More angst! I'm really giving Anne hell.
Small warning for self-harm, less explicit than the last one but I'm kind of obsessed with the idea of Anne having branches so it'll be mentioned in nearly all of these one-shots even though they're not connected. Also Anne gets punched in this story (it's brief and doesn't faze her).

She's back.
Anne's back in the human world.
It's only been a month, far less than Anne spent in Amphibia, but Marcy are Sasha aren't there
She keeps the box though she only needs the stones.
Answers the police's questions about her missing friends with fake stories and real grief
Says someone kidnapped them.
Saw the others die.
She escaped.
The branches that started growing after Andrias don't stop.
They almost grow faster now.
Here in her world.
And once a month becomes every fortnight.
She dumps the pruned branches in the compost heap by the park.
Hides the broken ends in the pile so no one can question the red sap.
People at school treat her like glass at first, and she has to see a therapist.
She lies.
She doesn't tell anyone on earth the truth.
Not even her parents.
She might have confided in them if-if Sasha and Marcy had been with her.
But they're not.
They're bones now Anne's sure.
Rotting away somewhere in Newtopia.
Second year of high school.
She still makes trips to Amphibia.
She has good days sometimes.
With the Planters and Ivy and Maddie.
But that world haunts her now too.
And she prunes.
She's not numb to the pain, but it's become so much easier.
And then Sasha-Sasha's back. Takes a swing at Anne with her sword and slashes her arm. She swears it was on accident and Anne wants to believe her but how can she.
Still she tells Sasha everything, going back to earth and coming up with a story and Sasha huffs a sarcastic laugh.
"Well then. Guess I got my wish." She says, tells Anne she'll stay in Amphibia with Grime and promises, with what Anne desperately wants to believe is remorse in her eyes, she won't make a move to take it over.
Anne doesn't notice the slash until two days later when she takes a shower and her arm twinges.
It's shallow, but it's long, stretching from the inside of her elbow down almost to her wrist. It should hurt far more than it does, and she tries not to think about the sap dripping slowly from it.
Because that means the sap isn't just in her…whatever they are.

Someone gets it in his head to punch her for rejecting him one afternoon.
His punches don't feel like much even though her head snaps violently to the side, and she turns back silently, glaring at him.
Another punch, the other side.
Head twists back, she glares.
He grabs her arm and tries to shove her into a wall, but she stands firm.
He grips harder.
She doesn't flinch.
She decks him without blinking.
Sasha's a good fighter, she needs to be better. Just in case.
After that she gets a…reputation.
Freshmen whisper about her like the boogeyman and the older kids look at her suspiciously.
Rumors fly and Anne doesn't care because none of it matters.
She'll graduate and spend her life working at her parents restaurant and visiting Amphibia, or maybe she'll leave earth for real this time, maybe try to mend her broken relationship with Sasha so they can mourn Marcy together.
Sasha finds her pruning in the woods one day, and throws up.
Then she picks up the saw and helps.
It feels a little like an apology, and Anne recognizes the admission of trust she's given Sasha by letting her hold a sharp object near her throat.
They cry that afternoon, next to each other, wishing there was one more person with them.
They'll never be what they were, not just because Sasha really does seem to have left her desire to control behind with—
In Newtopia castle.
Fights and easily opened wounds gape like a chasm between them, but they reach a point of in-hostility. Trusting each other with their lives but not much else.
Anne doesn't know how to feel about it but Sprig and Polly and Hop-Pop are there so she's better off than she probably would be otherwise.
Sasha asks one day, what the pruning is like.
Anne doesn't know how to explain it but she tries, tells Sasha about the beginning, how she could barely move, hardly think, how she only wanted the pain to end. Tells her it's like a broken bone but worse because it tears too, how raw they felt when they were cut.
"And now?"
"It's like…a shot. A sting and an ache."
Sasha looks truly horrified, guilt burning in her eyes, because if she hadn't-If she'd been better maybe Anne would have believed her, maybe Anne wouldn't have needed the power of the gem.
She spends more and more time in Amphibia, earth feels so alien to her now, an ideal she can't reach, flesh-wood roots holding her in Amphibia.
She leaves a note this time, when she vanishes.
She tells her parents she's sorry, she loves them, but she can't be on earth anymore. She doesn't belong there, alien power flowing in her veins.
Earth isn't home anymore.