew she couldn’t handle all that attention so soon; it had already been an intense day, she was exhausted to the bone and overwhelmed with how much had changed, and she knew that once everyone knew they were back, they’d all be clambering over each other to talk to them, and just the idea of that made her want to crawl in a hole and hide for a while. Of course, it was only a matter of time before word of their return would spread like wildfire, but she hoped she could at least get a nap in before the entire town came running to their curtain-door.

Sasha pushed the red curtain aside, stepping into the room with the others quickly following. It was surprisingly large and clearly some kind of strategizing or planning room, with a round table in the middle with a map laid-out on it, a wooden chandelier with candles hanging above the table, a large wooden board to the side with a mess of maps and notes pinned to it, and various weapons hanging on the walls. As Anne and the Plantars stared at the room in awe, Sasha walked over and stood by the table, glancing down at the map for a long moment with furrowed brows before shaking her head and refocusing on the others, giving them the same confident smile she’d been wearing since entering the base.

“This is the strategy room, although most people call it the Commander’s room. I, uh, spend a lot of time in here.” As she spoke, she grabbed a blanket that had been hanging off the back of a chair and let it drop to the floor, kicking it under the table in a clear effort to hide it. The Plantars were too busy gawking to notice, but Anne’s focus was solely on Sasha, and she watched the action with a frown – the blanket could’ve easily just been for comfort, maybe it got cold in the room at times, or maybe the chair was uncomfortable and the blanket provided some padding, but Sasha’s strange behavior gave the concerning impression that there was more to the story. They all jumped as Sasha clapped her hands together to get their attention, giving them an intense, serious look once everyone’s eyes were on her.

“Listen up: the only people permitted to use this room are me and Grime, so unless one of us is already in here or we give you direct permission, no one is to step foot inside, understood?” They hesitantly nodded, somewhat taken aback by the sudden change of attitude, and Sasha relaxed slightly at their compliance, though she sounded just as serious as she explained the reasons behind the rule.

“There are a lot of extremely important documents in here, and although it looks a bit disorganized and messy, we have a system and an order to everything. If someone came in here and carelessly moved something around or knocked something over, it could ruin days, or even weeks, worth of work and planning, and we can’t afford to be set-back like that. Grime and I are the only ones who really have reasons to use this room anyways; when teams are sent on missions, we give them all the information they need during their briefing, and the teams themselves typically aren’t very involved in the strategizing portion with the rare exception of the team leaders, and even then, they’re only in here when me or Grime are present. Please understand that this rule isn’t just for you guys, it’s for everyone, and it’s not because we don’t trust you or don’t think you’re capable of helping, we just can’t make mistakes or waste time at this point. Andrias is getting closer to launching his invasion every day, and right now we’re on-track to march in four weeks, if not sooner, so everything we do from here on out has to be perfect. Does that make sense?”

They nodded again, more confidently this time, and she smiled.

“Great, let’s keep moving, then. I’ll take you to your room next, I can tell you’re all pretty tired, and I’m sure you wanna put those bags down. This and the main hall were basically the most important things to show you anyways, plus the briefing room, but that’s not too hard to find and you can always just follow the crowd when we call a meeting there next. If you need help finding something, don’t hesitate to ask around, the other resistance members will be able to help, or at least point you in the right direction. Now c’mon, your room isn’t too far from here.”

Once again, the group followed Sasha as she left the room and started leading them through the hallways; by the third turn down a hall that looked exactly the same as every other one, Anne knew she would have one hell of a time trying to navigate to and from the other parts of the base, but the promise of soon having a relatively private place to rest overshadowed most of her worries. Her bones ached, protesting every movement like the creaking branches of an old tree bending under the weight of a bird, and it was getting harder and harder to lift her feet enough to take another step, the ground clutching her shoes and trying to drag her down to bury her in a grave she was supposed to meet weeks ago. By the time they reached the room, she could barely stand, and she was more grateful than ever to Loggle for carrying her duffel bag for her, though he left in a hurry as soon as he set it down in the room, not giving her a chance to voice her thanks.

Sasha waited in the doorway as they went in and inspected the room; it was about as small as Anne had expected, no more than eight feet long and wide, with a single bed in the corner only big enough to fit one person and three thin mats on the floor to serve as the other ‘beds’. Even with their bags shoved into a corner, there was barely enough room to walk between the door, beds, and luggage without stepping on someone’s belongings or where they would be sleeping. The bed only had a thin, stiff-looking mattress, but considering what the other options were, the unspoken question of who would get the bed escalated to something that could easily spark a huge argument as everyone tried to prove that they were most deserving of it. Before anyone could begin to plead their case, however, Sprig spoke up.

“Anne should get the bed, the rest of us can sleep on the floor.” He was met with a grumble from Hop Pop and an indignant ‘What?!’ from Polly, and Anne shook her head.

“No, no, you guys take the bed. I’ll be fine, I’ve slept in worse places plenty of times.” Of course, she really did want the bed, but more than that, she wanted to avoid any sort of explosive argument. She was tired, and she was emotionally drained, and she just needed to lay down and go to sleep for a while, even if it was on the ground. She wasn’t in the mood to fight for a stupid bed, but Sprig wouldn’t give up so easily.

“But right now you’re hurt. Opening the portal took a lot out of you, it almost killed you, and you need to get some real rest to get better. When you’re able to stand without looking like your bones are stabbing you from the inside, we can talk, but for now you’re gonna take the bed, got it?”

“Sprig-“

“I’ll, uh, leave you guys to sort yourselves out here.” Sasha cut-in, interrupting the brewing conflict and getting their attention. “I need to go find Grime. I’ll see you later at some point, though, alright?” She turned to leave, but Anne shot a hand out, grabbing her wrist.

“Sasha, wait!” She looked down at where Anne was holding her, then to her face, confused. Anne quickly let go, wringing her hands together instead as she tried to come up with a good reason for stopping the other girl. She knew why she did it, though; the question had been sitting in the back of her mind since she first saw Sasha outside – weeks longer than that, if she were honest with herself – and she knew she couldn’t let Sasha walk away without asking it, even if the answer could ruin her. She took a deep breath, steeled her nerves, and looked the other girl in the eyes.

“Where is Marcy?”

It came out broken, horribly weak, and even as she whispered the words with tears building in her eyes and heartbreak clogging her throat, something small and vulnerable and inescapably in love inside of her already knew. Sasha’s eyes shot to the floor, her shoulders hunching and her mouth pulling into a tight line as she tried in vain to avoid answering, but Anne wouldn’t let her go so easily. She reached out once more and gripped Sasha’s shoulders with the strength of someone desperate and terrified, begging fate to change its mind, begging God to have mercy on her tired, shattered soul, begging like a fool for something that was never going to be hers, begging Sasha to just answer already so she could finally leave the limbo of unknowingness she had been imprisoned in for so long, even if it meant falling into the fiery pits of hell. Sasha swallowed thickly before replying, quiet and heavy with long-endured pain and regret.

“She’s not here.” Anne felt her stomach drop out of her body, heard her heart pounding in her ears despite it ceasing its life-giving pulses, felt her blood go cold and her body fill with nerve-severing needle-sharp static that left her lightheaded. It was what she’d expected, what she knew to be the truth, and yet she couldn’t help but feel as though someone had grabbed her heart in their fist and squeezed until it collapsed, until its mangled pieces squished out between their fingers, until there was nothing left but bloody mush in the hole where her love was supposed to be.

“…What?” Sasha sighed, then looked up, meeting Anne’s welled-up eyes as tears ran down her face in rivulets from her own.

“After the portal closed, Andrias had Lady Olivia and General Yunan take Marcy away. He told them to take her to a ‘rejuvenation tank’, whatever that is. Grime and I… we couldn’t stay, we couldn’t keep fighting, we would’ve lost. So, we escaped, and we had to leave her behind. Anne, I- I’m so sorry.”

She bit back the sound of her cries, but she couldn’t hide the way her shoulders shook with sobs under Anne’s hands, and Anne could feel her own chest heaving as her body failed to decide whether it wanted to cry or scream or throw up. Trembling, she brought one hand up, cupping Sasha’s cheek and gently brushing the tears away with her thumb even as more unrelentingly replaced them. It took everything she had to resist the urge to tug Sasha close and hold her forever, to let the world fall and fade from reality if it meant keeping Sasha safely within her arms, to protect what she had left and sacrifice every piece of her broken soul but the two engraved with the names of her loves. It would be a fine existence, she thought, to have nothing left of herself or her being except for her two girls, her two loves, who made it worth it to exist at all. She lowered her hand back down to Sasha’s shoulder, hating the way that Sasha chasing after her touch made her want to abandon all hope and everything she’d worked for and stay there, just the two of them, safe underground together. They had a job to do, though, because if there was a chance to save Marcy, no matter how slim, they were going to take it, and they were going to give it their all.

“You said Andrias had her put into a ‘rejuvenation tank’?” Sasha nodded. “Then she has to be alive. If he wanted her dead, he would’ve left her on the floor, so there has to be something else.” She didn’t try to hide the bitter hatred she had for Andrias, not when she knew Sasha wanted to kill the monster just as much as she did.

“We need to figure out what he did to her. We need to figure out how to save her.” Sasha gave her a wobbly smile and nodded.

“That’s exactly what we’ve been working towards.” She brought her hands up, gently holding onto Anne’s wrists. “Get some rest, and come find me tonight. We can talk more about it and… everything when you’re not dead on your feet, okay?” Anne huffed, but smiled.

“Okay.” She wanted to hug her again, to know that she was real and tell her how much she missed her, how glad she was that she was okay, how hard it was to keep going on Earth without her and Marcy by her side, and she wanted to whisper ‘I love you’s in her ear like a mantra to make up for all the times she couldn’t say it before. But Sasha squeezed her wrists and stepped away, out of Anne’s grasp, and with one last little wave, she disappeared down the maze of hallways, leaving Anne alone with the Plantars.

She sighed and turned back around, ready to continue arguing with Sprig about the bed, however instead she was met with the sight of the three mats claimed by the frogs and their belongings while the bed remained vacant, and Sprig’s smug, insistent face staring back at her. He nodded towards the bed, and she rolled her eyes, though she made sure to give him a small, thankful smile as she accepted defeat and collapsed onto the bed, pulling the thin, too-short blanket over herself before passing out.

***

Sasha paced around her bedroom, uncaring of the taste of bitter iron in her mouth as she chewed her lip, her brows pinched and eyes trained on the ground. She stopped, scrubbed her face with her hands, sighed, ran them through her hair, then started again. It was a cycle she’d been trapped in for Frog-knows how long – she didn’t particularly try to keep track, and she didn’t have any space left in her mind to care, the only thing she could think about was Anne.

Anne, who had been gone for so, so long. Anne, who appeared out of nowhere and would’ve been taken out by a centipede if Sasha hadn’t chosen to go against Grime’s orders and fight the damn thing to blow-off some steam. Anne, who looked exhausted in mind, body, and soul, worn-down in a way Sasha had never seen her be before, supposedly because she had opened a portal (God, she’d nearly fainted overhearing Sprig say that Anne had almost died doing what Sasha thought was impossible), though she had her doubts that it was the only thing contributing to her tiredness. Anne, who came back against all odds, who was the same and yet so very different, who was so close and yet so far out of reach, who was happy to see her despite all the horrible, unforgivable things she had done.

Anne, who was beautiful and loving and everything good in the world, in the universe.

Anne, who deserved so much better than Sasha despite how hard she’d worked to become a better person, and who had been dragged into the resistance where she was expected to follow Sasha’s command.

She stopped, scrubbed her face with her hands, groaned, ran them through her hair, and started again.

She knew she needed to go find Grime like she’d said she would, avoiding it was only putting-off the inevitable and likely making him even more upset, but she really wasn’t in the mood to get chewed-out and forced to rest, especially since defying him was the reason she found Anne. She couldn’t pretend to be sorry, not when her girl, her love, her Anne was just a few halls away. She’d considered going back to the strategy room to continue pouring over the plans for the next few weeks and prepare for the arrival of the citizens of Beetlecreek, who were supposed to get there within the next couple days, but the idea of doing anything when Anne was finally back was nauseating, and she knew she wouldn’t be able to focus or think clearly. She definitely didn’t want to talk to any of the other resistance members and get asked stupid questions, hear stupid stories, or be dragged into stupid arguments, so with no other ideas of ways to keep herself busy while she waited for Anne to wake up, she’d gone to her own room to hide and pace a hole in the floor.

As backwards as it sounded, her bedroom was just about the last place anyone would go looking for her – she was almost never in her room for any meaningful amount of time, only occasionally dropping by to get something she’d left there or put something she didn’t need anymore away. She was much more likely to be found asleep at the table in the strategy room than in her bed (hence the blanket that she hoped no one saw because it would just be embarrassing for them to know she passed-out while working often enough to keep a blanket in the room), and if she wasn’t drawing maps and scribbling notes, she was somewhere else in the base doing whatever needed to be done to keep the place running. Hell, one time when she was on hour forty of no sleep, she’d gone to Stumpy’s to get a snack and ended up behind the counter helping him get through an unexpected rush for over an hour, only to forget her snack when she smelled smoke and ran to put out a fire someone started in group training; she didn’t realize she hadn’t actually eaten until she was back in front of her maps, trying not to fall asleep and wondering why her stomach was cramping so badly.

Part of her felt bad for hiding away when the resistance could need her, but she knew she wouldn’t be of any help in the state she was in; the unfortunate truth was that sometimes, the best, most beneficial thing she could do was nothing at all. So, she paced, and she thought about Anne’s return and all the things that it meant for herself and the resistance. Anne didn’t know about anything that had happened in Amphibia since the day of the castle, she didn’t know about the factories or the pollution destroying the environment, she didn’t know about the attack that leveled the town and forced the resistance underground, she didn’t know about how the resistance came to be, how it functioned, who their allies and enemies were, what efforts they were making to recruit, fight back, and prepare to take down Andrias and his army, ways they had succeeded, ways they had failed, or ways they had learned and grown stronger from their failures.

Anne didn’t know anything about the new world they were living in, but how could Sasha possibly keep her role as commander with Anne back in the picture? When Anne was involved, Sasha having control only made things worse and worse, and she had promised herself she would do things differently, do things right, but how could she do that if she stayed in-charge and perpetuated the very dynamic that led to her immoral, manipulative, selfish behavior and Anne breaking-off their friendship? She didn’t want to hurt Anne again, she couldn’t, but if she passed the helmet and gave Anne complete control over a resistance that she knew nothing about, their efforts to stop Andrias would surely fail, and they would lose Amphibia, Earth, and Marcy for good. She knew that if Grime were there, he would rip her a new one because obviously she couldn’t put everything at risk for the sake of Anne’s feelings, but he didn’t understand just how much Anne meant not only to Sasha, but to everyone. If Sasha stayed in control and screwed things up with Anne again, Anne would have every right to turn against her, and if she did, every single Wartwood citizen would follow without hesitation, and the rest of the resistance wouldn’t be far behind. Not wanting to hurt Anne again wouldn’t be a good enough reason for Grime to reconsider Sasha’s role as commander, but potentially losing the entire resistance absolutely would.

She just couldn’t figure out a solution that didn’t somehow end in disaster. She’d been a lieutenant, an outlaw, a usurper, a commander, an egotistical power-hungry self-obsessed teenage girl – she knew how to lead, she knew how to strategize, she knew how the world worked and how people worked and how to make it all work in her favor, but she didn’t know how to be with Anne, not anymore.

Ever since that day in the castle, she’d been waiting, praying, hoping against all hope for Anne to return. Like a bad dog brought to some country backroad, tied to a tree, and abandoned in the middle of nowhere by its owner after biting one too many times, left to either die in isolation or get picked up by some poor fool who didn’t know what they were in for, teeth still stained with blood and tail tucked between the legs, waiting. She’d never understood the phrase ‘all bark, no bite’ – what good was barking if the bite never came? What good was a threat if everyone knew it was empty? If anything, she was the opposite. Her bark was a privilege to receive, given when she would rather play with her food than eat it, when watching them squirm, cower, or run away in fear was more rewarding than the feeling of flesh breaking between her teeth. She didn’t make threats she wasn’t willing to follow-through on, she didn’t bark unless she was prepared to bite if the provocation continued, but people tend to not be forgiving towards mean dogs, even when they know damn well that there’s a reason for everything.

She’d become too accustomed to her violent ways, turned her teeth on Anne without care or remorse for the scars left behind, and when Anne got away from her and learned that love didn’t have to hurt, she’d only doubled-down because to admit that the pain she’d caused Anne was unnecessary and unjust was to admit that there was something wrong with her, something broken that needed to be fixed before Anne would trust her again and let her back into her life. It was scary, trying to change, wearing a muzzle until she could trust herself not to bite anyone who stood a little too close; after all, her teeth were her tools, her weapons, the way she protected not only herself, but her girls, even if in the end she hurt them, too. Filing them down to dull nubs would be losing her power, her protection, her advantage over her enemies, the thing that had kept her safe throughout her life, and she just couldn’t do it, not so easily and especially not in the middle of a war. She could change herself, though, fix her behavior, learn to keep her teeth in her mouth and not bark at those who truly meant her no harm, and maybe once she was a good dog, Anne would want her again.

She didn’t know if she was good yet, she didn’t know if all her work had made any real difference, and she was terrified to find out the hard way that she was still the same short-tempered, controlling, violent person she’d been before. Anne was back now, close enough to bite, and the idea of slipping-up and even so much as growling in her direction made Sasha want to cut her tongue off and rip out all her teeth just to guarantee it would never happen. She wanted to give everything to Anne and run away, return to that country backroad and tie herself to the tree, serve the rest of her sentence now knowing how much she deserved it. Anne wouldn’t know what to do with the resistance, though, and there wasn’t enough time before Andrias’ invasion for her to learn on her own. The idea of leading the resistance and the attack on Andrias with Anne by her side was great when hypothetical, a fantasy that kept her pushing forwards when things got hard, but now that it was becoming reality, she was lost and unsure.

She flopped down on her bed, staring at the ceiling. All her pacing and worrying was getting her nowhere, and as much as she hated wasting her time with things like breaks, she knew she wouldn’t be helpful or productive in her current state, and getting some sleep could help her think more clearly – plus, maybe Grime would go a little easier on her if her excuse for not seeing him right away was because she was resting like he’d asked her to, even if only because there was nothing else she could think of to do. Besides, she really was tired; the last time she’d slept was the day before for barely an hour, having passed-out in the strategy room and woken up with ink on her face, a quill stuck to her forehead, and drool smudging the map she’d been meticulously drawing attack plans on. Lack of sleep paired with the excitement of the day left consciousness quickly slipping from her grasp, her racing thoughts blessedly slowing down and trickling away as her tense muscles relaxed.

She got nearly two hours of sleep before she was woken up by Grime barging in, nearly tearing her curtain-door down in the process, and beginning his very long, very loud lecture before she was even awake enough to process the words.

***

Anne didn’t know how long she’d slept for, but she knew it wasn’t long enough, if not because she was still incredibly tired, then because the Plantars were still asleep on the floor despite being in much better condition than she was when they went to sleep. She tried to go back to sleep, shifting around to get comfortable, but the effort was futile – she knew she wasn’t going to be falling asleep again anytime soon. It wasn’t particularly surprising, she supposed; ever since she was a kid, for as long as she could remember, she’d always had trouble sleeping in new places. Of course, once she was familiar with a place and comfortable there, she’d sleep like the dead without issue, but the first few nights were always rough. As a child, she was the one who called her parents to pick her up from sleepovers in the middle of the night, tired, uncomfortable, and upset, begging to be brought home to sleep in her own bed (it was half the reason why her, Sasha, and Marcy’s sleepovers most often took place at her house, at least from her perspective, although she’d grown comfortable enough to sleep at their houses too when the occasion arose).

When she’d first arrived in Amphibia, those first two weeks in the woods were filled with more sleepless nights than not, and she felt justified in that because no one would be able to sleep normally in those conditions, but even when she was taken in by the Plantars, she didn’t get a full night’s rest for at least a week or two. During the trip to Newtopia, she’d gotten used to being a little tired all the time, spending her fair share of nights on the road awake and stargazing even when she wasn’t in charge of driving and making quick friends with the night shift workers at the Hemisphere Hotel, but she’d returned to a more normal sleep schedule when they’d made it back to Wartwood. Her biggest shock came when she and the Plantars were transported to Earth and she found that she couldn’t sleep in the bedroom she’d been in her whole life, in the house she’d called home until just a few months prior; she chalked it up to stress, trauma, and her declining mental health and tried to ignore it, using the extra time to her advantage to do more research (when she wasn’t in the attic, that is).

All that to say, she knew from experience that it was a losing battle to try to force herself back to sleep when she was in an unfamiliar place, and although she was technically home in Wartwood at the Plantars’ house, the dirt room in the underground base didn’t feel anything close to familiar. With a quiet sigh, she got out of bed and tiptoed out of the room, careful not to make any noise or wake anyone else up – she thought about shaking Sprig awake and having him join her like usual, but she knew how badly he needed the sleep, and all she planned on doing anyways was wandering the halls and avoiding any and all people, so she wouldn’t be gone for long. Her entire body was still pretty sore, but not nearly as bad as it was before, and she needed to move around and get all the restless, uncomfortable energy out, so wandering seemed like a good option.

She started by going down the hall in the direction of the strategy room and main hall, but instead of turning to go towards them at the end of the hall, she went in the opposite direction, going deeper into the tunnels that seemed to only really be used for bedrooms. She kept going straight as much as she could, only taking turns when she had no other choice in hopes of avoiding getting too lost, but the hallways all looked too similar, and she knew within a few minutes of walking that it would be a struggle to find her way back. She didn’t take it as a sign to turn around, though, continuing her wandering and deciding that getting back was a problem for later when she actually wanted to go back. For now, what she wanted was to keep moving, keep focusing on the feeling of her legs burning and her lungs expanding rather than that of her heart aching for reasons she couldn’t quite decipher, keep letting her head be filled with the rhythmic dull thuds of her feet hitting the dirt floor to leave no room for thoughts about her parents or the town or Marcy or Sasha, keep putting distance between herself and that tiny room that she had no choice but to share with Hop Pop which would surely soon become suffocating under the weight of her anger and guilt and stubbornness.

She’d gotten quite good at running away from her problems while on Earth. She and Marcy had that in common, she supposed.

The sound of distant yelling made her pause, straining her ears to try to figure out what was going on. For a terrifying moment, she thought that maybe something bad was happening, that the base was being attacked or people were somehow badly hurt, but there was only one voice, and it sounded more angry than urgent. Curious, she began to follow the sound the best that she could, forgetting her previous efforts to avoid getting lost and instead going in whatever directions made the voice get louder, closer. It didn’t take long for her to realize the voice belonged to Grime of all people, and shortly after that, she turned a corner and stumbled upon the scene, ducking back behind the corner to avoid being seen and peeking around.

Down the hall was Grime, standing in front of the doorway to a room with a box tucked under one arm while the other gestured wildly as he yelled, and standing before him, leaning tiredly against the doorway, looking annoyed and out of patience at the receiving end of the lecturing, was Sasha. Anne knew she shouldn’t eavesdrop – she could only assume the conversation was meant to be private, despite the volume, and it really wasn’t any of her business regardless – but curiosity gnawed at her, carving into her with its sharp teeth and pinching her nerves with its strong bite, and the idea of going back to her room made her legs lock-up and her heart race, so, against her better judgement, she stayed and listened.

“I mean really, Sasha, how many times do I have to say it before you actually listen? You’re hurt and you need to rest, not sneak out to go fight creatures that could barely be considered an active threat and that any of our teams could handle on their own! It’s been what, a week since you got a piece of your arm blasted off? You can’t possibly think it’s a good idea to go back to fighting already!”

“I already told you I’m fine! If I seriously didn’t think I could handle it, I wouldn’t have gone. Why can’t you just trust me?”

“Because I know you! And I know that you won’t do what’s good for you and rest unless you’re chained down to the damn bed! When Tuti deemed you to be in good enough condition to leave her direct care, I didn’t stop you from running back to your maps and strategies and attack plans, but going and fighting a centipede? What were you thinking?”

“I. Was. Fine. And it’s because of me that we got Anne and the Plantars back! If I hadn’t been there when I was, that bug would’ve killed them!”

“Well it could’ve killed you!” Sasha flinched at that, but Grime kept going without hesitation. “I’ve said it before, but apparently it didn’t stick, so I’ll say it again: you’re no use to anyone if you’re dead. I don’t care about Anne, I don’t care about the Plantars, and I don’t care about some stupid centipede. What I care about is you and your safety, and your ability to lead this resistance like you swore to devote yourself to.” Sasha straightened up, glaring as she stepped towards him.

“I can lead just fine, but you know as well as I do that Anne and the Plantars are just as important as I am, if not more, so don’t go dragging their names through the mud.” Her voice was low, cold, threatening. “It’s because of them that we were able to make any resistance force at all. We’re bigger and stronger now, but don’t forget where we started. If Wartwood hadn’t let us in and rallied behind us, it would’ve taken a whole lot longer to get support and start making moves against Andrias, and we’d be in a much worse position right now than we are. Maybe you don’t care about them, but Wartwood does, the resistance does, and I do.”

“Fine, think about it this way, then. Do you think Anne would’ve wanted you out there fighting that centipede if she knew there was a chunk missing out of your arm?” Anne waited for Sasha to tell him he was overreacting, that whatever injury she apparently had wasn’t as bad as he was making it sound, but her stomach dropped as she watched Sasha shrink back slightly, stuttering out her uncertain reply.

“I-I mean maybe, yeah, it was to help her, so-“ Grime shoved the box he was carrying into her chest, cutting her off.

“You’re clearly not thinking rationally, so this conversation is over. Clean up that arm of yours, get some rest – real rest – and come find me when you’re ready to listen. And for Frog’s sake, please eat something! You look like a damn skeleton without all that armor on.”

With that, he walked away, thankfully going in the opposite direction of where Anne was hiding. As soon as he was out of sight, Sasha sighed, slumping against the doorway once more and rubbing her face with the hand not holding the box. Anne considered taking her chance to make her escape, to turn around and go back to her room and pretend she hadn’t heard what she did, but she knew she couldn’t just leave, not without talking to Sasha first, especially now that she knew Sasha was hurt somehow. With a deep breath, she stepped around the corner and into view, hesitantly approaching. Sasha didn’t notice her right away, though, her face still in her hand, likely distracted by whatever thoughts were going through her head after the argument. Now that she was closer, Anne could see what Grime meant by calling Sasha a skeleton – her armor had been shed, leaving her in just a tank top and a loose pair of pants, allowing Anne to see the way her collarbones were too pronounced, her shoulders and elbows too sharp, her stomach too thin such that Anne was sure her ribs would be poking through if her shirt wasn’t covering it.

It was discomforting to see her in such a state, and Anne made a mental note to drag her to Stumpy’s for a real meal soon, but what really concerned her was the thick bandages wrapped around most of Sasha’s right upper arm, spanning from her shoulder nearly down to her elbow. Her mind raced with questions and her heart writhed from the desperate urge to demand to know what happened, force Sasha to sit down and rest, and fix her up to the best of her abilities, but she swallowed her worry and put on a more relaxed, casual small smile, hoping to avoid scaring the other girl away.

“Fighting with a hurt arm, huh?” Sasha jumped, startled, and nearly dropped the box, her head whipping to see who had snuck up on her. When she realized it was Anne, she relaxed, though her expression grew annoyed when she processed what had been said.

“Nearly dying opening portals, huh?” Anne’s brows twitched at the sharp edge in her tone, and Sasha immediately shrunk, once again bringing a hand up to cover her face and shaking her head. “Sorry, sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. I overheard, and I just- I was so worried about you all this time, and hearing that, I- I just- sorry-“

“Woah, hey, it’s okay, I know you didn’t mean anything by it. I’m not mad, it’s okay.” Anne raised her hands in surrender, dropping the joking tone to reassure her, but Sasha just shook her head again.

“Anne-“

“Sash, really, it’s fine.” She looked like she wanted to keep arguing and apologizing, but after a moment she seemed to decide against it, dropping her gaze to the floor with a small sigh. A couple long seconds passed before Anne had enough and broke the awkward silence, clearing her throat before speaking.

“Can I, uh, come in? I could help you with that.”

“Hm?” Sasha looked up again, confused, and Anne pointed at the box in her hands. “Oh! Uh, yeah, sure, you can come in.” She stepped aside, letting Anne through, though she quickly brushed by, setting the box down as she hurriedly started cleaning up various belongings strewn about the place.

“Sorry for the mess, I don’t spend much time in here and usually don’t have visitors, I really just dump stuff that I don’t need here, but if I knew you were coming, I would’ve cleaned up a bit first, y’know?” Anne just giggled lightly and picked up the box, going over to the bed and sitting down.

“Dude, I don’t mind a mess, I promise. I mean, my bedroom was always a complete wreck growing up, remember? Not to mention my locker at school, it was like an avalanche of random junk every time I opened that thing.” Sasha looked over, laughing, and Anne just smiled, patting the spot next to her. “Come on, let me see that arm.”

Her face grew uncertain, but she obliged and sat on the bed, though instead of letting Anne help, she took the box back and started digging through it herself.

“It’s okay, I can do it myself. It’s kinda nasty, and I’m trained to treat these types of wounds anyways, so it’s probably better if I just do it.” Anne reached over and put a hand on Sasha’s, halting her rummaging.

“I want to help, please?” She didn’t respond, hesitant, and Anne rolled her eyes lightheartedly. “It’s not like I’ve never seen an injury before. Do you know how much trouble Sprig and I got into those first few months? You can only chase after so many monsters before someone gets hurt, and working on the farm with all the old, crummy equipment, there’s bound to be some accidents. I can handle it, and besides, it’ll be harder for you to do it yourself since it’s on your upper arm, it’s an awkward angle to work at. I’ll be quick and gentle, I swear, so…?”

Sasha sighed and took her hand out of the box, angling it towards Anne. “Fine, but if you change your mind, I can do it. Really, it’s not a big deal or anything.”

Anne ignored her last weak attempt to dissuade her, taking a small pair of scissors from the box and cutting right next to the knot on the bandages on Sasha’s arm. Taking care not to touch the injured area, she unraveled the fabric, revealing a thick, bloodstained layer of padding taped down protecting the wound itself. Even with the padding covering the heart of it, she could tell it was far worse than she’d initially thought from the way Sasha’s usually pale skin was marred with coal black and sickly green bruising from the top of her shoulder to nearly halfway down her bicep. Throughout their time together that day, and even in that very moment, Sasha had never let-on that she was in any pain, not even so much as a wince, and Anne had held out hope that Grime was exaggerating and overreacting at least a little bit in his anger, but seeing the damage now and knowing the real mess was still covered-up left her questioning if Grime wasn’t taking it seriously enough.

She took a breath, bracing herself, and reached for the padding, peeling the tape off as gently as she could and pulling the padding away. Despite her efforts to not react, she couldn’t stop herself from sucking in a sharp gasp at the sight she was met with: an actual, literal chunk had been taken out of Sasha’s arm, as if someone had used a cookie cutter to carve a semicircle out of her flesh. Judging by the fact that Sasha could still use her arm at all, it was shallow enough to miss any major nerves or muscles, but she couldn’t imagine it was off by much. It was covered with thick, dark scabs, though the padding had pulled some up when removed, making it bleed in a few spots. Along the edge of the wound were blisters, both old popped ones and intact newer ones, and flaking, scaly, irritated discolored skin, all the result of serious burns. Scar tissue had already begun to build, pale pink inching closer to the ravine as it pinched the smaller, more easily healed bits closed, though it would take quite some time for it to replace all the blisters and scabs; even so, Anne could tell the eventual scar would be thick and gnarly, and she could only imagine how Sasha felt knowing it would be that way for the rest of her life.

“Christ, Sash, what the hell happened?” Sasha huffed mirthlessly.

“Laser blast. A mission went wrong, things got chaotic and messy, and I got shot by a bug with guns for arms. It’s okay, though, I’d rather have my arm get fucked up than lose someone to a laser through the head, especially when it comes to that team.”

“Which team?” Sasha smiled, genuine and proud.

“Croaker’s. She’s the leader, and on her team is Wally, Maddie, Loggle, and Toadie. They’re a really skilled group, they knock every mission out of the park, and… we’ve been through a lot together. The resistance wasn’t always this big, it took a while to gather this many members, and not everyone is ready or willing to do the dangerous stuff, so at the start we only had a couple small teams to go on missions, and Croaker’s was one of them. They don’t need me so much anymore, they can handle themselves just fine, but I like to tag along as backup in case things go wrong. As long as I’m there, I can make sure nobody gets killed or left behind.”

On the surface, it was a sweet sentiment, and Anne’s chest warmed at the thought of Sasha wanting to protect the people of Wartwood, but looking at her arm and remembering the argument she’d overheard, she couldn’t help but frown.

“Even if it means you get seriously hurt?” Sasha stiffened, and her expression grew stony as she turned to face straight ahead.

“I’m the commander. It’s my duty to protect them, no matter the cost.” Anne gently took her hand, leaning over to put herself in Sasha’s line of sight.

“Not if the cost is your life. I need you safe, too.” Meeting Anne’s concerned gaze, Sasha could only uphold her cold stoicism for a moment before she faltered, then sighed, giving their joined hands a small squeeze as her lips ticked up into a slight smile.

“I could say the same to you, you could barely stand on your own when you got here. Just how badly did the portal mess you up?” Anne huffed lightly and shook her head, reluctantly releasing Sasha’s hand so she could get back to cleaning and patching the wound.

“It was a necessary sacrifice. We needed to get back, and I was the only one who could open it. Trust me, if there was an easier way, we would’ve taken it. It’s not exactly fun having the magic powers that are woven into you get ripped out and take all your energy with them to tear a hole in the fabric of space.” She pulled a clean rag from the box and looked around, spotting a water canteen hanging off the bed post and grabbing it. As she soaked the rag and began brushing it over the injury as gently as she could, she noticed Sasha’s shoulders start to shake, and she was about to try to comfort her when she realized Sasha was laughing, though there was no humor in it.

“Fuck, Anne. Here you are, treating my arm for me, when you just got put through the wringer and nearly tore yourself apart to come back. You almost died, right? Isn’t that what Sprig said? So what the hell are you doing here helping me? I mean, if anything, I should be helping you.” She pulled away from Anne’s grasp, looking at her pleadingly. “Forget my arm, tell me what you need, let me help you, please?”

“There’s nothing to help, I’m not hurt anywhere, I’m just… tired.” She shoved away memories of her skin splitting apart, shattering like glass as her powers rushed relentlessly out, the very thing that had been her weapon, her strength, her protection, suddenly willing to take everything she was and everything she had if it meant opening the portal, using her, consuming her, breaking her, and when all was said and done, giving her exactly what they both wanted. She still hadn’t checked how bad the damage was, how mangled the flesh on her arm and legs were. She shook her head.

“You can help me by letting me help you. I can’t sleep, and I don’t wanna go back to that tiny room, so you might as well let me patch you up, right?” She took Sasha’s arm and guided her back to her prior position, resuming cleaning the wound with the rag. For a while, they simply sat in silence as Anne worked, the only words spoken being the occasional mumbled apology whenever Sasha winced or hissed in pain. Once the injury was clean enough, she set the rag down and took some ointment from the box, applying a generous amount to the area; she was nearly done with the ointment when Sasha spoke again.

“What was Earth like?” Her voice was quiet, gentle, fitting for the close, calm atmosphere they’d created even though the question itself very much wasn’t, though she had no real way of knowing that. Anne froze as memories of everything she’d done and been through on Earth rushed to the surface, not realizing she’d tightened her grip on Sasha’s arm until the girl tried to pull away slightly.

“Anne?” Confusion and concern laced her tone, and Anne forced herself to take a breath, loosening her hold and returning to her task.

“It was fine, about the same as when we left, although everyone was a hell of a lot more nosey than I remember them being before. Guess that’s what happens when you disappear without a trace for months and then come back as if nothing happened, though.” She put the ointment back in the box, wiped her hands off on the cleanest part of the rag, and grabbed some fresh padding and the roll of tape, carefully applying it like it’d been done before.

“What’d you tell them? How’d you explain it all?” Anne’s brows pinched, and she shook her head.

“I told them whatever would get them to leave me alone the fastest. It’s not like they’d believe the truth anyway, so there was no point in trying and making myself sound insane. My parents were the only ones who got anything close to the truth, and they couldn’t exactly deny my story with the Plantars right in front of them as proof, but in general we tried to avoid drawing attention or suspicion. The last thing we wanted was the government coming after us.” With the padding secured, she pulled out the role of bandages and began wrapping it around Sasha’s arm, making sure it was tight enough to hold everything together without being painful.

“What about you? Was it nice being back home, seeing your parents, having technology again, being surrounded by other humans?” Her movements slowed, all the different, horrible ways she could reply passing through and leaving a bitter taste in her mouth.

‘I hated every minute of it and felt guilty for not being happy, and no one understood why I couldn’t just relax and let myself enjoy being back. I couldn’t sleep without having nightmares about everything that happened, I couldn’t eat without being plagued by thoughts of bugs and burning flesh, I couldn’t do anything at all without wondering if you and Marcy were okay and wishing to be with you both again.’

‘I shut myself off and pushed everyone away. They didn’t understand. No one did. I cut myself to repent my sins, to relieve my guilt, to feel alive again. I tried to kill myself, but Death didn’t want me. Why? Why didn’t Death want me? Why didn’t Death take me when I begged for it to? Why did Death allow Sprig to save me when I was within its grasp? Why was I doomed to continue on when I tried so hard to make it end? How much blood do I have to give before Death deems me worthy of release?’

‘All the kids at school bullied me, they wouldn’t leave me alone and I couldn’t do anything about it. They spread rumors, they called me names, they followed me and harassed me, they made my life a living hell. Right before we came back, I nearly killed Maggie. Part of me wishes I had. She deserved it. I’ve never felt less human than when I was surrounded by them in that place.’

“It was nice, I guess. I was more focused on coming back here, though.” She cut and tied the bandage, and for a moment, her hand lingered on Sasha’s arm, her voice coming out quiet, a whisper shared only with her. “I missed you and Marcy a whole lot. I missed you all the time, every single day, more than anything I’ve ever missed before.”

She looked up and found Sasha staring back at her, their faces just inches apart. She could feel her soft breaths on her lips, see the pink flush in her cheeks and the questioning, searching glimmer in her surprised eyes, and suddenly nothing else in the world mattered but Sasha. Sasha, sitting next to her on the bed. Sasha, hesitantly reaching over to hold her free hand, careful not to pull away from the one still holding her arm. Sasha, glancing down at her lips, then up into her eyes, then right back down again as if she couldn’t stop herself if she tried. Sasha, leaning closer, and closer, and closer, and-

Anne ducked her head and looked away, letting go of Sasha’s arm and pulling her hand free from her grasp. She felt Sasha jerk back as if she’d been pushed away, and all she could think to do was clear her throat and start putting the last of the supplies back in the box, doing her best to avoid looking at the other girl as she did. The air felt colder than it had just a few seconds before, and shivering goosebumps spread across her skin with longing for the warmth they’d shared in their closeness. Once everything was put away, Sasha set the box on the ground, and for a few seconds they simply sat there in awkward silence, neither quite sure what to say or do next. They didn’t try to move away from each other, which Anne took as a positive despite feeling a bit like she was suffocating with embarrassment and regret and all sorts of other confusing emotions, and she was about to say something – she didn’t know what, but literally anything at all to end the silence – when Sasha beat her to it.

“Thank you… for, uh, helping me.” Anne nodded, a little too vigorously, and happily followed Sasha’s lead in pretending that whatever just happened, didn’t.

“Yeah, dude, of course! Anytime!” Silence again. Anne wanted to curl up into a ball and disappear.

“So, um, I guess you should get going, huh? I’m sure you’re tired, you didn’t get much sleep, and Grime’s given me strict orders to rest, so…” She thought about how long it would probably take to find her room again, about trying to sneak back in and being met with an angry Sprig demanding to know where she went and why she didn’t wake him up and all the details of what she did while gone, about being stuck in close-quarters with Hop Pop again and all the messy emotions that came with that, and she whipped her head up to look at Sasha as her mouth moved faster than her mind.

“No!” Sasha jolted, shocked by the sudden outburst, and Anne immediately shrunk back, closing her eyes to stop from seeing the way Sasha was surely staring at her. “I-I mean, we both need some rest, and I honestly have no clue how to get back to my room from here, and I wouldn’t wanna disturb the Plantars when they need to sleep too, so maybe I could… stay here? If that’s okay with you, of course, it’s your room after all.”

Hesitantly, she peeked her eyes open and found Sasha staring at her with an expression she couldn’t quite place, a mixture of surprise and confusion and something else, something deeper. Seeing the reaction, her own words caught up to her, and her eyes shot wide in panic as she started stumbling over herself to backtrack, wondering why the hell she ever opened her stupid mouth at all because clearly she couldn’t be trusted to not make a fool of herself and really it would be in everyone’s best interest if she just glued her lips together and never spoke again, but she didn’t get far before Sasha silenced her with one word.

“Okay.” Just like that, all the thoughts in her brain vanished, and she stared at Sasha in shock.

“…Okay?” Sasha smiled nervously and nodded, the pretty blush returning to dust her cheeks.

“Okay, you can stay.” She stood and walked around to the other side of the bed, beginning to pull the blanket aside. “There’s only the one bed, but it’s not like we’ve never shared a bed before, right? I-If you don’t want to, though, that’s fine! I can take the floor, no biggie!”

Anne nodded along dumbly, barely processing what was happening, but when she noticed Sasha looking at her anxiously, clearly waiting for her to respond, she shoved her brain back into gear and shook her head.

“Sharing is fine, I don’t mind!” Sasha smiled at that and nodded, climbing onto the bed and slipping under the blanket. Realizing she’d fallen behind, Anne stood and hurried to push back the blanket on her side, kicking her shoes off before getting in, pulling the blanket over herself.

It was immediately obvious that the bed wasn’t made for two people; laying side-by-side as they were, they each had most of an arm and a leg hanging off the side of the bed, even with their shoulders pressed together while they tried to avoid touching more than necessary to prevent anymore awkwardness (an effort that failed miserably, as it somehow felt more awkward laying like that than it had after… whatever that other moment was). After a long minute of pretending they would somehow get any rest like that, Anne decided that enough was enough, they were acting weird for no reason and it would only get worse unless she did something about it, so she was going to do something about it.

“Fuck it.” She pushed herself further into the bed until she wasn’t hanging off anymore, and before Sasha could ask questions or complain about her own lack of space, she pulled her in so that she was laying halfway on top of her, one of Sasha’s arms thrown across her stomach and her head resting on her chest.

“Anne?” Her heart was racing, and she was sure Sasha could hear it, but she tried her best to sound calm and collected anyways. She’d already committed to her half-baked plan, so there was no point in being uncertain about it now, or at least she’d tell herself that to avoid freaking out any further.

“Let’s be honest here, we weren’t gonna get any sleep like that, and besides, we’ve had hundreds of sleepovers before, so I figured, um… is this okay?”

She lost confidence the more she spoke, and by the end she was seriously doubting her rash decision, ready for Sasha to get upset and demand she leave. Instead, however, Sasha pulled herself in closer, shifting to get more comfortable in the new position, but not moving away. Once she was settled, Anne wrapped her arms around her, one pulling her close around her back and the other resting comfortably on her shoulders, letting her face press against Sasha’s head, tickled by the short, soft strands of blonde hair. In the quiet isolation of the room, they breathed together, laying in each other’s arms for the first time in months, holding one another tight and basking in the knowledge that they were there, together, alive, after so long of wondering, hoping, praying for the other’s safety.

“I missed you too.”

Sasha’s breath brushed warm against Anne’s neck as she whispered, and Anne smiled, giving the girl in her arms a gentle squeeze of acknowledgement. The living, breathing weight of one another served as a comforting sign that the moment was true, it was real, they were safe and finally together again, and it wasn’t long before the swaying hands of sleep swept them away, carrying with it the promise of a new day.

***

“So, the base must be under the house then. Very clever, wouldn’t you agree, Wit?”

Marcy sat on the floor of her prison, her wrists chained to the ground and her knees digging into a mirage that couldn’t decide if it wanted to be cold stone or rough dirt, refusing to look up at the being that held her captive. She wouldn’t give it the satisfaction of seeing the effect its words had on her, the tears staining her hollow cheeks, the fear burning her sunken, tired eyes. She never would’ve thought she’d wish to be back in the fake version of her bedroom, tortured by illusions of her Anne and her Sasha, losing her mind as the distinctions between what was real and what was fake grew blurrier, but anything, even that, would be better than the void she’d been damned to. In the void, there was nothing for her to see, nothing for her to hear, nothing for her to smell or taste or touch, not unless her captor wanted there to be, and when it did, it was only to toy with her, to make her suffer for its amusement or coerce something out of her.

She wished it would make a knife appear so she could just end it already.

She knew just as well that killing herself wouldn’t do anything in the void. It wasn’t real. None of it was.

“Andrias believes we should attack now. It would be a quick and easy guaranteed victory. All we’d have to do is send a few fleets to their precious little hideout. They’d be caught off-guard and unprepared, and by the time they could pull themselves together enough to fight back, it would be too late, too much of their force would already be dead, they would be outnumbered and overpowered. Even if some escaped, they would have nowhere to go with their base destroyed. Most of the stragglers would die on their own, and it would be all too easy to pick off the rest, if they were even worth the trouble.”

Marcy clenched her fists, trying to focus on the feeling of her rough bitten-up nails digging into her palms rather than the words of the god before her. She’d been through the song and dance enough to know that whatever it was getting at, it had already made up its mind on how it would proceed, it had simply deemed the topic one that would get some type of reaction out of her and decided it wanted to see it. It didn’t matter what she said or did, nothing would make a difference, she couldn’t change its mind, the only power she held was whether or not she would let it get to her, whether or not she would give it the reaction it wanted. She always tried to hold back, to stay strong and give it nothing, but it was in her mind, reading her thoughts, examining her memories, picking apart her emotions, and it knew exactly how to make her tick.

“An attack as aggressive as that wouldn’t leave much room for precision, though. The bots would simply kill everything in their path. It would be a wonderful show of force, sure, but it would also be somewhat… barbaric, no? Not exactly the neat, calculated, all-knowing and all-powerful look we’re going for. Besides, we wouldn’t want to accidentally kill our dear Heart and Strength, now, would we?”

Marcy’s breath caught in her throat, and she stared wide-eyed at the floor with ringing ears as she waited for it to continue, the chains on her wrists clinking as her hands trembled.

What does it know about Anne and Sasha? What is it going to do to them?

“It would be an awful shame to kill them before we could all meet face-to-face, and furthermore, we’re quite curious to see what they’ll do now that they’re together again.”

Marcy couldn’t stop herself from gasping at the implication. She kept it quiet, but not quiet enough. She was never quiet enough, it could always hear everything.

“Oh, was that a gasp we heard? Do you have something to say, Wit? Speak up, we’d just love to hear your input.” She bit her lip hard, not even breathing lest it take it as a response, and after a moment it clicked its tongue in disappointment. “Be that way, then. It seems you really don’t care what happens to them. Surely it would bore you to hear how we want to capture them and bring them to the castle. Perhaps we’ll put those fancy collars on them, at least until they learn to obey on their own. That seems too easy, though, does it not? How fun would it be to break them down just as we’ve broken you down? To show them who’s in charge and help them see just how powerless they are to stop us? Truly, we won’t even need to capture them, they’ll come running on their own in due time, and then they’ll have no one to blame but themselves for falling right into our hands. Oh yes, we could kill them now, but how satisfying would it be to let them believe they have the upper hand, come to us on their own accord, and kill them once they realize they were playing our game all along, hm?”

“Don’t you dare hurt them!” She lunged forwards in an attempt to attack, but was yanked back down by the chain on her wrists, hitting the ground with a hard thud as the being before her watched on, amused. She panted, glaring up at it as tears streamed down her face. It hadn’t even flinched. They both knew she was powerless. She held her glare as it approached with slow steps, kneeling to be at her level before reaching out and grabbing her face hard enough to bruise, forcing her to continue looking at it.

“Aw, how cute. You really do like them, don’t you? We’re sure they’ll be flattered to hear all about your feelings towards them, and when they do, the whole sending-them-to-another-world betrayal thing will be water under the bridge! Don’t worry, Wit, you’ll all be back together again soon, and once they’re under our control, they’ll be here, with you, forever, just like you wanted. Until then, we know you’ll enjoy watching from here.”

With a sharp smile, it released her face and stood, walking away into the darkness before vanishing, returning to a place in her consciousness that she wasn’t allowed to go. With its departure, the chains around her wrists ceased to exist too, and she was once again alone in the vast, empty, suffocating void. She looked down at her lap as the sound of static entered and grew louder, the void beginning to shift and glitch as it did – she knew what it meant, and she knew she wanted no part in it, though she didn’t have much of a choice. Just when the static was loud enough to hurt her ears and the flickering of the void formed spots in her vision, it all clicked into focus, the static becoming comprehensible sound and the void settling into an image. Even with her gaze pointed down, she could see it in the peripherals of her vision, and she could hear it all loud and clear.

It was one of that thing’s favorite ways of torturing her while it was too busy to do it itself. It kept her locked in the void, unable to do anything, but allowed her to see through its eyes and hear what it could hear, forcing her to witness everything it was doing while using her body as its vessel to do it. She listened to it tell Andrias the new plan, listened to Andrias meekly protest and get shot-down almost immediately, listened to him agree to his lord’s commands and walk off to do its bidding.

She listened to it chuckle and pick up the music box.

She closed her eyes as it started to run its fingers lightly over the gems.

She listened to it speak, and she wished she were dead, praying to a god she knew didn’t exist that somehow her girls would be okay.

“Soon.”

Chapter Text

The bed was cold with lonesome emptiness when Anne woke up, drowsy and aching all over, and being so deep underground meant she had no real way of knowing what time it was or how long she’d been asleep. The exhausted, delirious confusion was one she had experienced many times back when she’d first arrived in Amphibia, jolting awake in whatever cave or log she’d used as shelter and wondering for one hopeful moment if maybe it had all been a bad dream, and she’d drag herself out of bed and go downstairs where her parents had breakfast waiting for her, and she’d roll her eyes only half-genuinely as they complained that she’d slept in too long and argue back that it was the weekend, she had nowhere to be anyways, and they had clearly only just gotten up themselves, still wearing their pajamas like her. Reality always came quickly crashing down on her, though, when she registered the humid, swampy air thick with the scent of cold mud and alien plants and the rain that fell overnight, the rocks digging into her back and the twigs tangled in her hair, the hunger devouring her stomach as it tried to eat itself for the barest slivers of nutrients after days upon days of rationing the few protein bars and snacks she had in her backpack.

The passage of time slipped by her then, too, when all that mattered was waking with the sun to ensure she was protected by awareness when the creatures of the forest ventured from their homes, taking advantage of the daylight to wander in different directions in hopes of finding some hint of civilization, and being sure to get somewhere hidden before darkness claimed the sky and left her blind and vulnerable to the nocturnal beasts hunting from the shadows. She’d had her phone, sure, but she tried to save the battery by keeping it turned off most of the time after realizing it was no use trying to contact anyone or call for help, and with no way of confirming that the hours there were the same as on Earth, knowing the exact time wasn’t of much use to her anyways. All that mattered was the rise and fall of the sun, the routines and patterns of the few small animals she felt she had even the slightest chance at successfully hunting for food, and the painful bodily signals that told her whether or not she could skip eating for another day to stretch what little she had.

When the Plantars had taken her in, those patterns still mattered. She still often woke with the sun to give herself a slow morning sitting outside, watching the sunrise with warm tea or coffee before starting whatever work Hop Pop asked of her for the day, and she still paid attention to the routines of the animals so that she knew when they’d be most likely to come poke around the farm and try to steal their livelihood, always prepared to protect the fruits of their labor with her tennis racket and farm tools, and she still stayed excruciatingly aware of her hunger as she struggled to adjust to the unfamiliar food she was served (a task only made more difficult by Hop Pop’s poor cooking), never quite able to let go of the habit of avoiding eating until it hurt, even if the reason was less about rationing and more about not wanting to be bedridden with food poisoning all day if her body reacted poorly to something. Her eating improved over time, getting more comfortable as trial and error revealed what was safe for her to eat, what was a toss-up, and what would condemn her to hours of sitting the bathroom floor, hunched over the toilet with bile burning her nose and throat, but the other habits stuck, proven to be useful in her daily life, even as her circumstances changed.

Underground, though, she didn’t even have the sun anymore, and a deep-rooted anxiety trickled in entangled with consciousness at the realization that she had no clue how much time had passed while she slept, survival instincts that had been dormant on Earth buzzing to life once again to make her heart race despite her efforts to rationalize with herself that she was safe surrounded by dirt walls in a base full of her friends and allies. She hoped and prayed that she wouldn’t wake in such a way every day, that she’d adjust like she always did, like she had to do to survive.

She groaned as she pushed herself up, sucking in a tense breath as her left arm burned with the movement, and looked down at the vacant spot next to her where Sasha had once been with a frown before shaking her head and sliding out of bed; it was unreasonable to be upset that she’d been left alone, Sasha was leading the resistance, she was busy and had a lot of responsibilities to uphold, of course she couldn’t just wait around for Anne to wake up like she always used to do before, back on Earth. She had more important things to worry about than Sasha leaving without a word, anyways, the biggest one being just how long exactly she’d been asleep because it was only a matter of time before the others awoke and realized she wasn’t there, and while Hop Pop and Polly might not be too concerned by her absence, she really didn’t want to get the earful from Sprig she was bound to be met with if he did notice she was gone.

The curtain-door was aggressively shoved to the side, and she whirled around to see who was bursting in, praying it was Sasha, only to feel a headache start to form sharp and pounding in the center of her forehead when instead she found-

“What the heck, Anne?” Speak of the Devil, and he shall appear.

“Shit.”

Sprig glared at her from the doorway, and she couldn’t help but shrink slightly under the accusing weight of it despite the flame of defensiveness already beginning to bloom in her chest.

“You could’ve at least left a note.” She shook her head, knowing damn well a note wouldn’t have been enough for him, but chose not to say so.

“I was going to come back-“

“You should’ve woken me up!”

“You needed the sleep!” Even then she could see the eyebags still staining his face, only a little lighter than they’d been before, and it made her heart hurt knowing how much the stress and exhaustion he’d experienced since that day in the castle – hell, since he met her – had aged him beyond his years. A fourteen-year-old wasn’t supposed to have sunken-in eyes darkened with heavy bags or tense shoulders that trembled with the constant strain of carrying everyone else’s struggles along with his own, he wasn’t supposed to know yet how to bite his tongue and take deep breaths to avoid saying something he didn’t mean in the midst of a dizzying whirlwind of emotions, he wasn’t supposed to be able to read her so easily, to see through any argument she made or façade she wore, to understand what twisted mess of tangled roots sick with rot dug into the earth of her soul and poisoned the body that grew from them with crawling, molding moss.

“You know I don’t care about that. If you’re going somewhere, I want to know, I-I need to know. Even if you have to wake me up, even if I’m tired, even if we should both be sleeping instead, if you’re gonna leave, I need you to tell me!”

“I didn’t think I was gonna be gone so long, honest! I just wanted to go for a quick walk and come right back, nothing worth disturbing you for, but then I found Sasha and she and Grime were arguing, and then we got to talking and I just lost track of time.” She crossed her arms, unable to stop the flinch that came when her left arm burst with bubbles of stinging spikes and shuddering, burning throbs. Sprig, of course, noticed immediately, and his angry frown melted into one of concern. “I’m sorry I worried you, though.”

“It’s-“ he stopped himself with a sigh, refusing to brush it off with a forgiving ‘it’s okay’ but clearly now more focused on her potential injuries than his own frustrations, taking a step forward and letting the curtain fall back into place behind him. “How’s your arm? Have you gotten a chance to look at it since the portal?”

“No,” she held the limb in question protectively against her chest, “I’m a little scared to, to be honest.” She gave a small smile, trying to ease his worries, but he didn’t reciprocate, staring at her arm with a grimace before nodding his head towards the door.

“C’mon, I think I passed by a bathroom, we can take a look at it and get it cleaned up if it needs to be.” She hesitated, tempted to decline the offer if only to avoid seeing the damage for a little longer, but she knew he wouldn’t let her leave it alone, so she chose to avoid the argument and followed him out.

As they walked through the twisting hallways, another pain began to make itself known on her thighs where her other wounds rubbed against her jeans, and she filed it away as something she’d deal with later when Sprig wasn’t around to see her crimes; he still didn’t know, as far as she was aware, and she didn’t intend for him to find out anytime soon. It was nauseating to know she was hiding it from him, but the idea of telling him and facing the betrayal she’d committed was nearly enough to make her vomit.

‘Yes, I’ll do it. I’ll let you in. I’ll trust you.’

So much for her promise. She’d spent so long trying to be a better person, learning to be honest and selfless and genuine, and yet it was all left behind so easily the moment she had to face real, difficult, vulnerable consequences, reverting back to the version of herself that would lie and guilt trip to get her way, childishly selfish and only doing things for her own benefit without a single thought to how it would affect those around her. She’d dug herself into a hole too deep to crawl out of, and staring up at the night sky so very far above, she longed with head-pounding blue haze to either float away and join the stars or let the dirt walls finally cave-in and bury her in a grave she was meant to fill long ago.

***

The bathroom… well, she supposed it could be called one, and she had no room to complain when it was likely the best they could do given the circumstances (those, of course, being the fact that they were living underground in the scraped-out remains of ancient family tunnels under the rubble of their town). The toilet was just a bucket wedged in a hole in the floor to keep it steady in one place, and the sink was a big barrel of water, most likely recycled, with a spigot, which drained into another barrel directly beneath it, and she tried with all her might to not question what the collected dirty water was used for. As they entered, Sprig lit the lantern hanging next to the doorway to give them some light before joining Anne at the sink. Slowly, she pulled her jacket off for the first time since she put it on all the way back in her house on Earth, wincing as the fabric of the sleeve brushed against her arm, slightly stiff as it peeled off her skin. She didn’t look right away, but she heard Sprig suck in a harsh breath and felt the flesh of her arm begin to burn and throb the way fresh cuts always did, and it was more than enough to tell her it was bad. She tossed the jacket to the floor a few feet away and took a long, deep breath to steel her nerves before finally looking at her arm.

The sight made her nauseous.

She was used to seeing blood smeared on her skin in messy fingerpaint streaks, rusty dried splotches that itched when the bandages were stripped the morning after, revealing what she often neglected to thoroughly clean in the dead of night. What she was looking at, though, was different, because even in those late hours after hiding in the moon-shadowed embrace of the attic, she would at least take the time to wipe away the worst of it, maybe even run it under the sink if it was too messy, but not after the portal. Instead, it was left with nothing but a jacket sleeve to contain its fire-gouged truth, bleeding freely from the time every little line on her skin was torn open in the screaming winds of a tornado to the innumerable times when her movements twisted and tugged them apart again to the moment she was in right then when the blood-hardened cast the fabric had formed around the wounds took the ashen blackened scabs sealing them with it, allowing them to pour once more. The stain that once merely coated the singular area it sprouted from had grown, spreading its decay through her veins until it consumed her entire forearm, painting haphazard abstract across her flesh in oxidized old copper and fresh blooming crimson, slow-dripping rivers following the paths that had been carved by their ancestors long before them.

She allowed Sprig to take her hand and guide her arm under the spigot, and he didn’t so much as wince when her grip tightened at the harsh burst of frigid water hitting her beaten and bruised skin. The surface of the stain quickly faded under the barrage, allowing them to better see the wounds themselves and the extent of the damage done by the blue still pulsing through her. Despite the terrifying amount of blood, it appeared the scars hadn’t quite been reverted to their youngest, deepest forms, the lines split open but not to the extent they were when she’d first made them. It was far from a pretty sight, but it hadn’t and wouldn’t kill her as it was, though her mind was quick to spin images of her overusing her powers again and worsening it beyond repair.

“You need to be more careful,” Sprig, as always, was having a similar train of thought. “We’re lucky it isn’t worse, but you need to let these heal before using your powers like that again.” Her eyebrow quirked up at his wording.

“Again?” He gave her a brief flat look, quickly shifting his attention back to her arm as he closed the spigot and pulled a roll of bandages from his pocket.

“If it were up to me, you wouldn’t use them ever again. It hurts you, it’s been hurting you even before the portal. If it can do this much damage in just a few minutes, I don’t even wanna think about what could happen if you keep using it over and over again, especially without giving yourself enough time to recover. But I know you, and I know you won’t just stand back when people need you. These powers are a part of you that I don’t think is gonna be going away anytime soon, so if you won’t stop using them entirely, at least give me the peace of mind of knowing you’ll let yourself rest and heal before using them again, and you’ll only use them when it’s absolutely necessary.” He tied the bandage now covering her forearm from her elbow to her wrist, but he didn’t let go, holding her hand captive and looking her in the eye. “Can you promise me that?”

She only hesitated for a second before nodding with a tight smile, squeezing his hand in reassuring affirmation. He stared at her for a moment longer, as if searching for some kind of lie in her minimal response, then finally released her with a small smile back, watching as she picked her jacket up and slid it back on. She frowned at the stiff roughness the left sleeve had taken, making a mental note to find some way to wash it, even if just with water; it was overdue for a good cleaning anyways, it had been far too long since the last time and in the past day alone, she was sure it had soaked up a good amount of sweat and forest grime, and that was ignoring the mess of the sleeve.

She waited in the hallway as Sprig blew out the lantern, and the two of them began making their way towards the main hall while Sprig rambled about his observations of the base and how hard it was to sleep in the tiny cramped room and how he couldn’t wait to go find Ivy as soon as possible but he needed to get some food first or else he might just pass out when he sees her and isn’t Anne hungry too because they haven’t eaten since before everything and he wondered what kind of food was available when their options must be limited due to the farmland being destroyed and he just hoped it wouldn’t be anything too gross but he wouldn’t complain either way because really they were lucky to have anything to eat at all and on and on and on. She was happy to just listen, nodding along when he glanced her way, but her mind was preoccupied by thoughts of a certain blonde.

She wanted to find Sasha before anything else, although she wasn’t sure Sprig would let her go so easily; she wanted to check-in with her and at least attempt to take a look at her arm, even if she had a sneaking suspicion Sasha would fight-off her care, and most importantly, she wanted to get caught-up on everything. She and the Plantars had been given a brief rundown of things the day before, but she was hardly in any shape to really process or understand it, and if she was going to help Sasha and the resistance as much as she wanted to, she needed to know everything that had happened in her absence and what the next steps were. As she and Sprig entered the main hall, she tried to subtly guide them towards where she vaguely remembered the strategy room being in hopes of finding Sasha there, but Sprig was quick to notice and grabbed her arm, pulling her instead towards Stumpy’s, determined to get some food before either of them could do anything else. She sent one last look in the direction of the strategy room before relenting with a sigh, allowing Sprig to drag her away.

***

Sasha mumbled to herself under her breath as she split her attention across three different maps, glancing between them where they laid flat on the table, overlapping one another due to the lack of space. She’d been wanting to get a bigger table for a while, but it was never a priority, and they didn’t really have the supplies for it anyways unless she wanted to steal a table from somewhere else in the base, but that didn’t seem very professional or worth the time and effort of dragging it back to the room. It was moments like these, though, that she resented the little table, shuffling the maps around in an attempt to see more of each of them and realizing partway through that she’d lost her quill somewhere in the mess. Her mumbles quickly turned to frustrated grumbling as she abandoned her efforts to keep things at least somewhat organized in favor of finding her quill because she’d already lost three others in just the past week and she’d be damned if she gave Grime another thing to lecture her about, even if he did give her a new quill in the end.

Successfully finding her quill (and only brushing one map onto the floor in the process), she flattened the three maps back into place on the table and refocused on her task the best that she could, adjusting her fur cape to cover her injured arm more and trying to forget the feeling of Anne’s hands there, wrapping her wounds with the gentle care of a warm breeze carrying dancing dandelion seeds through the air, bees picking pollen from flowers with the promise to do something meaningful with it all. The helmet of authority sat on the floor a few feet away, mocking her inability to concentrate – she hadn’t put it back on since taking it off the day before, it just felt wrong to wear it with Anne back, but she knew it was only a matter of time before she’d be forced to make the choice to either hold her role as commander and put it on, or pass it and the title off to Anne. As much as she dreaded the thought after how their last ‘conversation’ went the night before, she knew she needed to talk to Grime about it, and with more and more of their allies arriving by the day, it needed to happen sooner rather than later. He wouldn’t let her be stupid, as much as she wanted to be.

She shifted in her seat, chewing her lip if only to distract her mind from the throbbing in her shoulder, and squinted as the words and markings on the maps registered only as nonsense. She didn’t have time for this, she’d wasted enough the day before pacing in her room, she needed to get back to work, back to planning and strategizing, back to leading. Grime had taken it upon himself to be in charge of the training schedule for the new troops, ensuring they all got at least some practice to help them integrate better into the resistance as a whole, especially when it came to group training where they’d need to feel even just somewhat comfortable and confident in their abilities to keep up. It was one thing off her plate, which she was grateful for, but it meant he wasn’t available quite as much to help with everything else that needed to get done, namely: strategizing.

They needed to take out as many factories as they could before they marched for Newtopia, but it felt like for every factory they destroyed, two more popped-up in its place – she could’ve sworn they’d blown up the newest one just a few weeks ago, and yet it was producing frobots once again and dumping toxic smoke out to match. If the reports she’d received were accurate and her estimations correct, the factory was only one of several in its area, located just a few miles west of the one she’d gotten hurt at. The trip there and back was short enough to be contained in a day, but it would be most efficient to take out all of the factories in one go rather than having teams target them one at a time and come back to base between each, which would extend the mission to at least a few days to accommodate for resting time and any on-the-spot changes to the plan. A mission like that was one she would only trust an experienced team to take on, like Croaker’s, but the idea of losing one such team for days on end, especially so close to their attack on the castle, made her anxious enough to hesitate.

She couldn’t tag along on a mission so long, even if Grime somehow agreed to let her; there was too much to do in too little time, and she needed to be there at the base to keep things under control and running smoothly with the additional troops on top of continuing to plan and prepare for the quickly approaching day when they’d march to Newtopia. She just couldn’t afford to leave for that long, but that meant she would have no way of knowing how the mission went until the team returned (if they returned, that is). Part of being commander was trusting the people she led to be capable, allowing them to do things on their own without hovering over them like a concerned parent itching to micromanage every little thing, and she did trust them, she’d seen them fight and carry-out missions and fend for themselves, she knew they could handle it. The ghosts of her mistakes haunted her, though, and she could always feel the weight of the seventeen pretty painted stones marking hastily dug graves pressing down on her from the surface, reminding her of what happened when she wasn’t there.

***

They were late. She was trying not to freak out about it, the team she’d sent out was still fairly new (like all of them were, so early on in the resistance) and it wasn’t truly a dangerous mission as far as she knew, so they probably just got lost or something. They were supposed to return mid-morning the day before, and standing in the open doorway of the Plantars’ house watching for any sign of their approach, she could clearly see the sun starting to set, painting the hazy sky a brilliant swirling of fiery orange and pastel blush pink. She tapped her foot impatiently, feeling Chuck’s silent gaze on her back from where he sat between the door and the fireplace; if it were anyone else, she’d try a little harder to appear more composed, but he wasn’t the type to judge or gossip, and she knew he wouldn’t think any less of her for being visibly agitated with nail-biting worry.

Thirty-one hours. Approximately.

It was one thing for a team to be a couple hours late, slowed down by an injury or bad weather or any other number of things that were inconvenient in the moment, but overall harmless in the long run. The timing of it all was only an estimation anyways, a series of calculations for how long it would take to get to the target, how long whatever their actual mission was would last, and how long the journey back to base would be. Shit happened, plans changed, things got thrown off-schedule, it was part of the job, and she didn’t let the small delays worry her, especially to the point of distracting her from all her other duties. She was too busy to concern herself over things like timing, all that mattered was if the mission succeeded and if anyone was badly hurt, in which case Tuti was quick to take over. The resistance was still young, she’d only been commander for a few weeks, and after the latest attack on Wartwood drove them underground just over a week ago, she had more on her plate than ever.

She didn’t have time to stand around waiting for a team to return to base, not when there were still people sleeping on the floors in the hallways while they dug-out more bedrooms, not when they were scrambling to find a way to grow food so they wouldn’t all starve to death, not when everyone was looking to her for guidance and reassurance, not when on top of all of that, she still had to make sure they stayed on-track with taking down factories and recruiting nearby towns and figuring out how the hell they were going to stop Andrias. She didn’t have time to worry like this, and yet…

Thirty-one hours. Surely almost thirty-two by then.

It was too long, too late, too concerning. She could feel in her gut that something was wrong, something more than just getting lost or spraining an ankle or being forced to find shelter from an unexpected storm of nuclear waste rain that seared cigarette burns into the skin it fell on. From her position in the open doorway, she could just barely see the row of freshly dug dirt on the ground a short distance away from the house, ten small hand-painted stones in a neat line with barely a foot between them, each still surrounded by other small personal belongings, keepsakes, and offerings. It had only been a week since they were buried. She swallowed painfully around the nauseating cotton-thick lump clogging her throat, begging silently to everything and nothing please, please, not again, not them too, no one else, please.

There was movement at the edge of the forest, and she brought her binoculars up so fast they whacked her in the nose hard enough for some small part of her mind to be worried about getting a nosebleed. Her pain was forgotten, though, when she was finally able to get the magnified view focused enough to see clearly who was emerging from the tree line, and she couldn’t help but huff a small chuckle of relief when she recognized all four faces, faces she hadn’t seen since she sent them off nearly fifty-six hours ago. As quickly as it came, however, her relief was sucked away, replaced by dawning horror that choked her laughter in the base of her throat and sent frost-frigid fear snaking through her veins. She dropped the binoculars and broke into a sprint, approaching them as fast as she could, praying what she’d seen was a mistake, a trick of the light, a glare in the glass, but her heart only sank further the closer she got, her own naked eyes confirming what she feared.

Cradled protectively in the arms of the team’s leader was one of the other members, pale and unmoving. Half of his head was covered in blood, copper-rot brown, clearly old, but whatever wound had caused it was hidden, the ruined war-worn side of his face pressed against the leader’s stained chest where it limply rested. His arms had been carefully folded across his chest and his legs tied together with a strip of torn fabric to stop the limbs from swinging or hitting anything, but even so, the leader walked with a careful slowness as the team followed Sasha back towards the house, trying not to jostle him. As they entered the house and Chuck saw what had happened, he bowed his head and removed his hat in acknowledging respect, and the tremble in his shoulders left her gripping her own composure with desperate hands, praying she could at least make it somewhere private before breaking.

Time slowed in torturous purgatory as they walked through the base towards Tuti’s office. Everyone who saw them froze and stared, all movement and conversation coming to a halt and leaving the base ringing with a still silence that Sasha knew from experience she wished she didn’t have was only temporary, an unstable hush that would soon be replaced by the guttural, primal, animalistic cries of grief so uncontainable, so undoing, so all-consuming and inescapable that it would seep from those afflicted in a soul-baring dance, falling to their knees where they stood and punching the floor until their knuckles broke and tearing their hair out in handfuls, all while their love was torn from their throats in wailing screams that could never come close to expressing the true extent of the pain it inflicted upon them. It had only been a week. They hadn’t even finished grieving the others yet, and still another had joined the ranks of the fallen.

Was that what things would be like from then on? A constant flowing stream of raindrop loss that swept through faster than they could recover from, weaving around rocks and soaking into the earth until every stone, every speck of dirt, every animal in the forest and every person in the resistance had been touched by it, a means to an end that opened into an ocean of drowning waves eager to consume all those still somehow standing in the final battle? In the end, would the graves scattered on the hilltop be a worthy sacrifice for the freedom to plant gardens anew? If – no, when – they came out victorious, could they look at the empty spaces in homes and farms and families where loved ones used to be and say they were content? Could they stare up at the aching void of the nighttime sky, tracing the twinkling constellations of newborn soul-stars with longing, reaching fingers, and claim with a grim-heavy smile that if they went back to the start, if their land and home was in dire danger once more, they would do it all again? What good was a better world if the children meant to be raised in it were all dead? What purpose did freedom serve if there were no people left to experience it? What was the point of all the fighting and violence if everyone and everything they fought for was destroyed by that which was meant to save them?

Would it still be worth it if she lost everyone she loved? Would she march on if Grime fell behind her? Would she take down Andrias if Marcy’s body was cold in his grasp, her bones whittled into weapons and her soul nothing more than a passing chill in the shadowed, haunted castle halls? Would she see a point in living if everywhere she turned, she found ghosts of the girl who was never coming back, stray strands of curly hair carried by the wind and woven into clothing, strange fusion foods in restaurants that the chefs refused to let go of, a name lying heavy on the tongues of the townspeople, spoken like a prayer, held like a promise, revered like a god? When she had to dig their graves, too, would she be able to look at the world around her, think about the world forever left behind, see their names carved into stones, and find peace with the way it all became?

The first scream pierced the air when they were just feet away from Tuti’s office, and she dug her teeth into her lip at the sound in a futile attempt to maintain her crumbling mask of stoicism, her focus grasping for the feeling of her canine tearing into flesh, filling her mouth with the taste of saltwater iron. Tuti was already in the office when they entered, saving Sasha from the arduous task of finding her through the waves of people surely waiting to swarm her after their short procession across the base, and she was quick to take the body from the team leader’s arms to begin working. She wasn’t a mortician, she could only barely even be considered a doctor, but Sasha trusted her to do a thorough inspection of the body and all its wounds for a report, as well as clean up the worst of the mess so it would be at least slightly less difficult to look at for the burial, although a clean face would hardly make a difference – it wouldn’t bring him back to life, it wouldn’t undo what had been done, it wouldn’t save him just like it hadn’t saved anyone else before.

Sasha pulled the team leader aside while the others filed out to recover in their own rooms, letting her know that she needed a detailed report of the mission and especially what happened to the deceased, but that she should take the rest of the day to rest and grieve before worrying about it. With that, she, too, took her leave, rushing with no small amount of urgency to her bedroom, hoping there was less of a chance that she’d be bothered there than if she went to the strategy room she was known to spend most of her time in. As expected, nearly everyone she passed in the halls tried to stop her, most in a state of stomach-sunken distraught and denial, some merely confused and concerned over why everyone else was so upset, ignorant to the mournful parade that had occurred just minutes prior. She pushed past all of them without a word, speeding up to a half-run the longer she was left vulnerably exposed in plain view of everyone, furiously wiping away the stream of spit and blood trying to paint her chin as she continued gnawing at her lip, on the verge of taking a chunk out of it.

She almost tore the curtain-door to her room down in her haste to get inside, and the moment she was through the threshold, hiccupping sobs bubbled up from her chest, scraping her throat with the threat of a coughing fit, trapped carbonation filling her ribcage and squeezing her heart until she couldn’t breathe, and all she could manage to do was pace in a circle while her body did its best to simultaneously cave-in on itself and explode violently outwards, a nuclear mushroom cloud of her own image. Any attempt at keeping the copper-bitter drool in her mouth was forgotten as her hands made their homes in her hair, pulling and scratching and ripping handfuls out until she was sure her roots would be dyed the same crimson that haunted her every decision. She knew anyone who walked in would be met with an unruly sight, with tears and snot dripping down into the stained saliva to make a mess of her crumpled face and short strands of blonde hair scattered around the floor and across her shoulders just as it had been a mere few weeks ago when she’d cut it all off, but she couldn’t even begin trying to pull herself together now that she had burst.

Just as she feared, beneath the deafening waterfall roar of pounding blood rushing through her ears, she heard her name called in a gruff, questioning voice, then again with far more panicked concern. Her eyes were squeezed tightly shut, but she didn’t need to peel them open to know who had found her, immediately recognizing the large, rough hands grabbing her wrists in a firm but gentle hold, trying to get them to release her hair before settling on simply holding them still so they couldn’t do more damage to her already burning scalp. No longer able to continue pacing, her legs trembled for only a moment before giving out beneath her, and the comforting hands easily followed her to the floor, mumbling a mantra of calming words in the same low, rumbling tone the whole way.

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” her voice was pitifully small, whining like a kicked dog and begging with the soul-shattered plea of a child being given the silent treatment by their parents.

“I know, it’s okay, it wasn’t your fault.” She shook her head as much as the hold on her wrists allowed, heaving gasping breaths and swallowing the urge to vomit at the thought of everything.

“I-I thought it was safe, it was supposed to be safe, I don’t- I didn’t-“ her words caught in her throat and ripped a harsh cough from her stone-tight chest, forcing more sour spit to spill from her mangled lips.

The hands on her wrists hesitantly let go, one moving to rub her shoulder blade as more weak coughs itched her ribs while the other disappeared entirely, quickly returning with a cloth to wipe the grossness from her face. Part of her couldn’t help but protest, half-heartedly trying to turn away from the rag and releasing her hair to weakly push back the arms holding it, feeling entirely too much like a child – she was old enough to clean her own mess, she didn’t need her dad someone else to do it for her – but her efforts were ignored and the hand finished its job before tossing the soiled cloth away and brushing all too softly through her hair, stopping at the back of her head and pulling her forwards into a hug, made only somewhat uncomfortable by the cold chest plate now pressing into her face. She only resisted for a moment before melting into the hold, dissolving into incoherent wails she was sure her curtain would fail to prevent from leaking into the nearby hallways, but she couldn’t bring herself to care if anyone heard her. All she cared about were the hands rubbing circles into her back and combing through her tangled hair and the soothing vibrations of the voice seeping into her head, rolling thunder in the distance, far enough away to not yet scare the wildlife into the forest but close enough to feel the static in the air, electric tingling that made arm hairs stand up straight, a patient quiet that heightened the cicada buzz of the powerlines and left everyone staring up at the sky, waiting for singing white light to crack the claustrophobic cover of thick, dark clouds encompassing the land.

They sat there on the floor until her tears ran dry, until her chest gave up its efforts to expel her lungs, until sniffling whimpers replaced storm-siren wails, until all that was left was an emptiness in her chest unable to be filled by the soft off-tune humming coming from the body she was pressed against. The cloth returned, folded so that only the clean part touched her face, and she had no energy left to try to resist, surrendering to the care as it wiped away the tears and snot and spit that had replaced what had been cleared before. She clung to wide shoulders as she was guided on weak, unsteady legs up into her bed, allowing herself to be laid down and tucked-in as if she were a child again, as if there wasn’t a resistance force needing to be led in a war, as if there wasn’t a grave waiting to be dug for someone too young to fill it, as if she was back to being seven years old and the worst thing that had happened to her was her mom forgetting her birthday and screaming at her when she saw the obnoxiously glittery pink earrings Anne’s mom had bought for her at the mall when she, Anne, and Marcy went earlier that afternoon in celebration, earrings she had picked out herself, earrings that Anne and Marcy had said were pretty on her with pure honesty sparkling in their eyes, earrings that were so very far from the plain golden studs her mom had chosen for her back when she first got pierced only half-willingly and had refused to let her change ever since.

By the time she woke up, Tuti had finished preparing the body. Close family and friends were given the chance to see him one last time in private in Tuti’s office, and Sasha went to the surface to dig a new gave next to the ten others with the volunteered help of Chuck and Loggle. At sundown, he was lowered into the hole, dressed in clean clothes and wrapped in cloth, dark green around the body to return it to the nature from which it came and white around the head to help the soul pass from the world of the living to that of the dead. They covered him in dirt, cradled in the palm of the earth, and once he was tucked-in tight, the space was decorated like the ten others next to it, adorned with personal items, keepsakes, and offerings, complete with a small painted stone above the head, a name etched into the underside.

‘Florian Earwig’

He was only fourteen.

She’d been hesitant to send someone so young on a mission, but she didn’t have many options, the resistance still so small as they struggled to recruit nearby towns, and he was eager to prove himself, insistent that he could handle it. It was a small mission, meant to only last a day, their target just a few short miles away. It was supposed to be safe, every piece of information she’d been able to gather about it implied it would be, the most danger to be found being two guarding robots that would be easy to avoid and quick to take down if needed. The factory wasn’t functional, but the presence of guards indicated it might become so if they didn’t destroy it, so all they had to do was set a few explosives and get out of range to watch to make sure they went off and did the damage necessary, then leave. There were no reports of vibrations in the ground to signify the potential presence of one of the strange robotic insects they’d been seeing more and more of, and the nearest functioning factories were several miles away, so any calls for backup the two guards made would take at least ten minutes to arrive, which was plenty of time for the team to make their escape.

It should’ve been easy. It should’ve been safe. It should’ve been the first mission of many for the young, promising fighter.

It wasn’t supposed to end in another body in the ground and a screaming mother clawing at the dirt, dragged away when darkness overtook the sky long after most of the others had already retreated into the base – it was dangerous to be out at night, after all.

It wasn’t supposed to end in a flurry of panic when reports of a break-in and theft in the weaponry reached Sasha’s strategy room the next day, an order calling everyone to gather in the main hall, a search for the person missing from their attendance, a discovery of a grieving mother lying motionless on the floor of her bedroom with a stained dagger in one hand and blood lazily pooling around her where it poured from deep self-inflicted carvings in the opposite arm, another death, another burial, another grave.

She didn’t send anyone else out on missions for a full week, and even when she finally did, it was because Grime forced her to, reminding her about the rapidly worsening state of the world and their deadline to march on the castle, still far away but getting closer every day. She refused to let him talk her out of tagging along on that first mission, though, and the one after it, and the next one after that, and so on and so forth. When she eventually sent a team on a mission without her, she spent the entire time they were gone once again standing in the doorway of the Plantar’s house, staring at the tree line, chewing her lips raw, and it was only when they returned exactly on time and reported a near-perfect mission that she relaxed enough to send more teams out on their own – only for the safer missions, though, of course.

***

Five more people had died under her command in the time since then, and many, many more injured. Grime was always quick to reassure her that those numbers were extremely low for a war, that they were lucky to have lost so few, that their troops were ready for and capable of bigger and more dangerous things in spite of it, because of it. More would die, it was as inevitable as the sunrise and the changing tides and the long nights spent under Grime’s watch so he could stop her from tearing herself apart with bitten-sharp fingernails clawing at skin and pulling out hair, trying to peel her sinful, reaper-touched, suffocating flesh from her bones as if her blood would seep into the earth and return life to those buried above. The ownership of freedom came at the price of war. The ability to live was a gift given by the cold hands of those willing to die. When all was said and done, the town they would rebuild would have bones in the foundations of their buildings, blood watering the roots of their gardens, names that were quietly forbidden from being used anew until they were forgotten entirely.

It was something she could do little to change, but she tried anyways with every inch of her soul, every cell in her body, an insignificant human, powerless, ignorant, small, putting on the cloak of a god and praying to her muse that it might be enough, just for this, just for now.

She groaned and dragged her hands down her face, surely smearing the ink staining her fingers everywhere, though that was the least of her concerns. She was tempted to get up and go try to find Grime, at the very least to see how much longer it would be until he could help her, but she quickly shook the thought away with a frustrated grimace. She was the commander, not him, and if she couldn’t do something as basic as plan a mission that was exactly the same as dozens of others she’d overseen in the past without his input, what good was she? The helmet of authority stared at her from its place on the floor, whispering a question she’d already thought long and hard about, one she’d been trying very hard to ignore throughout her poor attempt at being productive:

If you’re struggling this much after leading this resistance from its earliest conception, how much worse would Anne be, lacking as she was in the knowledge and experience necessary for such responsibility?

She slammed her quill down and pushed herself to her feet, grabbing the helmet off the floor and shoving it into the far back corner of the room, tossing the blanket that normally lived on the back of her chair over it. With that, she sat back down with a huff, picked her quill up once again, and forced her hand to write despite the protests of her gut. She did what she knew how to do, what she was good at back when the resolve-weakening care that had too quickly wriggled its way into her heart had not yet infected her mind like a parasite – she mapped the route to the target area, taking into consideration the density of the forest and the potential weather patterns and any obstacles that might slow them down, such as large hills, bodies of water, wetlands, and destroyed towns that held the risk of harboring gangs that wouldn’t hesitate to try to rob them blind. She calculated how many people the team she sent out would need to have at minimum, then added one more as precaution and began rationing out food and supplies, lists she would need to deliver to the horticulturists in charge of the hydroponic gardens, the small group of chefs who made the meal packs for all the missions, the weaponry staff, and Tuti as soon as possible to make sure the team got everything they’d need in time.

She looked at the number of factories and their locations in relation to one other and began running written simulations on a fresh piece of paper to test different approaches, the various orders the team could hit them in, the different locations and angles they could start their attack from, the possible timing of how many they could take down in succession before needing to retreat and regroup, the estimated number of robot guards and the cycle of their rotations based on previous missions and observed patterns, and all the other little details that needed to be taken into account during the tedious, but extremely important, logistical stage of planning she was in. There wasn’t much she could finalize, not while refusing to put names to the faceless team as she was, not without knowing exactly who would be going, what their individual skillsets were, and how they’d work together as a group, but she let herself get lost in the process, consumed by the familiar meticulousness of it all.

Finally finding the focus she’d been chasing since the day before, she nearly fell out of her chair, startled, when a plate was dropped on the table in front of her, the savory smell of the steaming meal quickly flooding her senses. She looked over and was unsurprised to see Grime standing next to her, his arms crossed and an unimpressed brow ridge raised, daring her to try to refuse the food. As soon as the adrenaline dripped out of her system, her face twisted in annoyance, scabbed, dry lips twitching into a sour frown.

“Jeez, aggressive much? You scared the shit outta me.” He huffed, throat puffing out a little with defensiveness.

“That’s hardly my fault, you were staring at those maps so closely you could’ve fallen into them. Speaking of, you have ink on your nose.” He pulled a small, folded cloth from his pocket and tossed it to her, which she quickly used to wipe the charcoal smear off her face before handing back. “How long have you been at it, anyways? Your eyes have that weird glassy look they get when you forget to blink for too long. Which you do. All the time. Especially when you stare at maps for hours without taking a break.”

She rolled her eyes at his not-so-subtle accusation, then blinked rapidly at the aching sting that made itself known when she did as if reminded of its own existence by his words, scrubbing them harshly with stained fingers that quickly returned the smokey streaks she had just worked to remove.

“Does it matter?” She kept her eyes closed a little longer, if only to avoid seeing the exasperation she knew was growing on his face at her response. “I’m the commander, it’s my job, and after how much time I wasted doing nothing yesterday, I’ve got a lot to catch up on.”

She peeled her still-irritated eyes open just in time to see him shake his head with a grumble, clearly unhappy with her response, and part of her wanted to bite back that he wasn’t much better back when he was captain at Toad Tower – while she was locked in a cell and trying to charm her way to freedom, she’d heard plenty from the guards about his tendency to stay holed-up in his office all the time, only leaving to yell at the guards or interrogate her, the light in his room forever lit with the implication of working all hours of the day and night – but she held her tongue, knowing from past arguments just like this one that it wouldn’t help anything.

“I got most of the next mission planned,” she said instead, hoping it would pique his interest enough for him to let the topic of her nonexistent work-life balance go. “There’s still some details to clean up, but we should be able to send a team out within the week.”

He narrowed his eyes at her, not at all fooled by her attempt to divert the conversation, but after a long few seconds he relented with a sigh. He, too, must’ve realized that continuing to argue would get them nowhere, and even he couldn’t deny that they couldn’t afford to waste time, despite his – hypocritical, in her opinion – insistence that taking breaks to sleep and eat weren’t wastes. He pulled her chair back, putting space between her and the table, and picked up the plate and shoved it into her chest.

“Eat.”

It wasn’t a question, and considering he was willing to humor her work at all, she didn’t want to push her luck by refusing. Besides, the smell of the food was making her salivate like a dog, her stomach grumbling and twisting painfully as an added reminder of how long it’d been since she’d had a proper meal, and she couldn’t really work on the maps while he was looking at them anyways. Thus, she took one bite and chewed and swallowed like a normal person, then quickly began devouring the meal like a starved man, shoveling food into her mouth and only chewing enough to not choke. It was improper and disgusting, the type of behavior that would earn her at least a yelled lecture and long grounding from her parents if done in public, but Grime didn’t judge her, he didn’t even comment on it, he only gave her a small look of approval before focusing his attention on the papers strewn on the table. He was used to it, even expected it; toads weren’t exactly known for their class or manners, after all. She appreciated his lack of reaction anyways, though, as she continued scarfing down her food.

He didn’t say a word until she was done, watching from the corner of his eye as she set the plate down and wiped her face and hands clean before scooting her chair back into place. She looked at him, then at the maps, then back at him again, raising her brows expectantly.

“So? What do you think?” He didn’t respond right away, he didn’t even move, he just stared down at the maps, and for a moment she was worried he hated it, mentally preparing for him to lay into her with critiques and complaints despite believing herself that her plans were good, great even. But he didn’t. After a few seconds of silence that stretched on for an eternity, he simply nodded.

“It looks good. There’s still a lot of holes to fill, but it’s a solid start.” She felt all the work she’d done was more than a start, but she didn’t say so, letting him continue uninterrupted. He pointed at the map closest to him, and her gaze followed his finger to one of the margins she’d scribbled in. “What team are you thinking of sending? You have the numbers here, but no names, and I don’t think I have to tell you how important that information is.”

Her stomach flipped, and she suddenly regretted eating anything at all as the taste of undigested food and stomach acid bubbled in the base of her throat. He looked at her questioningly as her hands tightened into fists on the table, and she forced herself to relax, taking a deep breath and unfurling her fists to instead clasp her hands together. Her heart hammered in her chest, shoulders aching under the weight of fifteen graves and bones scraping against each other at the idea of adding even more, but when she spoke, her voice was steady, strong, unwavering. A commander, through-and-through.

“I haven’t quite narrowed it down yet. For a mission like this, it’d have to be one of our most experienced, trustworthy teams. Croaker’s would be an obvious choice – a little small, but we can pull from other teams where necessary to fill-in their numbers – but it’s barely been a week since their last mission and while none of them were hurt, it’s only fair to let them rest. Besides, this mission is long, we’re looking at multiple days spent away from base, and when we’re so close to marching on the castle and with all the new recruits coming in…” Grime sighed.

“You’re afraid of losing them.” The truth, vulnerable and ugly, bleeding beating heart held in a gentle palm surrounded by twitching, itching, razor-sharp claws.

She was far from an open book, always protecting the whispered words scrawled on the pages in curling letters that feigned elegance in a dull, tragically predictable story, holding herself firmly closed with only the carefully crafted cover visible to the public. It was rare for her to let anyone truly see inside, past the vision-blurringly long preamble that held just enough detail and truth to satiate curiosity and an equal amount of bullshit filler to thoroughly discourage anyone from digging further, a privilege she’d only willingly given to two people in her entire life. She couldn’t hide from Grime, though. He saw her cover for what it was: a pretty mask hiding a long-winded novel with depressing plotlines and a wholly unlikeable protagonist. He saw it, and he cracked her open like it was nothing, like the thick leather strap holding the pages tightly closed wasn’t even there, like she was any other book, any other person, if not somewhat more aggravating to flip through. As soon as they’d fought the herons together, as soon as they’d become a team, as soon as she’d dared to show him the title, it was over, he had won. She couldn’t keep him out even if she tried, he knew her story well enough to predict what would happen next before the words were even written, and somehow, without her ever noticing until it was too late, he knew how to change what would soon be added in permanent pen.

He read her book from cover to cover, and he told her all the ways it sucked, annotated every page with comments and critiques, brutally honest red ink seeping through the pages. When he saw a paragraph coming that he didn’t like, he said so to her face, putting his hand on her wrist to stop her from writing as he explained the ways it could be different, could be better. Sometimes – no, often – she felt he was wrong, biased just like any other reader and pushing her in a direction she’d never planned to go, but then again, all her plans had been thrown out the minute she went from one world to another, nonfiction to dark fantasy, and once his name had been added to the narrative, there was no turning back. He read her, he knew her, he predicted her, he changed her.

She hated it. To be seen so plainly, so thoroughly, was a curse on her existence. Maybe she didn’t want his annotations, his opinions. Maybe she didn’t want better paragraphs and plotlines. Maybe she wanted to write a bad story with bad characters who all made bad decisions. She hadn’t said anything relating to her own emotions, and yet…

‘You’re afraid of losing them.’

She missed the soul-burning isolating peace of being unknowable.

“I just think it would be valuable to have them here. They’d set a good example for the new recruits, especially for teambuilding, and they have the stories and experience to help the newcomers understand exactly what it is that we do, what missions look like, and what the dangers are.” The look in his eye made her avert her gaze, staring down at the maps as if they would protect her from his prying hands cracking her skull open and allowing him to see into her mind.

“Sasha-“ She hated that tone, holding far too much care beneath the sternness, she hated it, hated it, hated it.

“What, Grime?” She cut him off with sharp, snapping, spitting embers. He didn’t even flinch.

“They’re one of our best teams, they’re capable of this, you know that.”

“I do.” She bit her lip hard enough to taste blood, and then a little harder.

“They’re not going to disappear, and they’re not going to come back dead, right?”

“Right.” Her voice cracked on the word, crumbling like ash on her tongue, betraying her conviction.

“They’re the best choice, the only choice. We shouldn’t waste them by keeping them here when they could be making a difference out there. They’re important to you and to this resistance, but in that importance is value, and this late into the war, when we’re getting ready to march on the castle, we have to put our strongest soldiers forward. You don’t want to risk anything happening to them, but we can’t afford to fail. Do you think they’re going to fail?”

“No.” The truth, inescapable, indisputable, revealing.

She picked the quill up with a white-knuckled tense grip, dipped the sharp tip of it in the inkwell, and in strokes far more confident than she felt, she wrote the names of the members of Croaker’s team on the map.

***

The meal was great, as much as Anne hated to admit it when it delayed her from seeing Sasha. She’d missed Amphibia’s food dearly while away, and although the sight of the fusion items she’d invented still being listed on Stumpy’s menu made her nearly turn around and abandon ship to go wallow in guilt somewhere private, his excitement at seeing her again was enough to hold her in place. After talking with him long enough for a line to form behind them, she and Sprig ordered and sat down, getting as far from the line and wandering crowds as possible in hopes of avoiding being swarmed. She knew it was only a matter of time before people would start seeking them out, forcing conversations, asking questions she’d really rather not answer. Frankly, it was a miracle they’d made it so long without getting hounded. When they’d returned to town from their trip to Newtopia, the fwagon was surrounded the moment they’d crossed the threshold of the welcome sign, and the townspeople were relentless in their questioning.

Now, they’d just come from another world after missing for so long with no guarantee they were even alive, and what they were met with was a land getting destroyed by pollution and a resistance force preparing for full-blown war, and yet they’d largely been left alone.

She didn’t understand it, but then again, Wartwood had always found new ways to confuse her every time she thought she was finally starting to make sense of it all.

She was just glad she and Sprig were able to eat in peace. Once they were done, they went to the Sundew’s shop, both so Sprig could ask about Ivy’s whereabouts and so Anne could get something sweet to bring to Sasha. Felicia was as pleasant as always, and she didn’t pry too much or trap them in a long conversation despite the fact that Anne was sure she was itching to ask a laundry list of questions (her tea shop was prime grounds for gossip, both before everything happened and still, if the whispers the few patrons exchanged were anything to go by). While good manners and the need to be polite played no small part in her held tongue, Anne also knew Felicia used to travel quite often, and she was sure she, too, had experienced the exhaustion of being forced to talk to people the moment she returned home and wasn’t thrilled at the idea of damning someone else to same fate.

So, they exchanged pleasantries and some surface-level explanations of what things were like on Earth and in Amphibia during their time apart, and then they moved on as if nothing life-changing had happened, as if Anne and Sprig hadn’t been on another planet just hours ago, as if they both didn’t look like they’d aged ten years in the time they were gone, as if they weren’t underground below the leveled remains of their town in the middle of a war none of them had signed up for. Anne would have to find some way to thank her, sometime, for having the kindness to pretend not to care in any real amount about their absence and everything that happened during it.

Anne let Felicia decide what to give her, watching her pick out a handful of teacakes and small pastries and arrange them in a box, which Anne accepted with many thanks. Sprig was directed to a smaller, more private training area deeper in the base where Ivy apparently liked to go to train alone without all the crowds and noise, and with a promise to come check back in soon, he was off, half-hopping and half-running in the direction Felicia had pointed him towards. Anne thanked her again for the help, politely nodded along to the open invitation to sit down and have a real conversation soon, and bid her goodbyes, leaving the shop with the box of treats carefully clutched in her grasp.

Finding the strategy room was easier than she’d thought it would be, considering how unfamiliar she still was with the base. Located on the outer edge of the main hall, the red curtain serving as the door was recognizable from pretty much anywhere with an unobstructed view, and she was sure the spot gave Sasha a solid overview of the area whenever she poked her head out to check on things. Helpful, she supposed, for a commander who was too busy to do much socializing but still wanted to keep an eye out and make sure everything was running smoothly when she had a minute to spare. She only hoped Sasha got some time to herself occasionally, moments throughout the days and weeks where she could leave the strategy room and walk freely through the base without having her attention demanded by everyone she passed, able to take care of her needs and think about other non-resistance-related things for a while.

She hesitated at the door, Sasha’s warning from the day before about being in the room without her or Grime there ringing in her head, but she shook the thought away. It wasn’t against the rules to just peek her head in to check if Sasha was there, and considering the fact that she wasn’t in her bedroom when Anne woke up and that Sasha herself had said she spent a lot of time in the room, she felt there was a pretty good chance she would find her inside. She took a deep breath, heart hammering in her chest for reasons she couldn’t quite place, and raised a fist to knock before realizing she didn’t exactly have anything to knock on, choosing instead to gently push the curtain aside, letting herself in.

Sasha was exactly where she’d thought she would be, hunched over in her seat at the table in a position that was surely doing no favors for her spine, fully engrossed in the maps lying in front of her. She’d put her armor back on, but now that Anne knew where to look, she could see the barest slivers of white bandages on her arm between the chunks of metal and strips of leather – the fingers of her free hand twitched, itching to undo the wraps and check on the wound festering underneath, to clean it up and carefully rebandage it, to hold her arm as gently as she dared and ghost her fingers over what had been done in her absence, never quite touching out of fear of hurting her more. She refrained, though, and the tempted hand joined her other to hold the box if only to stop it from reaching out, grasping at the small yet uncrossable distance between them.

Sasha didn’t look up at her entrance, she didn’t even acknowledge it, focused on her work in a way Anne was far more used to seeing in Marcy. For a long moment, all she could do was stare, taking in every little detail, stealing the chance to admire her without fear of being noticed and feeling that horribly selfish part of her heart ache with hope that it wouldn’t be the only time, that someday she’d be able to stare all she wanted and Sasha would stare right back with the same softness shining in black hole pupils surrounded by only a small ring of color that they couldn’t quite consume. She lingered in the intensity of Sasha’s expression, the corners of her mouth pulled down and a crease pressed between pinched eyebrows, eyes darting across the scrawl on the pages too fast for it to be anything short of fully memorized. Her teeth worried her lip, and while her dominant hand tapped the tip of a quill against the table (and had been for some time, based on the growing splotch of ink on the page’s margin beneath it), her other hand found its home in the hair at the base of her neck, twisting and pulling it in a fidgeting reminiscent of how she used to twirl the ends of her ponytail and pointlessly fix her already perfect bangs back when her hair was still long. The sound of clinking, jostling metal drew her gaze down to where Sasha’s leg bounced furiously under the table, just as restless as every other part of her, the speed of the movement causing her armor to shift despite her heel never hitting the ground.

She wanted to stare forever, to stand there and take in the image of the girl she’d missed for so very long until the rise and fall of the sun lost all meaning, until the war ended and the town was rebuilt and everyone else abandoned their makeshift underground home, until the roots hanging from the ceiling finally grew long enough to reach her and crawled across her skin like veins and the dirt she stood on began to swallow her whole. It would be a waste, though, to stand silently for so long and never make her presence known to get Sasha’s attention, if only because it would mean she wouldn’t get to hear her voice again and again, words directed only at her, her name spilling from smiling lips a hundred times over like a prayer, like a promise, like a pretty thing, like something worth using precious life-sustaining breath on.

She cleared her throat, and Sasha visibly startled, shooting her an annoyed glare only a millisecond long and returning her focus to her maps just as quick. A second later, though, realization dawned on her face, and she whipped her head up again, staring with shocked-wide eyes at Anne.

“Hey,” she couldn’t help but smile at the stupefied expression painting Sasha’s features, even if her heart stung slightly at the look she’d been given before it. Sasha’s mouth opened and closed silently for a moment, gaping like a fish, and then her mind seemed to catch up with her and she shook her head clear as her face erupted in an embarrassed flush.

“Sorry! Sorry, I thought you were someone else, I didn’t- I wasn’t trying to-“ Anne cut her off before she could get too far in her rambling, holding out the box towards her. She knew Sasha wasn’t trying to be mean, not really, and as sad as it was to admit, she wasn’t used to hearing so many genuine apologies from her, and adding on the ones she’d been given the day before, it was starting to weird her out a bit.

“What’s that?” Sasha looked at the box questioningly, but didn’t reach to take it despite Anne obviously offering it to her.

“Treats, from Felicia’s shop.” She shook the box slightly, trying to signal to Sasha that it was for her without messing up any of the goodies inside, but when Sasha still didn’t move, she rolled her eyes with no real malice. “C’mon, take it, I brought it for you.”

“Oh,” it was hardly more than a whisper, but she did as told and took the box from Anne’s outstretched hands, opening it and peeking at the contents. “You didn’t have to do that, but thanks.”

“I wanted to.” She bit-back the tense defensiveness creeping into her voice, an instinctive reaction to any hint of criticism or controlling demand from Sasha despite her gentle tone containing neither. “Besides, don’t think I missed the way Grime grumbled about your eating last night. He’s right, you’re wearing yourself down to the bone and your body’s taking the hits for it.”

Sasha’s shoulders hitched, her nose scrunching in annoyance, but she forced herself to relax, picking at the edges of the carboard box.

“He worries too much, I’m fine. He just brought me some food a little while ago, actually.” She looked up at Anne, saw the expectant plea she knew was seeping from her eyes, the nervous wring of her now-empty hands, and she sighed softly. “These look good, though. Felicia’s a talented baker, even down here.”

She set the box down on the table in a small square of free space without actually eating anything from it, her eyes refocusing on the maps, and Anne chose not to comment on the fact, standing awkwardly a couple feet away from her in silence. She shifted uncomfortably, continuing to wring her hands and rocking back and forth on the balls of her feet, watching Sasha start scribbling again and feeling unignorably like she needed to say something but coming up blank when she tried to think of what. Frustration laced with disappointment churned in her chest – since when did simple interactions get so difficult? Conversation used to come to them as easy as breathing, the two of them slotting together like pieces of a puzzle, and even the gaps in their sentences were filled with the comfortable quiet of lifelong companionship, the soul-soft knowledge that they didn’t need words to appreciate each others’ company. When did they lose that? When was the river-flow of bleeding, blending mumbles and bubbling freshwater giggles dried-up? When was the serene late-night hush of gentle breaths and brushed fingertips replaced by choked-back nonsense held merely for the sake of not looking like a fool and a distance so palpable there might as well have been an invisible wall between them?

She knew when. She knew the moon staining the starless sky the same color marring the tip of her sword, the cheek of her other. She knew the humid breeze that brushed every inch of exposed, unprotected skin, whispered fingers pulling her hair, her clothes, urging her closer to the edge they flew so effortlessly away from, the edge that could only end in a fatal fall. She knew the rattle in her bones as the blade in her hand clashed with another, the tremble in her exhausted legs as the stones beneath her feet shifted dangerously, the searing burn of her knees scraping layers of skin off as she dove for the hand vanishing from view. She knew the words that were supposed to be final. She knew the scream that tore from her chest like a beast from a cage and shred her throat raw and bloody in its escape. She knew when everything had changed irrevocably, insurmountably, inevitably.

“So, uh, whatcha workin’ on?” Keep trying in spite of it all, keep reaching for the normalcy she knew was still there somewhere as desperately as she had reached for the hand releasing her own, the life of another slipping through her fingers.

“Hm?” Sasha looked up at her, then back down, blinking. “Oh, just another mission. I was only gonna send out one team this week, but Grime insisted on at least two, said we need to ‘whip our spiders’ now that our time is running low, which I think is the equivalent of saying we need to kick it into high gear?” She grimaced, the twisted-up expression on her face hilariously disgusted, and shook her head. “Regardless, he makes a good point. The other mission’s already projected to take a few days, so I’m trying to keep this one shorter, but the target’s a bit far and in a weird place geologically. It would ideally only be a few hours’ travel by cart, but the most efficient routes I can find wouldn’t be able to accommodate one, all dense forest and swampland. Going the long way around on better roads, though, would extend the travel time to over a day one-way, and it would leave them exposed to marauders we’ve had issues with in the past on those routes.”

She leaned back in her chair slightly, pointing at the map directly in front of her, covered in various lines, circles, arrows, and nearly illegible notes. Anne took the unspoken invitation, approaching the table to stand next to her and looking down at the paper, taking a moment to figure out where exactly in the valley all the scribbles were supposed to represent before replaying Sasha’s explanation in her head. She traced the different routes with a pointed finger, mouth moving in soundless mumbles to herself; Sasha was right, the land the team would have to cross through on the fastest paths would only be possible on-foot, and while she didn’t know anything about the supposed marauders, she trusted Sasha’s judgement, and it wasn’t too surprising to hear considering the roads she was referring to were commonly-used enough to have a relatively consistent flow of travelers without the crowds (and witnesses) of the more populated main roads, at least from what Anne knew from before everything.

Something nagged in the back of her mind, and she leaned closer, echoing Sasha’s poor posture as if the proximity would reveal anything new. She pictured the more detailed maps Hop Pop had shown her how to read for their trip to Newtopia, trying to fill-in the gaps the hand-drawn one left, sifting through her memory in hopes of finding some piece of information that was missing from the equation. She was never very good at geography, and even with Hop Pop’s lessons she was only ever able to understand the maps enough to not get them lost when she was driving Bessie without Sprig’s help navigating. Just when she was ready to give up and ashamedly admit her shortcomings, however, something clicked, and her finger slammed down on the map hard enough to bend the joint back painfully, landing on an area that hadn’t been covered in markings.

“What about here?” Sasha leaned forwards, intrigued, but her brows pinched again when she saw where Anne was pointing, shaking her head.

“Same issue as all the others. It’s not as swampy, but all my research says that part of the woods is dense, and a cart wouldn’t be able to maneuver through the heavy greenery.”

“Correction: it used to be dense.” Anne grinned proudly as Sasha looked at her, confused. “Me and the Plantars used to pass through that part of the valley a couple times a month to go to markets in the nearby towns. They carried some produce and things that don’t grow as easy here, and we had some good luck finding cheap tool parts and scrap to repair the farm equipment when it broke. Which was often. Anyways, on the last trip we took before-…” the unspoken admittance of everything that had happened burned bile on her tongue, and she swallowed the words, pushing on with only a split second’s pause, “before, Sprig and I ran off into the woods there while Bessie took a snack break. We were just trying to get some energy out, really – we’d been stuck in the cart for like three hours by then – but we maybe sorta accidentally angered a giant lizard-wolf thing? I don’t know, it was long and low to the ground and its body was covered in thick scales like a lizard, but it had the teeth and bark of a wolf which was terrifying when it started snapping its jaws at us- never mind, not relevant. My point is, it chased us all the way through the woods back to the road where Bessie, ever so reliable, carried us to safety, and in the chase, it just barreled through everything in its path like it was nothing. When we passed by on the way back home, there was basically just a huge hole carved clean through where it’d run. I’m sure some of the plant life has grown back since then, and there might be some bigger debris that needs to be cleared away, but a cart should be able to fit through, and it’ll get them pretty damn close before they need to go on-foot the rest of the way.”

Sasha stared down at the map, fingers tracing where Anne had pointed during her story, and her eyes grew wider the longer she thought everything over. She suddenly stood from her seat, too excited to stay down, and began sketching the route Anne had described with a grip on her quill tight enough that Anne was worried it would snap in half, muttering to herself. After just a few short minutes, she stopped, straightening her back and admiring her work, apparently done, though Anne didn’t have enough experience with map-drawing to tell the difference between the new lines and the unfinished and abandoned ones.

“Using this route, they’d be able to move fast without much issue on the main road to start, and they’d pull off into the woods a couple miles before marauder territory, which should be enough distance to avoid them as long as they haven’t moved around too much since our last encounter.” She used the tip of her quill to follow the various lines and arrows as she explained, indicating which markings correlated to which movements. “The path through the woods would take them about three-quarters of the way to the target, and the last stretch would be an easy hike, no more than a couple hours. They’d be coming in at an odd angle, but we can work with that, we’ve done it before. Anne, you’re incredible!”

Without warning, Sasha launched herself at Anne, wrapping her arms around her in a tight hug. Before Anne could process it enough to reciprocate, Sasha pulled away like she’d been burned, flailing her hands for a moment before firmly slamming them down on the table, the pink dusting her cheeks and the tips of her ears visible even as she turned to face the maps. She jumped right back into rambling about the mission, a constant stream of half-finished sentences about supplies and timelines and potential teams to assign to it, and Anne just stood back and let her talk, trying to follow the quick, unrefined flow of consciousness and failing miserably. She was fully capable of learning how it all worked, she was sure, if she was given the chance to be taught or at the very least observe Sasha while she worked, but it wasn’t the time for that, and she wasn’t in any rush to start taking on those kinds of responsibilities when she’d only just arrived to the resistance. She had time, she could worry about it all later, or at least she could lie to herself that she did, stand on her head so the hourglass looked more full than empty as the sand trickled steadily through, ignoring the echoes of hundreds of feet marching in preparation for a battle whose shadow loomed over them, blocking out the sun.

***

Ivy was exactly where her mom had said she would be, although it took Sprig some time to find her, making several wrong turns in his search before asking someone else to take him there. She didn’t notice him at first, and he took the opportunity to simply watch her train from the edge of the room, even as his feet itched to run to her. She’d always been good at hand-to-hand combat, playful as it was when the stakes were nonexistent, and she’d only improved more after the fight with her mom revealed that her chores at the tea shop were training in disguise, given the freedom to learn with the explicit intent of self-defense rather than hiding it behind tablecloths and tea sets (she still had to do her chores, however, much to her disappointment). Watching her now, though, was like nothing he’d ever seen before. She stood in front of a dummy, and while the moves she made were similar enough to her prior training to be familiar, there was an aggression that hadn’t been there the last time he’d seen her, a heavy lean towards the side of offense rather than a solid standing in the role of defense.

When she swung her arms, it wasn’t to block imaginary attacks, but instead to make hits of her own, punches and kicks landing true where she aimed them and causing loud thuds to echo off the walls, accompanied by her grunts of effort. He watched as she sent a foot flying harshly into where the stomach would be, followed immediately by a punch to the face hard enough to make the head come loose and tilt unnaturally to the side, a combination that was guaranteed to send her opponent to the ground and leave them unable to get back up anytime soon (if at all). She stepped back, panting, and shook out the hand she’d punched with before reaching up and twisting the dummy’s head back into place, seeming entirely unfazed by the damage she’d done. It was only when she widened her stance, bent her knees, and raised her fists again that he decided to make himself known, choosing to forgo their tradition of greeting one another with sneak attacks out of a newfound fear for his currently unbroken face and instead approaching with purposefully loud steps, the noise quickly getting her attention.

She whipped her head towards him, still in a fighting position, but the moment she registered who he was, the tension drained from her limbs and a smile broke wide on her face. Her feet shifted in a familiar warning, and he only had a millisecond to prepare before she threw herself at him, tackling him in a hug and taking them both to the ground despite his attempt to dig his heels in to keep them upright.

“Sprig!” He returned the hug as tightly as he could, ignoring the bruise blooming on his back where he’d hit the ground and the fact that the strength of her arms, somehow so much more than the already impressive strength he was used to before, made it hard to breathe. After only a moment she pulled away just enough to get a good look at him, eager to see his face again after so much time apart, her arms releasing their hold so she could cup his smiling cheeks with her hands, staring in wide-eyed awe as the touch confirmed that he was real.

“You’re here! You’re really here!” He lifted his hands to hold hers on his face, squeezing them just a little tighter as her thumbs brushed away the tears streaming silently from his welled-up eyes. “I heard the rumors that you guys came back, but I didn’t wanna get my hopes up until I saw for myself, and I tried to find you yesterday but I didn’t know which room you ended up in and the commander vanished for the rest of the day so I couldn’t ask her and my mom said I should let you guys rest if you really did come back and made me work at the shop so I couldn’t sneak away but now… here you are.”

Her voice broke at the end, and tears began to pour down her own face, her wobbling smile more than enough to make him move his hands to mirror hers, holding her face and trying in vain to wipe away the tears that just kept coming. He could count on one hand the number of times he’d seen her cry in all their years of friendship – she wasn’t emotionless or insensitive, far from it, but when she was upset, she tended to fall back on frustration and even anger, something with direction, something she could use, far easier to find outlets for and keep control over than the vulnerability of gasping, wailing tears. Now, though, she cried hard, squeezing her eyes shut as her shoulders shook and hiccupping breaths caught roughly in her throat in her attempts to bite back her sobs, still trying to put on a strong front even there, even then, even with him. He didn’t try to hide his own trembling, he simply pulled her back into himself, wrapping his arms around her as she buried her face in his chest and clutched his shirt in tight fists as if he would disappear if she loosened her hold even a little. Maybe he would. He’d done it before.

He squeezed her in his arms a little tighter.

***

When the tears stopped and they could breathe again without the threat of falling apart, Ivy was eager to drag him back to the dummy and show him everything she’d learned in his absence, showing off a series of moves and attacks in quick succession. She patiently guided him as he tried to copy some of it himself, giggling at his somewhat clumsy attempts – he wasn’t bad by any means, certainly not as good as her but, then again, she’d spent the whole time learning and training while he was on Earth getting rusty, focusing more on finding a way back home and not letting anyone die in the process than keeping his combat skills sharp. He’d always preferred long-distance fighting anyways, a fact that she was, of course, well aware of, although he still decided to remind her by pulling out his trusty slingshot and shooting a handful of small rocks at the dummy from different distances and angles around the room. He only missed one shot, and that was because she lurched forwards as if she was going to jump in front of the dummy right when he was about to release the band, and he quickly changed the angle of his aim as the projectile slipped from his fingers, sending it flying over the dummy’s – and Ivy’s – head. He glared in fake anger as she laughed, but he couldn’t wipe the grin off his face at the sound.

Frog, he had missed her.

He rolled his eyes as she half-jokingly criticized him for it, mirth still sweetening her voice while she told him he couldn’t pass-up the opportunity to take down an opponent in a real battle just because she was close by, and he responded by reminding her that it wasn’t a real battle, and all he would’ve accomplished by not changing his aim was hitting her with a rock while she protected a lifeless sack on a stick (and he very smartly did not tell her that he still would’ve purposefully missed the shot in a real battle if she’d gotten in the way like that, that he would never risk hurting her for the chance of hitting an enemy when his ammo was more than pebbles and the consequence was more than a copper-sized bruise; she wouldn’t take it well, he knew, because she was a fighter through-and-through, and she was brave to a fault, and no matter how good his intentions were, she would feel horribly betrayed if he jeopardized the resistance’s victory just to save her, roping her into his guilty verdict through her involvement even though he would’ve been going directly against her wishes, as if she wouldn’t do the exact same thing for him in a heartbeat).

He asked her questions about the resistance, about everything that had happened since he was transported to Earth, about her training and the missions she’d been sent on and her mom’s tea shop and anything else he could think of, out of a genuine want to know about all he had missed as much as out of the desperate desire to keep the conversation as far away from the topic of himself as possible. It was impossible to avoid entirely, though. She was burning with curiosity, bursting with questions, and he couldn’t blame her. He’d want to know every little detail too, if she’d been the one sent to another world; Frog knew he’d asked Anne hundreds of questions about her planet and life and culture since meeting her, and all the information he’d gathered still didn’t compare to seeing it in person, experiencing it firsthand, a mere fraction of his life spent living as close as he could get to the way she’d lived so much of hers.

He wanted to tell Ivy about it – the good parts, at least – but the very first mention of it, the simple question ‘So, what was Earth like?’ asked in innocent interest, nearly made him throw up, and he must’ve made some kind of face because her smile dropped in an instant and she reached out a hand, hovering in the air between them but not quite touching, lost to what was wrong or how to help. He took a breath, then another, the same way he’d instructed Anne to so many times when her lungs seemed to run away from her, but it didn’t help him like it helped her, and the realization that it wasn’t helping only made things worse. Panic-fueled adrenaline trembled his hands and pumped his heart hard and fast, and the fragile control he held over his breathing shattered, leaving him panting quick, shallow gasps that made his head spin with the feeling that he couldn’t get enough air, his fingers reaching up to grasp at his throat as if he was being strangled, suffocated. The action was enough for Ivy’s confused hesitation to be shoved aside, and she quickly grabbed his hands and pulled them away from his neck, holding them firmly enough that he couldn’t escape but with an impossible gentleness that ensured she wasn’t hurting him.

He struggled against her for a moment, his fear-addled mind confusing her protective care for threatening restraint, but then her voice broke through the haze of screaming and sirens clouding his thoughts, and he latched onto it with the fierce, clawing desperation of finding a buoy while drowning in a raging ocean storm, of wrapping his too-small body around his infant sister in the lonely dark of the basement as if it would somehow save her while the screeching of the herons destroying their town grew closer and closer to their quiet home, of stitching-up a mangled arm with searing-hot blood coating his fingers where he held a sewing needle because he needed to do something to fix her and he couldn’t let her die, he couldn’t lose her too, he wouldn’t. She pulled him to her chest the way he had done to her, and he could feel the vibrations of her voice seep into his skull as she mumbled words of comfort, and every insufficient breath he took carried the scent of sunbathed dirt in the summertime and dozens of teas served with scones and sweets and it flooded his senses with her.

Her chest rose and fell against his head in deep, even breaths, and he followed the example unthinkingly, pressing closer into her as his frantic breathing slowed to mirror hers until every inhale and exhale was shared. She continued speaking to him as his heartrate returned to a normal pace and the tension drained from his body, not missing a single beat even when he slumped in her grasp and forced her to balance his limp weight, simply leaning back slightly so he was laying on her more than she was holding him up. He nearly fell asleep like that, he wanted to fall asleep and escape it all and then wake up later and pretend nothing happened, but he knew that wouldn’t be fair to her.

Selfishly, he stole five more minutes of her comfort.

She didn’t bring up Earth again, when he pulled away too soon. She didn’t say anything, in fact, not for a long few minutes, waiting to give him the chance to go first. Every time he opened his mouth to try to speak, though, the words died in his throat and his mouth filled with ash-heavy cremation smoke, and he was left sitting a foot away from her, floundering. She took pity on him, made the first move like she always seemed to do, and decaying moss-guilt crawled up from deep in his gut to tangle itself in his chest.

“Are you okay?” A loaded question, though it shouldn’t have been.

“Yes?” His voice was quiet, broken, and her face pinched with doubt almost imperceptibly, but he noticed, he always noticed, and he shook his head. “No? I don’t know.”

“That’s… okay.”

Silence. He didn’t want to explain, and she didn’t want to force him. Moving on without talking about it wasn’t an option. Something had to give, and it had to be him.

“I’m sorry.” It was dull, mumbled, two words he’d said and heard so much in the past weeks that they’d lost all meaning. An empty placative, nothing more. She didn’t know that, though, and it still meant something to her.

“Don’t be, it happens.” It didn’t, or it shouldn’t, not like that. It wasn’t the first time she’d seen him break down, but it had been a while since the last, and back then she knew and understood why it was happening. She’d lost people, too, in the heron attack. Everyone in town had.

“Do you wanna talk about it?” No. No no no no no- “You don’t have to, if you don’t want to.”

“It’s just-“ he choked, a pathetic whine escaping instead of real words. She was too good for him, too patient, too kind, too whole. His brokenness would spread to her too, if she stayed, he was sure of it. He couldn’t let her go, though, his love made him selfish like that, selfish enough to drag someone new into his mess, selfish enough to force someone to live against their will after they’d done everything they could to die, selfish enough to try to pretend, just for a while, to be someone worth staying for. She was never one to let anyone tell her what to do anyways.

“It’s just… hard. I haven’t really had to talk about it yet.”

“Do you want to?” An opening, an out. When did she get so good at emotions? The same time he got so bad at them, he supposed.

“I should talk.”

“That’s not what I asked.” Stern, but not mean. He couldn’t say he was a fan of the trend of the people in his life refusing to let him lie to them, or to himself.

“I want to.” He didn’t, but he didn’t want to leave her fully in the dark, either. “Maybe not all of it, but… some.” She nodded and reached out a hand, palm-up, offering. He took it, and he tried not to start crying all over again when she squeezed her quiet support.

“While we were on Earth, some stuff happened. Bad stuff. It’s, uhm, not really my place to go into detail, I don’t think, but it really sucked, for everyone. We weren’t really able to deal with it all, every free moment was spent trying to find a way to come back. We didn’t really want to deal with it, either. Not to the level we should’ve. Thinking about Earth just brings it all to the surface, I guess. It wasn’t entirely bad, though, there were some good things, too. Earth has this thing called the ‘internet’, it’s like magic! And the food was so good! A lot of the plants and animals and stuff were the same as here, but weird. Like, they didn’t try to kill us or anything, and they were way smaller, but everything else was huge-“

Ivy smiled as the misery carved into his face was slowly outshined by excitement, nodding along as he rambled and asking the occasional question, but for the most part staying quiet and letting him go on and on. She didn’t ask him to clarify what ‘bad stuff’ meant, and he didn’t offer to; she would find out eventually regardless, he was sure. Secrets like the innumerably many he kept had a tendency to come out one way or another, and the worse the secret was, the more violent and devastating its escape into the world would be. He only hoped that when the explosion occurred, when the shockwave of everything that was revealed leveled the few remaining pieces of their home and left nothing but an empty, smoking crater in its wake, she would understand why he couldn’t tell her, why he wouldn’t even if he wanted to. It was Anne’s grenade, and she had to be the one to pull the pin, but he would be standing right next to her when she did, holding her hand as it obliterated them both.

***

When Grime entered the strategy room, he visibly paused upon seeing Anne sitting at the table next to Sasha, watching her scratch her quill across the maps in silence. What surprised him more, however, was the half-eaten pastry in Sasha’s non-writing hand and the powdered sugar dusting her lips, a small box he could only assume was once full sitting on the table with only one pastry left inside. Anne noticed him immediately and gave a small wave, refusing to break the peaceful quiet she and Sasha had been wrapped in since Sasha’s rambling stream of plans had ended in favor of actually writing it all down on paper. It was easier to follow along when she could read and reread it, watching as Sasha physically drew connections between all the moving pieces that went into a single mission, cross-referencing different maps and communications from other towns and reports from prior similar missions to ensure she had every bit of information she possibly could, and, just as important, that the information she had was accurate.

A mission report from last month saying there weren’t any signs of robotic or mind-controlled bugs in the area was irrelevant when the letter she’d received a week ago from a small, trustworthy group of allies still living in the rubble of their town half a mile away from the same area claimed there’d been multiple sightings of a purple-eyed red mantis lurking in the woods.

Anne was happy to just sit back and watch her work, absorbing as much as she could about the process so she might be of more help in the future – she’d always been more of a hands-on learner, hence why most of her school experience was spent doing anything but studying or completing the boring, pointless busywork teachers loved to force upon their students when they didn’t feel like doing their jobs, but she could at least try to get a baseline knowledge of the mission-planning process until Sasha had the time to really show her the ropes. Besides, it was nice to watch Sasha in her element, observing her with a heart-fluttering fascination in a way she hadn’t been able to since before it all got complicated, back when her element was in the school’s gym with her cheer uniform on and pompoms in her hands, ordering her team around and showing them the routines she’d been working on nonstop for the last two weeks in preparation for the start of football season.

It was easy to get lost in her, then, sitting on the bleachers with Marcy tucked next to her, staring unabashedly at the way the fluorescent lights high in the ceiling made her perfectly styled hair shine, the slightly exaggerated makeup she and all the other cheerleaders wore to stand-out under the stadium lights during games, the confidence radiating from her as she demonstrated different moves as if they were as natural and easy to her as walking. Everything about her, everything she did, was completely, utterly captivating. It was different now, yet still the same; fluorescent bulbs had been replaced by flickering firelight, filtering through the short mess of hair to form a glowing halo around her head. Her face was bare, but still just as beautiful, even scarred with the reminder of past betrayals, even sunken thin with the evidence of overworked self-negligence, even prematurely wrinkled with stress carved into eyebags and pinched brows and frown lines. Her confidence was no longer found in dance moves and barked counting, but attack strategies and strict timelines, knowing exactly what needed to be done and when and by who, drawing it all out so that she could explain it coherently to the team being sent on the mission when the time came.

Anne fell back into her like she’d never even left, pulled into orbit by insistent gravity, watching from afar as she circled around and around, facing her world with her back to the sun. The distance between them was held protectively, though, layers of the atmosphere threatening to burn her apart if she got too close, just as it had every time she dared to try. The bridge between them had been set aflame more than once, had always been burning in some small way since the moment it was built, and yet the charred remains still stood, fragile as they were, an invitation to attempt to cross one last time. There were many things they hadn’t talked about yet, things they’d need to talk about before taking any steps onto the blackened wood between them, but for now Anne would watch her from the other side of the water, from the space beyond the sky, from the bleachers in the gym and the seat right next to her at the table, and she would let the too soft smile live unrestrained on her face, trying not to giggle at the powdered sugar on Sasha’s lips and ignoring the urge to reach over and wipe it away.

Grime cleared his throat, breaking their peaceful quiet and Sasha’s concentration, and Anne wondered how upset Sasha would be if she strangled him for it.

“Our allies from Lily Burrow have arrived. We’re getting them situated now, but you’ll need to come welcome them, show your face, let them know who’s in charge.” Sasha nodded, glancing down at the maps and plans on the table.

“Okay, I’ll be right out. How many newcomers is it?”

“Our count is seventy-four, however records of their town’s population indicate there should be at least one hundred. It’s unclear at this time whether the rest have fallen behind and will get here later, or if those already here are all that’s left.” Sasha’s face twisted, and she sighed.

It was always hard to be reminded of the effects of war, not only on Wartwood, but on Amphibia as a whole. She’d seen entire towns wiped off the map, family names and bloodlines killed-off one by one until there was no one left, hundreds of years of history and culture destroyed like it was nothing. She’d never cared much for history in school, always finding it boring and repetitive, but watching pieces of Amphibia’s history get lost under the rubble in real time left her mourning everything that would never be recovered, all the artifacts in museums that had been reduced to dust, all the landmarks that had been carved out and paved-over to make room for more factories, all the tales passed down through generations strictly through oral storytelling now gone with the deaths of the only people who remembered them. She couldn’t help but wonder, too, how the history books would be rewritten, how the events unfolding before her own eyes would be told – she remembered her history teacher in eighth grade once going on a long tangent about how much of history was buried, the narratives twisted to paint the ones who won, the ones who survived, the ones who committed atrocities and still came out on top, in good light.

Would Andrias be described as a benevolent king led astray, his hand forced, his heart broken by the things he was forced to do by some nonexistent evil influence? Would she and her people, her resistance, be the crazed killers causing destruction across the land with their bombs, tricking and manipulating the good citizens of other towns to join their reign of terror, showing no sympathy or mercy to the poor king as they severed his head from his neck the very first chance they got?

If she died before it was over, if she never got to tell her side of the story, would she be remembered as a leader of the people fighting for their home, or as a child alien from another world who got in over her head and paid for her overconfident ignorance with her life?

She could only hope that whoever made it out the other side would tell the truth, honest in its horrible, ugly, violent nature. There were no winners in war, only those who died and those who didn’t. When they defeated Andrias – not if, when – it would be a great victory, but how could she possibly say they had won when so many lives had been lost in the process? Amphibia and Earth would both be saved from his destruction and invasion, but the land was still polluted, the forests and swamps and open plains still thinned and withering, the towns still leveled and the people still dead. Beating Andrias wouldn’t revert everything back to the way it was before all the damage he did, but they could hope and pray that their freedom from him would allow them to rebuild, let nature heal, create something new and better from the ashes of the old.

“How is the mission planning coming along?” She blinked back into the moment and realized she’d been quiet for a second too long, giving Anne a reassuring smile at the concerned hand gently touching her shoulder before focusing back on Grime.

“Good, I’ve mostly finished this second one thanks to some help from Anne.” Grime squinted at that, and Anne glanced between him and Sasha while her hands fidgeted nervously in her lap.

“Please, you did all the hard stuff, I really just watched.” Sasha nudged her with her shoulder, unable to help the smile tugging at her lips.

“I was only able to do the hard stuff because of your valuable intel. I’d still be stuck trying to find a good route if it wasn’t for you.” She’d spent too much of their lives pushing Anne down and discrediting everything she did, it wouldn’t be fair to not give her credit for this, too. She’d promised to be better, to do right by her, and acknowledging Anne’s contributions was part of that. It didn’t make her a worse commander, it didn’t make her weak or a failure, it just made her a slightly better friend than she was before.

“Right,” Grime cleared his throat uncomfortably, and she leaned back from Anne again, returning to her position hunched over the table. “What team are you sending out? I can get a message to them to start preparing.”

“I was planning to send Stumpy, Ivy, and Fern, but I’d like to get one more person in there too for good measure. I’ve seen some promising work from Amber, from Topplewood, and this could be a good first mission for her, but it’s a risk since we don’t know how she’ll mesh with the team.” Grime hummed in thought, scratching his chin with one claw.

“What about Sprig?” Anne’s head whipped towards him.

“What about Sprig?” Her voice was cold, deadly serious, daring him to continue while warning him to shut up. He didn’t even look at her, staring strictly at Sasha as if she hadn’t spoken at all.

“We know he gets along with the others, and while I won’t say I trust his fighting abilities, it’ll be a few days before they’re sent out, and he can spend that time training with the others to get up to speed so their skill levels are more evenly balanced. If meshing is what you’re worried about, the familiarity and trust between them should be more than enough for them to all work together.” Anne looked at Sasha, waiting for her to dismiss the idea, but Sasha only stared down at the maps, chewing her lip in contemplation.

“But Sprig and Ivy are dating,” Anne spoke up in spite of Grime’s clear attempt to exclude her from the decision. “Wouldn’t that be, like, a conflict of interest or whatever?” Sasha frowned, lifting a hand and tilting it in a so-so gesture.

“Normally it would be something we’d at least be wary of, but this mission is pretty short and simple, and I was going to split the team into pairs of two anyways. If we keep them separate, they should be able to focus on the mission more than each other, and it’d be good to get more people out on missions like these. Right now, we only have a few small teams who do targeted attacks, and Sprig could be a beneficial addition if it goes well. We need all the hands we can get.” She looked closer at Anne, then, and saw the way her leg bounced restlessly under the table, how she twisted and wrung her hands together with a force that seemed almost painful, the pinched, anxious expression souring her face as if they’d just suggested putting Sprig on the frontlines, and tilted her head in confusion. “Unless, of course, there’s a specific reason why he shouldn’t go?”

She didn’t know anything about what happened on Earth, but she remembered Sprig’s skills with his slingshot and the guts he had. She didn’t like the obnoxious little brat, but her personal feelings were irrelevant, she had to do what was best for the mission and the resistance as a whole. He could hold his own in a fight, she’d seen it herself, and he wasn’t the type to give up or back down, almost to a fault. He’d flung mud at her face on her own turf surrounded by armed guards, he’d fought Grime one-on-one and won, and if the few stories she’d heard were true, he’d saved Anne’s life time and time again, even back when he and everyone else in the town thought she was a horrifying monster in the woods. She could hardly stand him, but she had to respect his fire and fighting spirit, something the old her would’ve never admitted – growing as a person, or whatever. He’d do well on a mission like the one she was planning, and unless Anne gave her a good reason not to, she was willing to give him the chance to prove himself.

Anne stared at her for a moment, mouth forming silent words as she tried to find one such reason, but after a few seconds she shut her jaw tight and crossed her arms, slumping in her chair and staring at her lap. She was obviously upset about the idea of Sprig being sent on the mission, but Sasha couldn’t fathom why aside from the general anxiety of someone she cared about being out of her sight. War was scary, she understood that better than she ever should’ve, and even with the reassurance that the mission wouldn’t be particularly dangerous, it made sense that Anne would have some reservations about him going; they’d only just arrived to the resistance, they were still getting used to everything being so different from what they knew when they’d left, and just a few hours ago Anne had seen the injury Sasha had gotten on a mission, the same kind she was now planning to send Sprig on. Even so, though, the reaction was more dramatic than she’d expected, and she didn’t know what to do with that aside from brush it off unless Anne explained why exactly she was so upset, which she wasn’t jumping to do. They couldn’t just stay holed-up in the safety of the base forever, they had a war to win, a king to defeat, an invasion to stop, Anne had to know that.

She sighed.

“Let Stumpy, Ivy, and Fern know they’re getting a new mission and to include Sprig in their training to prepare him for his first outing. Their briefing will be in two days, and they’ll leave in three if their supplies are ready, four at the latest.” Grime nodded.

“And the newcomers?”

“I’ll be out in just a minute.” She gave him a tight-lipped smile and very intentionally glanced at Anne, who hadn’t moved from her slouched sulking, silently begging him to get the hint. Thankfully, he did, and he didn’t argue, only giving her a look warning her that if she wasn’t there in five minutes, he’d come drag her out himself, before leaving.

She waited until the curtain settled back into place to turn to Anne, letting the seriousness shadowing her face soften with heart-clenching worry, folding her hands together on the table to resist reaching out. She didn’t know how Anne would react if she tried to touch her, didn’t know where the boundaries between them were anymore, and she didn’t want to damage their fragile connection by accidentally crossing one, even if they had slept in the same bed holding one another; Anne had initiated that, not her, and now Anne was upset about something she did, and she didn’t want to push her luck and make things worse. Being a better person meant respecting Anne’s boundaries, she just needed to figure out what and where they were.

“Are you okay?” A long moment of silence, and then Anne sighed heavy and exhausted and brought her hands up to her face, rubbing it harshly.

“Yeah, yeah, I’m fine.” Her voice was low, resigned, and Sasha frowned.

“No, you’re not. What’s wrong?” Anne dropped her hands to her lap, clenching them into tight fists, and turned to Sasha with a glare sharp enough to make her flinch back as if she was about to be hit.

“I said I’m fine, just drop it already.” Boundary found.

“Sorry.” Sorry for pushing. Sorry for worrying. Sorry for never really caring before. Sorry for making you believe I never would.

Anne’s glare faltered, then dropped, and her hands returned to her face as all the anger drained as fast as it had flooded her, replaced instead by a bone-deep weariness that left Sasha aching to fix what she didn’t understand, anything to get the fiery, kindhearted, determined girl she used to know back. Anne moved to tug at the knots in her hair, brushing her fingers through with only the slightest hint of gentleness, not so much as wincing as the strands snapped and came away with her hands.

“It’s fine. It’s nothing. I’m just-… being dumb.” She shook her head, her attack on her hair pausing as she worked to detangle a larger knot that refused to give. “It doesn’t matter.”

“It does matter.” Pushing the boundary, pushing her luck. “It matters to you, so it matters to me. Just tell me what’s wrong? Please?” Anne looked at her with unsure glassy eyes, teeth worrying her lip, and for a moment, it really looked like she was going to tell her, and Sasha let her hopes run wild like a fool – then Anne clenched her jaw and looked away, and Sasha felt her precious few hopes collapse and die, consumed by the earth in shallow graves all too similar to the ones she’d dug herself.

“You should go, before Grime comes back. They’re all waiting for you.”

No, Sasha wanted to scream, screw them all, they can wait awhile longer, you’re more important, you’ll always be more important.

“I’ll come find you later, okay?” She said instead, and the words stuck to her teeth like tar. She just needed to shove her face in some feathers to complete the look and show everyone how much of a chicken she was.

Anne nodded, but didn’t say another word, and Sasha took the response for what it was, standing from her seat, retrieving the helmet of authority from where she’d banished it, and leaving with only the slightest hesitation at the door. The main hall was swarmed with people, mostly unfamiliar, undoubtedly the new arrivals from Lily Burrow. She could feel a headache spark to life as the cacophony of their voices surrounded her, suffocating the room with sound, and she did her best to hide all the fresh annoyance and lingering fire-licks of emotion under a mask of welcoming confidence, every part the brave commander they all expected and needed her to be. Grime was waiting for her next to the stage, the statue that once stood in the center of town looming over them, and upon reaching him, he gave her a look of disapproval for how long she took, but graciously didn’t speak on it. She pulled the helmet over her head and waited for a nod of approval while he gave her a quick once-over, returning him a nod of her own when he did.

She walked onto the stage, waving to the crowd with a wide smile, and began her welcoming speech as they quieted down. It was a performance she was familiar with and had long perfected, wearing confidence like a second skin, acting as if nothing could shake her, strong and steady under the gaze of her parents and classmates and soldiers and followers. Her smile stayed bright and enthusiastic, unwavering as she pushed down the feeling of hundreds of eyes following her in the spotlight, of her muscles straining and the cold late-autumn air biting every inch of skin her cheer uniform left exposed, of all her guilt and regret and desperation clawing at her chest with ravenous hunger and trying to tremble her voice with rumbling roars. She said her script and didn’t stutter, lied through her teeth to her parents until they left her alone, told her classmates what they wanted to hear to heighten her place in the social hierarchy then destroyed them with the truth when they dared to cross her or her girls, spoke her way into the hearts of the toads guarding her cell and used their trust to maintain her power after accepting Grime’s offer to be his lieutenant, whispered half-genuine apologies and empty reassurances to Anne and held Marcy wrapped around her finger to get close enough to the throne to complete her and Grime’s mission, admitted the truth in its burning vulnerability after losing everything and begged for the allyship of a town with no reasons to give it and many reasons not to.

She played her part well, just as she always did, the face of confidence, of bravery, of perfection. Now, though, when she stepped off the stage and away from all the admiring eyes, she could feel the rust-rot eating holes in her gut, her skin itching with the pus-green sickly infection crawling through her veins, her tree root ribs twisting around her heart and squeezing until every pounding beat sent tremors across her chest and earthquake aftershocks down her spine. She was their leader, their commander, and a damn good one at that. She felt like she was going to be sick. Her nerves sparked embers through her body, filling her legs with ashen deadweight, the all too familiar feeling of her mind and body screaming ‘I don’t deserve this’ as if she didn’t know, as if she could ignore it. Her entire life, the question had never been whether or not she deserved anything, but how she could get what she wanted regardless of anyone or anything else.

Then she got what she wanted for one delicious, addicting moment, and it was the worst thing that ever happened to her.

The realization came crashing brutally down on her in the aftermath, when everything she’d wanted and everything she’d had was gone, that she didn’t deserve anything. She didn’t deserve the popularity at school that she’d manipulated and threatened her way into, she didn’t deserve her two ‘best friends’ that she’d only ever used to get what she wanted, she didn’t deserve the support of a town she’d never done anything but harm, and she didn’t deserve the loyalty of the resistance whose members latched onto her pretty promises of liberation and the saving of their world when behind it all, in the end, it was just another way for her to get what she wanted: the defeat of Andrias and the return of her Marcy. It didn’t matter that she also wanted to stop the invasion and save Amphibia and Earth because her motivations, her end goals, were inherently selfish, and the resistance was born from the hope that maybe doing a good thing would make her a good person.

Sometimes, she wondered if it was impossible for her to be a good person after all the bad she’d done, no matter how hard she tried to change. Maybe she’d been born with something evil inside of her, crawling under her skin and burrowing into her organs, as vital a part of her as any other piece of her body. If she cut herself open and dug it out with bare, bloodied hands, would it take everything else inside of her with it, clutching her heart and lungs and intestines in clawed fists? If it had been with her from the start, who would she be once it was gone? Could she even survive without it, when all that was left of her was the empty husk of her skin and bones, flesh wrapped around the void that housed her soul? If the answer was no, would she rip it out anyways?

Was it better to give herself over to death if she could never be truly good in life?

She would keep trying, at least for the time being. She would finish what she’d started, see it through to the end, and if she could still feel the parasite of selfish cruelty inside of her, squirming, consuming, then maybe she would grasp her bravery with strangling fingers and hold a knife to her chest and see just how deep her evil went. She’d had a feeling recently, an inkling growing stronger every day, that her death would be violent, however it happened. It would be one of wept blood and spilled innards, of mutilation and desecration, of carved-out eyes and severed nerves, ugly in a way her parents would hate, dishonorable in a way she would despise. When Death came to collect her, it would not be gentle. It would bring with it all she had sowed, give back to her what she had forced upon others, and she would accept her punishment with open arms because it was what she deserved, and it was what was expected of a soldier, and it was what a good person would do.

War only ever ended in death, whether it be in the earliest attacks when no one was prepared or on the battlefield in the clashing of swords or after it ended but was never truly over, and she’d been living on borrowed time since long before the rebellion. She should’ve died in the castle, she should’ve died in the gem temple, she should’ve died falling off the tower, she should’ve died in the heron attack or when she was locked in a dark cell being fed nearly inedible slop or when she landed in the mud as an alien monster with spears pointed at her head, but she didn’t. She’d been given second chance after second chance, and all she’d ever used them for was to do worse, do wrong, do evil.

If this was her last chance, she would use it to do good for once in her life, and she would die smiling.