Work Text:
“Imagine this:
You’re driving. The sky’s bright. You look great. In a word, in a phrase, it’s a movie,
you’re the star.”
The burning sword pierced through her heart, liver, pancreas; essentially, her entire viscera burnt like her mother’s char siu— some of her kidneys and stomach, too, if she remembered her biology correctly. She wanted to scream, but she looked down her armor-covered chest and found… no blood. Of course— the blood evaporated. The scarlet life boiled inside of her mangled skin, evaporating as soon as it gushed out. She didn’t know what would kill her first; the burning or blood loss. She couldn’t care.
“so smile for the camera,
it’s your big scene,
you know your lines.”
Anne probably hated her; Sasha clearly did. She didn’t have time to think about if she was going to die or if she wanted to die. She could only hope for her friends’ safety. Grime and the Plantars’s safety. In movies, poems, and anime, they always described death as this wistful, almost wonderful thing. But Marcy didn’t feel her life flash before her eyes or exclaim a dramatic line about defending Amphibia’s honor. She just felt dead.
“I’m the director. I’m in a helicopter.
I have a megaphone and you play along”
“I-I’m sorry… for everything,” she choked out weakly. Pathetic, really. The last words of clumsy, klutzy, nerd, useless daughter and best friend Marcy Wu. An apology.
“because you want to die for love,
you always have.”
— — —
Did she?
The question bugged Sasha for weeks. Months, really. The whole time they were doing this Resistance thing.
Did she want to die?
It was horrifying because the answer should’ve been a resounding no. Marcy was a good girl, an aspiring artist who didn’t deserve to be betrayed by that Olm-forsaken-man. But she was, and alone without a revolution to plot or frogs to kill, Sasha thought.
Marcy was the school geek; bullied constantly for being odd, nerdy, for having “eyes that didn’t look open,” even by Sasha’s own cheer friends, the same cookie-cutter white girls who Sasha stayed friends with because “They’re nice to me!”
She cringed just thinking about it.
Every lunch, Marcy’s nose was stuffed in a book and her teeth sunk into a sandwich. She would chime into the conversation occasionally, either spouting nerdy nonsense or actually helpful points, but sometimes… She’d just say concerning things. Like “Wouldn’t it be cool if we got isekaid?”
— — —
Sasha’d laugh. “Yeah. We run into incoming traffic, and then get put in that video game you like.”
“Imagine this:
You’re pulling the car over. Somebody’s waiting.
You’re going to die in your best friend’s arms.”
She’d close her book. “Vagabondia Chronicles.”
“Yeah, yeah. Whatever.” Because subconsciously, to them, Marcy’s interests were just that; hers alone. They didn’t need positive attention to flourish.
“And you play along because it’s funny, because it’s written down,
you’ve memorized it,
it’s all you know.”
Anne would look half-concerned, cup a few of her coveted goldfish into each of their hands— “Guys, don’t say that!”
“Chill. It’s just a joke.” A bite; aloof. Clear. Sasha Elizabeth Waybright, to the core.
“It’d be cool if it was real. Escaping to another world…”
“I say the phrases that keep it all going,
and everybody plays along.”
They’d continue the conversation without her. The signs were always there: they were just too blind to see them.
— — —
Anne had always felt like an oddity in her friend group. Like an outsider looking in.
It wasn’t like she wasn’t accepted; she was, but there was something about their dynamic that unnerved her. A mutual understanding between Sasha and Marcy she could never dream of gaining; until Amphibia, of course.
Anne didn’t get it when Marcy would burst into the gym a minute after the bell, eyes sunken and smoky from being up all night studying. She’d asked, once, and Marcy said she spent her afternoon playing instead of studying, so her parents made her.
She was confused. She froze in the middle of the hall, getting bumped into by a boy she didn’t know the name of. Her pencil case fell off of the pile, and Marcy crouched to retrieve it.
“But why? You’re already top of the class.” The words, “My mom compares me to you,” died on Anne’s lips.
She set the pencil case on top of Anne’s current book, haphazardly picked out from the piles of boring that found their home in the Saint James Middle School library. “Dunno.” She was lying. She knew, because the minute Marcy dropped to number two, her unfortunate, undeniable future as a doctor was doomed.
“Girls! It’s been so long after the bell, get to your lockers,” boomed their science teacher from behind. “Let’s go,” — a clap, annoying and loud— “sixth grade, let’s go!”
“Student repellent.”
“I have to go. See you tomorrow.”
“Wanna hang out? Like, after—”
“No time.”
Marcy ran.
— — —
On the day of Anne’s thirteenth birthday, Marcy was skipping.
She rarely ever skipped; the big red cross on the online school calendar that said “Truant” was always an annoyance, a thorn in her side. A scolding she’d receive. This time, she had permission; she was downtown, studying for the PSAT. She had just finished copying down a page and answering every math question, cross referencing it with the answer key crudely right in front of the back cover. Every question she got correct except one.
Sasha texted her, telling her to meet up. She remembered it was Anne’s birthday. Shit, she thought. Maybe she’d quickly drop by a store and buy something; that’d work. Or steal. She didn’t have money.
A book fell. In its pages were promises of traveling to other worlds, fantastical goods that could let one control magic. She didn’t think it was real; maybe it was a spin-off book, an encyclopedia of some fantasy thing she didn’t know about. That had to be it.
She took a picture to find the fandom later. Sounds cool.
Her dad texted her. She shrugged.
— — —
The whole house rattled with her anger.
“You guys are ruining my life!”
The rest of their words blurred into white noise. Tears obscured her view of the crossing. Her words were true, so true she was debating running into incoming traffic, like Sasha had said only a month ago, echoing along the walls of the cafeteria. Her parents were the worst; constantly pressuring her into things.
She stopped at the thrift store; thinking, good, I’m in luck to find a gift. And then she saw it.
She took her phone to compare. It was the same box, alright.
Sasha and Anne were the only company that made this pitiful world worth it; because if Marcy tried hard enough, they could be in Creatures and Caverns, and she would be a stellar artificer rogue instead of the weird kid and the pathetic top student. She didn’t believe it, not at first, but maybe this was her chance.
“Imagine:
Someone’s pulling a gun, and you’re jumping into the middle of it.
You didn’t think you’d feel this way.”
Her green hair clip went loose. Strands of charcoal-black hair fell in her face.
She turned on her phone, took a picture, and texted Sasha back, speaking aloud like a maniac: “I think I just found the perfect birthday present for Anne.”
“There’s a gun in your hand.
It feels hot. It feels oily.”
— — —
The Core’s inner sanctum was just that; a sanctum. The scenery was green and verdant, sky blue as an L.A. summer afternoon. Cloudless.
Aldrich welcomed her; “We've seen your memories. We know your love of books, of games. This is the fantasy world you've always dreamt of. For that's what the Core is: a place where dreams come true.”
Dreams… Yes. Dreams. That was always what it was; a faraway dream, and here she was, living it, betrayed by a king and lost to everyone she loved. It almost felt right. Marcy Wu, whisked off to fantasy. A world where she was in control for once and not just a child in over her head.
“I’m the director”
— — —
She realized it was fake pretty quickly; when could things ever go well, ever go right for clumsy, klutzy Marcy?
Her friends would never act like this. Their relationship had always been very simple: ask and receive. It was how they showed love to each other. Trading gym shoes. Stealing music boxes from thrift stores, the same way Sasha’s dad compensated for everything by bringing her expensive denim jackets and boxes of chocolate. The same way Marcy compensated for being a useless daughter by bringing home A’s and good reports from her teachers during parent/teacher conferences.
But they’d changed in Amphibia. She’d learned that no world, even the ideal isekai she ran away to, would feed her with a golden spoon. Everything always had its catch; and she wasn’t ready to accept it. She was just a kid. But if everyone else was, then she had to! She imagined Sasha and Anne fighting together somewhere on Earth. Some resistance of rebels fighting against the robots.
“I started this whole mess because I wanted to escape that reality. But I won't run away from it anymore!”
“So be it. Then suffer, child, in eternal darkness, and in time, anything left of your personality will fade.”
“and i’m screaming at you”
— — —
Soon, she woke up. Finally out of that dreamscape.
“I’m waving my arms in the sky,
and everyone’s watching, everyone’s
curious,”
She felt tears. Her best friends. Her beloved Anne; her beloved Sasha.
“Can you believe we just defeated an ancient invading empire?”
When she said that, everything was back to normal. This never happened; Saint James Middle School cafeteria. Shit-talking classmates and teachers that assigned too much homework. Marcy drowned in its normalcy. There was no more water, but her body stung like hell. She wondered if it would be like that forever.
Laughing. “That's gonna look real good on future job applications.”
“And we'll have videos to prove it.”
They burst into giggles after that, and instead of warriors, scholars, or artificer rogues, they felt like girls.
— — —
Everyone’s injuries were tended to before they went back to Amphibia.
Olivia’s hands were cold and clammy, typical for an Amphibian. Underneath the metal suit, which Yunan had to forcibly cut, revealing disgusting tubing, her undergarments were still on, but her bra was half-charred at the back.
She clipped and unclipped the green clip in her hands, not even able to fathom the ugly scar Olivia must’ve been seeing right now. She bit her lip in pain as she felt the needle go through her.
The burning sword left a scar on both sides. Her back was still half open, and it was a grotesque sight. It had been halfheartedly repaired, mended together by the false amniotic fluid that filled Newtopia’s rejuvenation tanks. The inner flesh was green, and everything was charred by the electric chair. Olivia could still remember her screams.
Every stitch was evenly spaced and clean. Olivia made sure of it, no matter how much her hands tried to shake. She knotted it, and took a look at her back, unnaturally sewn back together. On her olive skin, traces of green leaked through. She’d done it once, with Sasha’s, though even then her blood was not green.
It felt unreal. Olivia looked down at her skirts. Thirteen. Marcy was thirteen. Maybe fourteen now.
She wiped small droplets of warm, jade blood from her back. She patted her shoulder, as if to say, "Darling, this wasn’t your fault.”
Marcy’s arm reached for Anne’s bra in front of her (luckily, they shared the same cup size), slipping it on and hiding a small portion of the horror. She clipped her hair back, and it was surreal and true that they had kept the clip all this time. They’d found it on the castle floor.
Anne emerged from the bathroom wearing the cat pajamas Marcy got her for her twelfth birthday. They stared.
Olivia took her cue.
For once, Marcy wasn’t running away.
“...everyone’s
holding their breath.”