Ok, I promise this is the last of the angst, and the girls actually get along here so… less angst? Tomorrow will be almost pure fluff to send me off, enjoy!
Vague mentions of Anne pruning her branches and Marcy having to do a similar thing, as well as a missing hand and artificial spine for Marcy.
Andrias is dead. The Night is gone. It should be easier now, Marcy thinks. They should be home, unharmed and alive and thrilled after their adventure. But this isn't one of her games, no matter how hard she tried to pretend. She wakes up late at night from nightmares of the tube, the Night puppeteering her body around, a sword through her chest. Her spine is metal, her crossbow part of her new hand. And the powers.
It's every nerd's dream to get magic powers, but Marcy wants to smack anyone who ever wished for them, because this is not a dream.
Her body should be like Anne's, vibrant plant life, but the machines in her don't like it. The vines that can grow try to force the metal of her spine out of her back, and then everything aches and her legs go numb and she can't walk. The machines keep most…growth stunted, but Anne's not eager to trade, because when they can't grow properly, they cluster and create cellulose tumors that hurt to cut out.
Andrias is dead. The Night is gone. Anne should be happy, should be home with her parents and Domino and going to school with Sasha and Marcy. But she can't go home ever again. The box is there, it's charged, but she doesn't look human anymore. Looking like a freak in Amphibia means being shunned, outcasted (at least when she's not treated like a savior). Looking like a freak in the human world means lab tables and science experiments. Branches grow out of her hair like some kind of swamp monster, and her skin is rough like bark. Her blood is thick like sap and she runs cold to Sasha's suffocating heat. The pruning isn't so bad anymore. It's given her a hell of a pain tolerance.
Marcy and Sasha both insist that's not a good thing because apparently walking on broken bones only makes them worse. The box is on the mantel at the Plantar's house. She really doesn't know why they kept the thing. Marcy mumbled something about studying it, but she hasn't touched the it once. Anne guesses it's safer with them than hidden somewhere anyone could find it, but still. She's starting to think Sasha was right about destroying it.
Andrias is dead. The Night is gone. Sasha could be home right now, ordering the school around with all the ease she used to order Anne and Marcy around and hiding her too-hot skin with a cold demeanor. She's not. She doesn't want to go back, not when Anne and Marcy can't follow her. They look so…She'll never be able to think of them as anything less than beautiful, but it's an inhuman beauty now. They'll never be able to go home, and she doesn't want to leave them behind. She's better about her control issues now, she really is, she has her toad army to command and even then she has Grime to reel her in if she gets too…forceful.
She doesn't order Anne or Marcy around at all, not even in jokes. Everything is carefully framed as a request down to the simplest things. She doesn't want to slip. The heat under her skin isn't too bad really, as long as she wears thin clothing and drinks cold water while she wears her armor. And stays inside on hot days. It's certainly easier to manage than Anne and Marcy's conditions.