A.N. This was a long time coming, though it's only been written over the last few days. I originally wanted the final chapter of this story to come out before season 3 aired. Then I was very underwhelmed with the 3A portion of season 3. All these Earth characters were introduced that we weren't going to get time to know and care about, plus they made the ridiculous choice of not naming Anne's parents and sticking to their guns on it. Coming back to Amphibia for 3B has been better... but now the finale is back on Earth, leaving little chance for the cast that'd been assembled to matter. The only way we're getting more of the Amphibians is a Star vs. kind of ending that melds worlds, or we will just get post-action glimpses of how the major players in Amphibia fared.

So, despite the wait, this story is set when I was going to have it be originally: right after Anne and the Plantars get zapped to Earth. My original idea was something along the lines of "Sasha nearly dies at the end of S1, Marcy nearly dies at the end of S2, so Anne's gonna get hers at the end of S3." I wrote two pages of that last June, a month after I wrote the first two chapters. But I thought the idea was boring, and decided to wait for more canon info to be known.

However, now that I've seen what comes next, those pages will not be posted. This instead takes place during the quarantine time in The New Normal (feel free to get the song stuck in your head while reading if you want a discordant experience). So Anne's not shown her new level of responsibility, nor written letters to parents that should be freaked the fuck out that their kids have been missing for six months. This is Anne internalizing all that burden, an Anne who is safe but knows Sasha and Marcy certainly aren't. Survivor's guilt, as the unstated tone of this chapter, I feel keeps this on-point with the first two chapters have while still being true to the start of season 3. So, now, something new before the finale.

3. Anne

The more time she spent confined within the walls of her house, the more Anne felt like she deserved this quarantine.

Her parents were being overprotective and overbearing, but at least they had a daughter present to devote all their worried attention to. The Waybright's and Wu's had nobody. Their absence was Anne's fault, and no one could talk her out of that.

It may have been Marcy who trapped Sasha and her in Amphibia in the first place, but it was Anne taking the opening Marcy had afforded her that now meant her two best friends were now stranded in another word with no feasible way to return. Sasha may have been the leader of their group, and Marcy the brainpower, but Anne was the glue that held the otherwise disparate trio together. Only now, Anne had lost her grip.

She was self-aware enough to know it wasn't her brains or natural take-charge nature that was bonding them together. She was an average student at best, and took orders much more readily than giving them out. But she was a likeable, dependable presence... or she had been, before Amphibia.

Zapped into a whole 'nother world, Anne floundered when she first arrived. Wartwood was slow to warm up to her; some still hadn't. And even those closest to her, the Plantars, had been let down repeatedly by Anne. Sure, their past squabbles small (Anne faking being sick) and large (Hop Pop burying then losing the music box) were eventually forgiven, but Anne felt deep down that things would've run smoother if only she were removed from the equation.

And now that proof of her faults was laid bare with her failure to bring Sasha and Marcy with her back to Earth, Anne couldn't justify lying to herself anymore. She didn't have it all together; she was a fuck-up of the highest order. She couldn't keep Marcy safe. She couldn't keep Sasha sane. She couldn't even appease her adopted frog family after six whole months of cohabitation. With her return to her parent's home, she had a new group of people to disappoint.

But most of all, she was failing herself. By letting all these doubts consume her the moment she was out of immediate danger, Anne was doing absolutely nothing useful to help those who were still squarely in the firing line. Like it or not, she was the center of not just her friendship group, but families of both blood and choice. Anne was the gel that held this whole multi-dimensional orbit together.

Her near-constant upbeat countenance was failing more and more often. Sometimes it still served its function of assuring others, but it also weighed on Anne like a onerous burden. Yet she had proved her mettle before, in moments both dire and dysfunctional. Despite all the other frogs, newts, toads and other denizens of Amphibia had thrown at her, Anne had still made it. Perhaps this being cooped up with no escape was exacerbating a mental spiral that wasn't even rational. The calamity box had bequeathed her blue powers for a reason; now she had to be worthy of them.

The parents that she currently thought smothering and restrictive actually had her best interests at heart, and Anne was being too stuck in her own head to see. She had dumped a lot of info on them all at once, and not a lot of it was easy to hear. Anne should still be thankful she was somewhat in their good graces still. But this lockdown had to be broken, or else Anne's psyche and interpersonal relationships would be what wound up fractured. She did not want her mom snuggled up to her in her own bed again unless she was having an emotional breakdown.

So, Anne put her foot down, showed some of the growth she'd cultivated while away. There was no less drama than during her adventures through Amphibia; it was just a different flavor of tension. But Anne prevailed (or her parents gave in), and she earned a reprieve. A trip to the market was not the life or death stakes Anne had gotten worryingly used to lately, but as a fresh start in her post-Amphibia existence, maybe a reminder of normalcy was what she needed. It was at least a sign she'd gotten over the first hurdle and hadn't stumbled. Now she just had to keep putting one foot in front of the other, and eventually they'd lead back to where she needed to go: a long-overdue reunion.