I just didn't want to be alone-

“It was pretty callous of them,” Marcy agrees, and she still looks so worried. “You… really tried to sacrifice yourself for Anne?”

It’s a good thing nobody else is around, still cleaning up from the volcakeno. Sasha still feels like she’s free-falling, the swooping in her stomach making her beyond nauseous. “Yeah,” she admits, softly, a word that feels too small for the weight that it carries. “I mean, wouldn’t you?”

“Probably,” Marcy confesses, and the concern in her face morphs into the saddest of smiles that Sasha’s ever seen. “I just worry about you, that’s all. I can’t have my first girlfriend dying on me, can I?”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Anne is taller than her, if only by a few inches, and she’s chuckling as Marcy wobbles precariously. “Marcy is a pretty name,” she says, offering a blinding smile. “Well, Marcy, don’t you worry one bit; I’ll wrap that ankle up and then you definitely won’t press charges against me, right?”

“Don’t worry,” Marcy teases, “I don’t press charges against pretty girls.”

Anne just laughs, and with Marcy’s bag slung over her shoulder and her arm supporting Marcy’s weight, Marcy relaxes, most of her tension just melting away– she’s definitely had worse encounters with people she was supposed to have killed five minutes prior.

~~

Once again, Anne wanders the halls like a ghost adrift.

~~

“Prom’s coming up,” Anne remarks, once they’ve gotten through their usual greetings and catching-ups. “Senior prom, too. Any special plans?”

“Oh, I was thinking about going with someone,” Sasha says all flirtatiously, and she bats her lashes– not at the camera, but towards Anne, grinning like a maniac. Anne smiles at her back, and something lurches in Marcy’s gut.

Before she has the time to dwell on the sensation, however, she’s thrust back into the center of attention as Anne looks back at the camera, eyes big and brown and almost hopeful. “What about you, Mars?”

~~~~

“No, I’m serious Marcy,” Sasha slams both of her hands down on the table, and finally Marcy looks up at her startled, eyes wide. “Anne loves you, I can tell. You just gotta seduce her a little bit to make her realize it. That faking a fall stuff is pretty good, but you need to go bigger. She likes the big gestures, you know?”

“Sash,” Marcy whispers, and for once, she looks confused, genuinely confused, like she doesn’t understand what Sasha’s telling her.

“It’s okay, Marce, this is… we want Anne, right? Then you have to convince her. Flirt with her, woo her, kiss her, whatever you gotta do to get her to realize she likes you.” Sasha’s rambling now, and she leans across the table, takes Marcy’s trembling hands in her own. “You’re smart, you’re cute as fuck, and Anne told me today she thinks you deserve to be spoiled. Spoiled! Like I don’t spoil you enough.”

~~~

Grime tells her she had acted on impulse, that he hadn’t been able to stop her from moving, only shielding her as she had collected the fallen body of her best friend and ran. Sasha thinks she had been possessed, because in her memories it all boils down to this: she had seen red, and she had moved.

~~

So why is it that she’s here, sitting at the lunch table with her study partner, ears burning red as the speakers blare some vague, generic love song with none other than the Sasha Waybright standing in front of her? 

“Call me crazy,” her study partner whispers, “but I think Waybright’s asking you to prom.” 

Impossible, Marcy thinks, her heart fluttering wildly in her chest. That can’t be what’s happening, cause Sasha is supposed to ask Anne like she’s always talked about. I accepted this already, what– what is she doing? 

“Marcy Wu,” Sasha croons, and everyone is watching them, eyes on the most popular girl in school as she makes her move, setting the stage for promposals all across the board. “Will you do me the absolute honor of being my date to prom?” 

~~

“You can’t,” Marcy says, and as the words spill from her, her resolve strengthens, giving her reason and logic just like before as she turns her emotions into words. “This… Anne, what will your parents think? The Plantars?”

“I have to keep them safe,” Anne reasons, but it just isn’t fair. “I’ve been letting you two lead for… so long now, can’t you just trust me for once?”

“I do trust you!” Marcy pushes herself away from Sasha, floating forwards even as her power pulses and struggles to keep her afloat. “Anne, it’s because I trust you that I can’t let you do this. This… this is my fight. If anyone should take the power of the stones and defeat the Core, it is me, because I’m the one who caused all of this.”

~~

However, Marcy doesn’t even seem to notice. Despite the platter of cookies already made, and the tray of them still cooking in the oven, she’s stirring more ingredients together, beating the dough furiously as she mutters to herself.

And despite it all, she’s so pretty; messy hair and powdered nose and all. Sasha yawns, and she slumps against Marcy’s back, draping arms around her shoulders with a languid sigh. “Hey, sweetheart,” she greets, and she doesn’t have to feign the next yawn that escapes her as she rests her head against Marcy’s own. “I think that dough is ready to be… used, now.”

“It’s actually edible, I didn’t add any eggs so that I could freeze it,” Marcy says absent-mindedly, before she jumps, nearly knocking Sasha off of her. “Sash!” she exclaims, almost scoldingly, whipping around - dislodging Sasha, who stumbles backwards a little bit, still squinting against the harsh kitchen light - with a glare only offset by the massive bags under her eyes. “What are you doing?”

~~~

It is, of course, no secret that Anne yearns for war.

~~

Anne remembers when they had first arrived back on Earth, when she herself had been swarmed with news reporters wanting to catch a glimpse of the girl who saved LA, and Sasha had gotten praise for her heroic actions regarding the flying palace, and Marcy had… sunk quietly into the background, completely forgotten. At least nobody got Darcy on camera, she had laughed, and that had been it, the only acknowledgement of her existence she had given during the entire ordeal.

“Yeah, you missed a lot,” she says, slowly. “Do you… have any idea of how long it was?”

Marcy’s gaze drifts someplace far-off and distant, and she clutches the pillow a little tighter to her chest. “No,” she answers, very solemnly. “I have estimates, though.”

~~~

She didn’t meant to tune Marcy out, but Marcy’s rambling about some new forensics fact she had discovered in the class she’s taking, and her nose twitches every time she gestures on the camera. It’s oddly endearing, and Sasha’s eyes have been fixed on the way her nose twitches, and has she always had freckles around her nose? Has Sasha ever noticed?

“Sash?”

Sasha snaps back to attention, her cheeks heating up as she’s blatantly caught in the action of staring a little bit too hard. Marcy’s looking at her so innocently though, like she hadn’t even realized how badly Sasha had been checking her out.

~~

“anne told me you were mostly robotic now,” she whispers, her voice barely loud enough for him to catch her words. even here, she is timid; the confidence and boldness he had initially admired about her is gone now, and he can’t even mourn the loss because it was destroyed by his own hands.

“it kept me alive,” he answers– truthfully, because despite the times he had to lie to her to keep up his ruse and play to the core’s games, he never really enjoyed lying. “hello, marcy.”

~~~

“Anne told me I had to sleep,” Marcy says out loud, sticking her tongue out into the air. “Will you stay?”

“Would you sleep if I didn’t?” Sasha asks, and she’s taking her jacket off now, folding both of them and placing them off to the side. She’s tugging her hair loose, too, which - combined with the lack of her jacket - really showcases how… vulnerable she seems to be here, in this setting. It’s a Sasha that only Marcy gets to see, and she relishes in it.

“I mean, maybe. It’s a promise to Anne, how could I break it?” Marcy snorts, and she’s already burrowing under her blankets as Sasha joins her, immediately opening her arms so that Marcy can curl into them. “But I like having you here. It’s… nice.”

~~

“This is where Mar- your host has been staying,” she says, awkwardly, “and I’m sure it would… please Andrias if you were to stay here as well.” Preferably without destroying anything, she thinks, wincing as she remembers the way Mar- The Core had flung magic at a table in Olivia’s lab, destroying it. She’s never seen magic like this before, but she refuses to fall into the same pit that had swallowed her Marcy whole, not when she has no reason not to avoid it.

The Core just snorts, and the orange pulses off of it a little bit harder. “That imp is lucky I don’t destroy his palace and everyone in it,” it says, and Olivia can’t help the shiver that runs down her spine because it sounds like Marcy, just distorted. “But this room… will suffice. Is it quiet?”

“About as quiet as any room in the palace,” Olivia says, kindly.

~~

The sun dips below the horizon line, barely visible past the smoke and still-burning embers. Marcy - The Core - is smiling, though tears trail down the visible parts of Marcy’s face, and it laughs and laughs as Sasha steps closer to it.

“I’ll admit, you certainly have strength,” it mocks, ten eyes flicking from Sasha to Anne behind her and then back to Sasha again. “Step aside, little one, and maybe we’ll even let you live. You are not the one we’re after.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~