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When whales die and sink, their carcasses - known as "whale falls" - become an energy-rich habitat, providing nutrients to a wide variety of organisms on the otherwise barren seafloor.
-
The corpse of an overturned beetle sat in front of Sasha.
Summer sun beat down on the sidewalk bordering the porch, driveway empty and blinding as white concrete reflected the vibrant sky above. The entirety of her ankle was in the light. Heat seared into her skin, bleaching the red canvas of her sneaker under ultraviolet rays.
The beetle was right beside the tip of Sasha’s toe. It baked in the heat of the pavement - not quite warm enough to fry an egg, but enough to burn. Marcy had told her that earlier, before her parents called and requested she return home for dinner.
The bug hadn’t been there long, considering the state of it. Sasha thought that it must’ve gotten stuck on its back during the night, struggling as it died a pathetic beetle death. Ants were swarming it, now.
She didn’t think it was still alive. She didn’t think she’d particularly care if it was.
There was a wet spot forming on the side of her shorts. Condensation from a half-empty iced drink created a puddle on the concrete - thai tea that Mrs. Boonchuy had brought for Sasha when dropping Anne off at her house. It was a rare treat, usually reserved for special occasions or when Sasha hung out for a long enough time at Thai Go.
There was no happy, vibrant occasion today. Sasha thought that Mrs. Boonchuy had simply pitied her.
It was more of an effort to cheer her up than either of her parents had provided.
“Do you have to go to the court again tomorrow?” Anne asked, as though Sasha wanted to spend her mornings in a freezing, stuffy old building. One where the old ladies working in the offices brought her gross, cough-drop flavored candy and words of false encouragement.
Sasha didn’t know why the other girl even bothered to stop by, today. It wasn’t as if she were in the mood to run around doing stupid shit with her friends.
“I don’t know.”
They hadn’t told her.
It was frustrating. She was eleven, almost twelve. She should’ve been able to choose. If her parents had coped for a few months more and pushed the technical stuff off like they’d been doing for years, she’d be able to flash her mom a middle finger and run off to live wherever her dad decided to settle.
Maybe that was why her mother had decided it was time to finalize a divorce, when they’d stayed together for so long already. She already knew who Sasha would choose, and courts tended to lean further towards the maternal figure. Away from rumored infidelity.
Neither option was really preferable, but at least she wouldn't have to worry about the scent of cigarettes clinging to her clothing while living with her dad. Wouldn’t have to worry about tripping over half-filled glass bottles and pouring foul smelling liquids down the sink. Wouldn’t have to worry about a mother stumbling home in the early hours of the morning, reeking of booze after having driven herself home in a dented car. Wouldn't have to worry about sneaking into the master bedroom in the dead of night, pressing a shaky hand against the sweat-slick skin of the woman's neck and praying to a god she didn't really believe in.
She could handle a few late-night screaming sessions if it meant that she’d be free of those things.
There was an overflowing ashtray toppled over in the weeds that littered the flower bed. It’d been on the porch at some point, and no one had cared enough to replace it, cigarette buds simply collected in a pile beside the wall and tossed in the general direction of where it’d once sat. Dirt pooled over the edge of the glass disk, remnants of tobacco and paper crumpled alongside it.
The ants were using it as a path to the maybe-dead beetle.
“Have you ever heard of a whale fall?” Sasha asked.
“No,” Anne replied, “Marcy probably has.”
Marcy probably had.
A whale fall.
“When a whale dies, its carcass falls,” Sasha said, “It plummets down. It doesn’t stop until it hits the bottom, and it just lies there.”
A once beautiful animal, left to rot. None of those deep-sea creatures ever saw a whale alive, just their large and convenient corpse.
“Bottom feeding fish flock to it. They turn it into a whole different ecosystem, and survive off of the rotting flesh for up to a full century, before the last bits of nutrients disappear.”
“What happens when the whale is gone?” Anne asked.
“I dunno. The bottom-feeders die, probably.” Sasha felt kind of like a whale fall. “You’re lucky your parents like each other.”
It was Sasha’s fault hers were still legally together.
Stay for the kid. Think of the kid.
Maybe if she was gone, her parents wouldn’t fight so much. Maybe if she was gone, her mother wouldn’t have turned to the haze of smoke and alcohol to cope with a loveless marriage.
If she were to disappear, she’d become a whale fall. Those around her would gain clout from her demise, her parents wouldn’t have to worry about custody battles. It would be easier for everyone.
“Hey, Anne?”
“Yeah?”
“You’re not gonna leave me, are you?”
“Why would I?” Anne asked, “You’re my best friend. Forever, remember? You and me and Marcy.”
Sasha nodded, though she didn’t really believe her.
People left. They always did. It was why her parents, despite trying for years and years and years, were finally getting a divorce.
Some people were worth staying for; Sasha was not.
Whale fall.
Bottom feeders, lazily grazing across the death of another. The death of something magnificent.
The beetle was swarmed with ants. They’d burrowed in through its outer shell, tearing apart flesh and the exoskeleton that had once protected it.
She wondered if it was still alive.
“I’m never gonna drink,” Sasha said. Alcohol was a depressant. Depressants never brought anything good. She knew that for a fact - she’d gone through her mom’s “self-help” books while the older woman was asleep. “I’m not going to smoke, either.”
Anne nodded, in the corner of her vision. Accepted her proposal without so much as a second thought.
Cigarette buds overflowed from the ashtray. Shadowed from view by a cracked fairy statue that her mother had bought when they first moved into the trashy cookie-cutter house a decade prior.
Her mom didn’t smoke, back then.
Her mom had actually seemed happy, back then.
It was difficult to pinpoint when that had changed.
Sasha stood from her seat on the stone porch. She ignored the half-empty Thai tea as it toppled over from her sudden movement, flooding her previous seat with orange sugar and vibrantly colored liquid.
Her shoe flew out further into the late August sun.
The beetle made a satisfying crunch as her heel hit the pavement.
-
The apartment she shares with her dad is quiet nowadays.
He doesn’t yell anymore. At least, not as much.
Sasha wonders if it’d be this way if she never disappeared, if he was only trying because of the extra FBI eyes watching over them. Only trying because of the guilt, the fear that he’d lose his only child forever. The fear that Sasha will decide to offer him the same treatment she’s been giving her mom.
He’s sitting at the table when Sasha exits her room, backpack slung over her shoulder.
A plate is set out, a pitiful piece of cinnamon toast placed in the center - edges burned and butter pooling over the side.
“Your mother called, last night,” he says. There’s a newspaper folded neatly by his coffee mug. “She’s a year sober, today.”
A year sober.
Sasha doesn’t really care.
“Good for her,” she says. The fridge is suddenly super interesting. She opens the door, stares blankly at the empty shelves of condiments.
She's a year sober. Just sober.
The woman still reeked of smoke, the last time she visited and her dad had forced Sasha to acknowledge her presence. Smoke doesn’t cling that potently for too long. The woman can’t even go fifteen minutes without feeding into her addiction. Not for someone like her daughter, at least.
“She wants to see you,” her dad says. He thumbs the handle of his mug. It’s plain and white, matching the countless others in the cabinet. “She still needs to give you your birthday present. Sixteen is a big year.”
It is a big year. Because she can finally drive places alone. Because Marcy’s doctors have a treatment end date in mind, because her best friend will be moving out-of-state in less than two months, on winter break. Because their trio will be cut down to two.
“She’s already paid for half of a car,” Sasha says, “if that other gift is so important, she can leave it with you.”
Sasha grabs a can of overpriced espresso from the fridge before letting it slam shut. She doesn’t wait for her dad to reply, because it’ll be the same conversation. Because school starts in an hour and she still needs to pick up Anne and Marcy.
With how her parents had ended things, she had expected her father to be overjoyed at her reluctance to interact with her mom. She sort of wishes that were the case, but apparently their only child going missing for a year had left more than enough time for them to reevaluate their life choices.
“Sasha, she’s trying,” he says.
He says.
Her father doesn’t yell anymore. He doesn’t scream, doesn’t shout.
It still feels as though the floor is made of eggshells.
Her mother is trying, but Sasha isn’t interested in her desperate attempts at closure.
She leaves the apartment without another word, ignoring the way she can feel her dad’s eyes on her back, locked onto the top of the scar that peeks out from the low back of her top. The toast her dad made is left on the table.
She brushes her hair out of her face as she walks down the rigid stone steps to the parking lot below.
The car she’d gotten for her sixteenth birthday is nice, for whatever it's worth. Bright red with a convertible top. If you ignore the random scrape of a tire track on the front bumper and the faulty battery, it can almost be mistaken as a new vehicle.
She’s used to financial instability, used to her dad going through job after job and her mother wasting any and all spare money. What she can’t quite grow used to is the persistent spoiling that came after the divorce. The meaningless gifts that are a result of Amphibia, the attempts to make things right after seeing how close they’d gotten to losing her forever.
At least a cheap, run-down car is useful. She no longer has to rely on public transport, on expensive ubers and mile-long walks.
Her car sputters to life when she turns the key, and Sasha presses down on the gas pedal until she’s persistently traveling ten miles above the speed limit.
She doesn’t slow until she reaches Anne’s house.
-
When Sasha let go of Anne’s hand - back at the top of a crumbing Toad Tower - she fully expected her life to end.
She liked to think that, if she were in one of Marcy’s epic fantasy series, she’d take the place of the tragic villain. The character who was given a final, single chance at redemption, only to die before given the opportunity to continue onto their character arc.
A whale fall, giving life to others in the story at the cost of her own demise.
Toad Tower was her whale fall. Her mighty sacrifice, giving Anne character development and a better chance at life in the hellscape of a world they’d been dragged into.
Sasha was surprised when she woke up.
Her body ached, strained and overexerted in a way she’d never felt before.
“You’re finally awake.”
The gruff voice of an old toad captured her attention.
Memories came flooding back all too quickly.
Anne had lunged at her, the metal of her blade gleaming in the firelight. True edge slicing across her cheek, lunging for the kill.
They’d finally reunited, and Anne had chosen a frog over her.
A frog.
It was a little hard to breathe.
“Where…?”
“We’ve taken refuge in an abandoned windmill for the time being, a few towns over.”
“Why are we… never mind.”
The bed she lay in was little more than a pile of hay and the skin of some strange, oversized mammal she had yet to encounter. Its pelt was scratchy, fur short and sharp in comparison to the faux products she often saw back home.
“Where is everyone?” Sasha asked, cringing at how hoarse and broken her voice sounded. Strands of blonde fell into her gaze, and she pushed back her bangs with an annoyed huff. Her hair had been taken from its ponytail, at some point. She hoped they’d kept her scrunchy, because she was not about to struggle with whatever twine or ribbon they used for hair in this world.
“Percy and Braddock went out to collect food a while ago,” Grime said, “they should be back soon.”
“And the others?”
The question slipped from her lips before she could stop to rethink it. A strange look crossed Grime’s face, one that looked all too familiar. The resignation of having to bring forth bad news.
There weren’t others.
Their army may have survived the fall of Toad Tower, but it hadn’t cared enough to stay.
Conflicting emotions whirred within her chest, and she waved Grime off before he could answer. Burning rage bubbled up, hot and potent and summoning pinpricks of pain to the corners of her eyes.
They’d left. Sasha had worked so, so hard to gain their loyalty, their trust - and they just left.
“Why did you catch me?”
“Pardon?”
“Why did you catch me?”
It was a simple question, one she didn’t really feel the need to elaborate on. Grime had gone out of the way to save her from a near certain demise. Her ribs hurt, the impact of his armor against her torso no doubt having bruised the bones.
“I wasn’t about to let my lieutenant die,” Grime said.
Sasha didn’t really get it.
Her palms pressed against her eyes. Her cheek stung, and the outline of a large scab covered a long length of skin.
“Sasha?”
“Leave.”
“Are you - “
“I said leave,” she snapped. She didn’t look up, didn’t watch his expression with bated breath. “End of discussion.”
That phrase didn’t really fit well in this situation, but Sasha didn’t really care.
Screaming and shouting at someone only elected screaming and shouting as a response. End of discussion was to be spoken in a calm, collected voice. It elicited a sense of authority, of control. It left no room for argument.
End of discussion meant the end of the discussion. The end of pointless late-night fights that weren’t leading anywhere. It meant a quiet calm after the storm, the slamming of bedroom doors and a brief relief before the cycle inevitably began anew.
At least, it should have.
Anne had strayed from the familiar, safe format. She had abandoned it, forsaken their friendship, only to return moments later, gripping tightly onto her hand and begging and pleading Fate to spare Sasha, spewing false promises about survival.
I wasn’t about to let my lieutenant die.
Grime had gone out of his way to save her, when not too long before he would’ve willingly ended her life without a second thought. She didn’t understand. It would’ve been so easy, so incredibly simple to just be rid of her.
Sasha didn’t get it.
(Several months later, after having watched Marcy bleed and burn on the floor of a throne room, she began to understand. Just a little bit.)
-
Marcy has been doing better around water.
It’s a slow process, one that she’s been working on between their group outings.
She still couldn’t enter the water, still turned down any summertime pool trips. Marcy has a fish now, though. She can conduct simple water changes, curate a tiny, underwater ecosystem without help. They’ve been able to add on aquarium visits to the list of possible activities.
Sasha is honestly baffled at how quickly Marcy’s been able to overcome certain triggers, as of late. She doesn’t know much about her time after the failed coup, held prisoner by Andrias, but she does know that it had left her terrified of being fully submerged in water. Terrified of dark rooms and green-blue lights.
She mentions a “rejuvenation tank” every now and again. Sasha is scared of what her time in that tank may have entailed, considering the state she was in when they’d finally returned to the castle after the months preparing for the Frogvasion.
They are at the beach now, almost entirely empty and deserted due to the lack of tourists, and Marcy lingers along the edge of the damp portion of sand. Her gaze reaches out across the outline of a now faded high tide.
It had been her idea, after watching the heavy rains that’d showered LA and the neighboring cities the night before. Storms wash ashore valuable trinkets - rare and exciting treasures.
The only other people here are those with the same quest as them, and the few locals taking morning runs in the mild weather.
Sea glass and full, flawless shells litter the sand. Sasha lazily shadows Anne as she walks along the receding waves, stalling in her movements only when the other girl crouches down to scoop up another interesting find.
Her gaze drifts away from the sand, out to sea. Gray and misty in the morning chill, dim and dreary under overcast skies.
There’s a whale, far in the distance. Multiple, if Sasha has to guess. A few other people stop in their beachcombing ventures to peer out across the water.
She’s never seen any this early in the year.
Salty air is humid and sticky, as the waves constantly rise and retreat, lapping at her bare feet and painting her skin with salt. It makes the scar on her back ache, every change in air pressure reminding her of torn, risen skin.
Marcy isn’t complaining, though, so Sasha ignores the mild discomfort.
Anne runs up to her, in her palm is a single, large shark tooth. Sharp edges dulled by time and harsh conditions. Her smile catches Sasha’s attention. Simple and stunning as she overturns the uncommon find, tracing the edges and grooves.
“Sasha, Anne!”
Marcy’s voice draws any and all attention from the shark tooth in Anne’s palm. Sasha moves quickly, her feet digging into damp sand as she sprints across the beach to where Marcy sits. She’s peering into the overgrowth along the sand dunes, right below the wooden steps that lead back up to the sand-covered streets.
“Marcy?” Anne asks, coming up behind Sasha.
“There’s a cat,” Marcy says. “I think it’s hurt.”
Sasha crouches down beside her, and sure enough a cat stares back. Multicolored eyes peer out at her.
She immediately sees what worries Marcy. Right over the cat’s left eye is a gross, puss-filled cut. Red and irritated. It looks infected.
“Its ear isn’t clipped either,” Anne notes, “it probably needs to be fixed.”
“Most vets offer that for free, right?” Marcy asks. “But they need to be watched a couple of days after surgery, in case any complications arise.”
The cat sits there, staring. It’s stockily built, large and muscular compared to the neighborhood cats she’s seen around her apartment complex.
She’s briefly reminded of an old toad, war-torn and built up under layers of muscle and scars.
“My mom’s allergic,” Marcy says, “I could see if she’ll be fine with it, but…”
Anne opens her mouth to reply, but Sasha beats her to it.
“I can take it,” she says.
Sasha doesn’t know why she speaks up. It’s not like she even likes the animal - Anne was the crazy cat lady, the one with Domino. She’s never even attempted to do that strange cycle of catch-and-release with feral animals. Never mind the fact that her apartment doesn’t even allow pets.
“There’s an athletic store nearby, they usually have those metal traps in the hunting section,” Sasha continues, mentally calculating how much it’ll cost. If there’s enough gas in her tank to cover the next week of school trips. “If you guys are fine with waiting, I should be back in maybe half an hour.”
They agree.
By the end of the day, Anne and Marcy help pay for the hefty vet bill and Sasha is left watching over a grumbling, hissing tomcat.
-
The hospital was quiet, at night.
Frantic nurses and emergency after emergency had faded into a less serious, somber tone. People were dead, Sasha knew. The rooms surrounding them were all full, and she was certain their room had a spare bed solely because of Anne - because of the FBI agents that’d arrived alongside the trio following their immediate return.
The pain meds they’d put Sasha on made her drowsy, though the adrenaline from the events of that day still clung stubbornly to her veins. A strange mixture of grief and relief churned in her chest.
Both emotions muddled and blended because it was finally over.
No more fighting, no more carnage; no more Grime, no more Amphibia.
She hadn’t gotten to say goodbye to Percy and Braddock.
Visiting hours had ended forever ago, it felt like. Sasha knew that she’d have to face the reality of returning home eventually. She had to face the appearance of a life that, at one point, she’d been wholeheartedly fine with abandoning entirely.
The steady beat of heart monitors and medical equipment was constant, annoying and relentless. It added to her insomnia, it added to the droning presence of mind-numbing boredom that came with the late hour.
She was the only one out of their trio that still had her phone. She’d already exhausted the interest of the many, mindless puzzle games on the device, and she wasn’t quite ready to log into her long-abandoned social media accounts just yet. Her face was already plastered across news footage, alongside Anne.
Sasha had the ever-growing suspicion that her social media handles had been leaked. If not by some overzealous reporter then by one of her past classmates.
She would face the aftermath, eventually. Just not now.
“Sasha?” a voice called out, “You’re still awake?”
The blonde shifted in her bed - ignored the burning pain that erupted across her back at the sudden motion.
“Yeah, Mars? Everything okay?”
It was still surreal to see her, alive and well.
…on second thought, not exactly “well”, but much better than Sasha would normally expect, all things considered.
The other girl’s form was engulfed in shadows. Even in the dim light Sasha could see the disheveled state she was in.
She felt the need to reach out, to cut through the darkness and cup Marcy’s cheeks in her palms, to calmly extract the lingering fears that’d consumed her entirely mere hours prior.
There was something scary about finding your newly regained friend collapsed, half-naked and dry-heaving on the floor of a hospital bathroom. Something terrifying about seeing someone who’d handled waking up from a literal possession silently sobbing at the sight of water, of all things.
Marcy didn’t reply, not at first. Sasha could see her hands wringing together, tangling with the white sheets covering her hospital bed.
Sasha didn’t give her a chance to collect whatever thoughts were whirring in her mind, slipping out of her own bed and ignoring the way her vision swam, ignoring the way her back stretched and pulsed at the motions.
She gripped onto the IV stand they’d hooked her onto, pulling the metal rod close to her as she dragged it across the room to where Marcy lay.
Crawling into Marcy’s bed was a familiar, comforting action. They weren’t at anyone’s house, and the hospital beds were far from comfortable, but they were together. Anne was resting a few feet away, lucky enough to capture sleep after the insanity of it all.
The IV pulled at her wrist, and Sasha ignored the twinge of pain it produced.
Marcy moved to the side, slowly. Her movements were sluggish, forced. There were several machines hooked up around her bed, and Sasha was careful to avoid the wires and tubes connected to her.
The full extent of damage done to the other girl had yet to be determined, and the anxiety that bloomed from that fact only added to the reality of what they’d gone through.
They all could’ve died, that day.
Anne did die, technically. The brunette hadn’t yet gone into the specifics, and Sasha didn’t know if she ever would.
“It doesn’t feel real, still,” Sasha said, “you’re here. Alive.”
“As alive as I’ve ever been.”
Sasha’s hand brushed a lock of hair out of Marcy’s face. It’d gotten longer, over her time trapped in the Core. Marcy had only ever kept it cut short, trimming it often. The way it framed her face was different. Pretty.
Sasha was still conflicted about what to feel, when it came to Marcy. She’d been so quick to push off her rescue, so quick to prioritize a rebellion over Marcy’s wellbeing.
Maybe if she’d been a bit quicker, a bit more concerned about the safety of one of her closest friends, she never would’ve been possessed. Never would’ve been trapped in her own mind. Sasha’s scar wouldn’t be burning now, if that were the case.
Perhaps that was the universe’s cruel sense of humor, a way to pay her back for what her spite had caused. A burning scar to match the ones Marcy had received.
She could see the top of the burn on Marcy’s chest, risen and red compared to the sickly bruised color the rest had taken - green blood causing an eerie discoloration. Sasha was hesitant, reaching out. Marcy didn’t protest as her hand pressed against the outline of the scar.
She wondered if hers would look like that, eventually. Perhaps it was too shallow, too different and minor of an injury to compare.
“I’m sorry,” Sasha said, “for everything.”
“I’m sorry, too.”
They leaned together, a bit closer, simply content to be in the other’s presence.
Marcy’s arms moved, reaching around Sasha’s torso and brushing across the bandages binding her chest. The simple, gentle movement sent waves of pain down her back, but she bit back the hiss that threatened to escape at the gesture.
She didn’t want to ruin this brief, much-needed moment of peace.
It shouldn’t have been any different than before, any different than the many sleepovers they had growing up - sharing beds and staying awake until the sun began its ascent across the horizon.
Something churned deep in her chest, unfamiliar, and Sasha did her best to push it back - to ignore the feeling.
Neither her nor Marcy spoke, more than content to press against the other and revel in the fleeting body heat. It barely combated the freezing chill of the hospital’s AC system - barely assisted the tiny, tube-like heaters the nurses had set up below paper-thin sheets - but it was enough, for now.
When a nurse would inevitably stop by to check on them, Sasha knew she’d be ordered back to her own bed.
So be it.
For a moment Sasha could stay there, alongside Marcy, and pretend everything was fine.
-
The cat is set up in Sasha’s bathroom, after its surgery. After receiving vaccines and antibiotics to clear up the infected bite on its forehead.
A cheap, throw-away litter box is in the corner behind her toilet, and she’s once again reminded of how much she doesn’t like cats every time she opens the door and is met with a nauseating odor.
The tabby hisses whenever she passes by, whether to shower or relieve herself. It had stopped swiping at her, at some point.
It hisses and growls, but it doesn’t attack.
Her reflection is strange to look at, now. Mirrors weren’t common in Amphibia, a fact that she knew Anne was very aware of, with how she’d grown accustomed to wandering about with twigs and leaves tangled in her curls, getting on her case about not telling her whenever she finally noticed their presence.
The scar on her cheek has faded since its initial appearance. The creams and cosmetic treatments do wonders to help lessen the mark. She doesn’t think it’ll ever fully go away - the cut had been too deep. Sasha had accepted that at some point. A permanent reminder of her mistakes is written prominently for everyone to see.
The cat makes a deep, guttural sound, and Sasha nearly trips over her own feet as she turns to face the animal. He’s curled in the corner, tucked behind the toilet beside that god-forsaken litter box.
“I should’ve just let Anne take you,” Sasha says, “maybe then you wouldn’t be such a jerk.”
Anne has Domino, though. If she remembers anything from the various snippets of cat facts she’s collected from Anne and Marcy over the years, it’s that they don’t take kindly to strangers.
The cat looks at her with wide eyes, clipped ear covered in a thin crust of red. A scar to match her own. It opens its mouth and lets out another one of those loud, ear-splitting yowls.
Her head hurts.
“I’ll take you back to the beach in a few days,” she promises, “then you can run off and we’ll never have to see each other again.”
It cries out, again.
Anne would know what to do to get it to stop crying. She’s good with cats.
Marcy, even. She’d be able to tell her all of the technical reasons this cat was upset. The proper ways to care for a feral animal that don’t include locking it in a frequently used bathroom.
They’re good at a lot of things Sasha isn’t.
The strange, stirring feeling in her chest returns, at the thought of her. It feels impossible to be around Anne and Marcy from time to time - impure thoughts cutting through rationality as she desperately tries to push them away. It was manageable, with both of them around. The three of them have always been close, but Amphibia had cut into that in a way none of them could explain.
It brings forth conflicting emotions, brings forth a topic she isn’t ready to address just yet. Maybe she will, eventually.
Multi-colored eyes stare back at her. Green and blue, eerily similar to Grime’s, piercing through layers of skin and bone and peering right into her soul. The colors were on the wrong sides, but that didn’t erase the resemblance.
Grime had been hostile to her, too.
“Maybe that should be your name,” she says, though she doesn’t understand why. It’s a cat, it’s not like it’ll understand her. It’s not like it’ll be around long enough to learn the name in the first place. “Grime. The feral jerk of a cat.”
She turns back to her reflection, familiar unease and a potent sense of wrong edging at the back of her mind.
Sasha doesn’t look like herself. She feels naked, without her armor, without that war circlet Wartwood’s carpenter had made for her to replace the clunky helmet. The muscles she’d gained during her time there had faded slightly, bit by bit. Worn down by a lack of time and the inconsistent availability of a ride to bring her to the gym across town.
It hadn’t been like this before. Wearing her hair up felt oddly reminiscent of the time before Amphibia, reminiscent of who she’d been. Wearing her hair down was different, but it still felt odd. Off.
Then, eyes flickering over the long strands of blonde shadowing her face, it hits her.
She looks too familiar. Too reminiscent of a figure she’d been avoiding. A figure she’d been busy trying to forget.
There’s a pair of scissors tucked in the drawers beside her sink. The cat yowls again, but she ignores it.
The solution to her current dilemma is all too simple, too easy.
Her hands curl around the plastic handle, taking the dull blades to her hair before she has the time to second guess her decision. Blonde strands fall into the sink, a lifetime worth of meticulous care and overpriced shampoo gone, a year worth of unsavory conditions and scarce access to proper hygiene erased.
It’s a mess, when she’s done. Uneven, too long on one side and too short on the other.
The cat yowls, again.
It’s a mess, but it’s enough.
She no longer sees the face of that woman when she peers at her reflection.
Marcy and Anne don’t comment on the sudden, choppy haircut the next time she sees them, and Sasha is thankful for that, at least.
-
Sasha only ever felt like herself when she was with Anne and Marcy, these days. The psychology book she’d stolen from their school’s library called it codependency, but Sasha didn’t really think that was right.
She had been codependent, at one point. She had clung onto her two friends with such a ferocity that it had caused a literal coup, betraying a newly gained trust that was earned with ill intent.
The vibrant glow of her laptop screen was strenuous against her eyes in the darkness of her room. She had to wake up early tomorrow, she should’ve been in bed.
Instead, she was stuck scrolling mindlessly through various online bookstores and college websites, selecting overpriced textbooks sold secondhand and various research journals and pirating the more expensive ones from those sketchy “free textbook” websites.
It had started as a coping mechanism, at first. Flipping through the many pages of an old, dust-covered psychology book and highlighting every out-of-place symptom, every relatable tidbit, every flaw that could help determine what exactly was wrong with her.
Marcy and Anne had both recommended that she try therapy. They were attending the sessions the government had offered to pay for, they were slowly working through the trauma that’d been loaded onto their shoulders without a second thought. Marcy had trouble settling on a single therapist for more than a few months at a time, but she was still going to the sessions; that was more than Sasha was doing.
The thought of opening up her innermost thoughts and feelings to a complete stranger was nauseating. Spreading out every fucked up mistake she’d made to someone who was paid to listen, paid to judge.
She didn’t feel the urge to explain her thought process during the worst of her downfall. She didn’t feel the need to explain why she’d let go of Anne’s hand at toad tower; didn’t feel the need to explain why she went through the trouble of recruiting an entire army when it became obvious that Anne was doing fine without her.
The books were easier.
It was incredibly simple to cruise through online forums. It was all too easy to log out of her main, now-verified accounts and create alternate, throw-away ones. Anonymous profiles and a random, fake alias to lurk and choose the most popular and praised books.
Psychology was an interesting subject, after all. This was a way where she didn’t have to rely on second-hand information, second-hand advice.
Maybe this wasn’t inherently healthy. Then again, nothing much felt truly “healthy” when it came to her own actions.
She was doing better. Just better.
She wasn’t as self-destructive as before. She wasn’t skipping out on her schoolwork, and wasn't convincing Anne to join her in illegal activities and petty crimes.
Her mother was doing better, too. They were letting her out of rehab in a few days.
Sasha added another book with a painfully high price tag to her cart, and clicked the checkout button before she could change her mind.
-
When the day comes to release the feral cat, there’s three unopened voicemails from an unsaved number in her phone’s inbox, and neither Anne nor Marcy are free.
Anne has to help her parents at their restaurant, and Marcy is stuck at therapy again.
Sasha doesn’t like to think too much about Marcy right now. Not when December is a present, looming threat. Not when every moment she spends with her is a moment closer to her leaving. Closer to Marcy and her mother finally joining her father at that distant, out of mind location.
“You’re not going to leave me, are you?”
She thinks she understands why Marcy was so afraid of change, now. In the heat of the moment - back in the worst of the storm - it had all seemed insignificant. Moving out-of-state was a small problem compared to the life-or-death situations they’d experienced in Amphibia.
Sasha had been angry with Marcy for her actions, but she so desperately doesn’t want the girl to move.
The heater of her car is switched on for the first time, as she drives down the overlapping residential roads. She doesn’t know what exactly draws her down this specific street. Overcast skies create a dreary drape of gray across the familiar yards. Families that’d been living in the houses for years with their distinct, personalized gardens. Green lawns fueled by sprinkler systems that flood the sidewalk every morning.
It’s a familiar path, though she’s never actually driven along this road before. She’d sat in the passenger seat enough times to have every turn memorized, every stop sign imprinted into her brain.
The house she pulls to a stop in front of is unassuming, just another copy-pasted building along the line of HOA-regulated housing. The sidewalk in front of it is cracked, weeds springing up along the rough edges. A line of flat stones leads across the dying lawn. There’s a tricycle siting in the grass, overturned on its side and covered in a thin layer of rust.
Her childhood home is almost the same as it’s always been, tiny details differentiate it from the house she was raised in.
She wonders if the interior still smells like smoke, or if the new owners had been able to pull the discoloring from the walls and repaint the yellow, stained ceilings.
There’s no ashtray on the porch, no overturned dish in the flowerbed.
Cat-Grime screams at her from the carrier in the passenger seat.
It’s a strange sensation, looking in from the outside.
She wonders what the family living in it now is like. Is there a father that yells? A mother who turns a blind eye to empty threats? A child who sneaks out onto the roof in the darkest of nights just to spite them?
Her phone begins to buzz, silently alerting her of a new call. She looks at the screen, numbers burning into her eyes as it rings and rings and rings.
There’s a brief lull of stillness, before the notification of yet another voicemail appears.
Sasha unlocks her phone and opens the inbox.
She recognizes the number, how could she not? It’d been imprinted into her mind from the moment she could comprehend the idea of a cell phone. Recited into the ears of a child, promises of calling the device if she ever found herself lost or alone. She hadn’t been allowed to go play unsupervised until she’d learned it.
Her mom had never bothered to change it at any point, simply reusing the same sim card for each phone.
Her dad must’ve given Sasha’s new number to her mother at some point. Must’ve tried to play mediator when he himself is already on thin ice in Sasha’s eyes.
She’s tired of being a whale fall, for others. Tired of being the tragic hero that people feed off of, gaining serotonin from her words and actions. Gaining happiness from her own misery.
Sasha suddenly feels sick, lingering outside of some poor unsuspecting family’s house like a creep in her beat-up convertible.
The voicemails stare back at her with vengeance, mocking her internal struggle.
She doesn’t have closure. She doesn’t know if she ever will, not when her parents are so insistent to just forgive and forget - to act as if nothing had ever happened, to act as though every mistake and shitty decision doesn’t permanently affect the messed-up way she handles her emotions.
Grime had been a nice presence, for a while.
She’d only known him for a year. It shouldn’t hurt so much to think of him. Maybe it’s because he’d acted more like a parent than either of hers ever did.
Sasha tosses her phone into the back seat, pulls her car out of park and drives away from the house and all of the bittersweet memories that come with it.
Cat-Grime has grown quiet - she needs to get him back to that beach, return him to his home. A home free of human-related stressors.
No, she doesn’t have closure.
She doesn’t know if she even wants it.