Ok so I finished Amphibia recently and it did a serious number on me, but also gave me a lot of inspiration. I'm also going on hiatus soon to work on an original writing project. This is gonna be a collection of some (mostly angsty) short one-shots to send me off. One chapter (one-shot) a day for about a week and then I'm going on hiatus for a while. Enjoy!
Warning: This particular one-shot involves body horror and self-harm, so if either of these will bother you I advise you turn back now.

Anne's head ached for weeks after the fight with Andrias. After her powers (because being thrown into an alternate dimension wasn't enough) manifested. Powers. She can hardly believe it. It's hard to get a handle on them, they're wild and unpredictable.
God but her head hurts.
She thinks it's exhaustion at first.
Then grief (Marcy with a blade through her chest, Sasha screaming in pain, both of them begging Anne for forgiveness with dying breaths).
But it hurts so badly she can barely think.
It spreads.
Down her neck, shoulders cramping and arms weak.
And Sprig finally notices something wrong.
He points it out to her, the second branch peaking out of her hair.
She reaches up to run a hand through her unruly curls.
She screams, loud and piercing, clutching at her head.
Pain ricochets down her neck, and bile crawls up her throat because her hair is full of budding branches.
And they are connected to her, hidden under her curls for weeks.
Slowly growing, creeping down to her hairline, sprouting upward under her hair to reach the light.
She shrieks and howls in pain, in revulsion, hands shaking.
Polly and Hop-Pop come running and Sprig tries to explain over Anne's cacophony but he didn't feel the boughs coming out of her skull, doesn't understand why she screams.
And she does, screams until her throat is raw and bloody, tears streaming down her face.

She can't touch them at first.
They have (she still gags at this after months) they have nerves, these woody (but not quite wood. They're fleshy too. Softer than any tree she's ever felt but still sturdy) things growing out of her.
But slowly, she acclimates to it.
Her head still aches.
It gets worse.
The branches grow lower, her neck, her temples, and her muscles scream in protest.
She can hardly raise her arms, can't turn her neck or twist her torso because pain shoots like lightning through her body.
And one day she falls and one of the branches snaps and again she howls.
Anne has broken a few bones in her life, but this is worse.
Because it doesn't snap off completely cleanly.
The fleshy bark rips and the bone heartwood snaps, leaving it half-dangling off its stump, and something begins to ooze.
It's red like blood.
But it is not blood.
It smells too sweet, runs too thickly.
Polly says it smells like tree sap.
Anne wants to cry.
But oddly enough, the ache recedes a bit where it came off. A spot near the nape of her neck.
She doubts she would have noticed it had it been from the…mass deep in her hair, but it gives her an idea (it's terrible but she is desperate for a respite from the pain).
And the next day she takes a pair of pliers used to cut through thick vines, grits her teeth against yelling muscles, places them around another branch along the nape of her neck near the base, and squeezes.
Snap
She doesn't scream this time, doesn't want anyone to know what she's resorted to, but a pained squeak escapes her and her eyes burn with tears.
Again.
Again.
And over a dozen more times.
Snap, thud
Snap, thud
And the blood-sap seeps syrupy thick into her hair and down her neck, making them that horrible tree sap sticky-dry.
Anne stops when her hands are too weak from the pain to keep going, keep pruning, and her shirt is soaked with tears, lips bitten bloody to hold back screams.
She washes her hair as best she can in the lake early the next morning, before anyone is awake.
The pain is…better after a day or so.
It is still horrible, but she can turn her torso a little more.
So she does it again when she thinks her arms can hold the pliers.
Snap, thud
Snap, thud
As she gets to the thicker ones, older ones, it becomes harder.
Finally she snags a saw and begs herself not to cry too loud.
The sound of the saw is so loud in her ears, and she knows she's sobbing but she can't hear that, just the deafening scrape of the teeth against her flesh.
Polly notices this time, sees the stumps at the back of Anne's neck.
She calls Sprig and they're both horrified but Anne pleads with them not to say anything, promises the pain of pruning is better than letting this growth take her.
They don't…help with the cutting at first. Polly takes the amputated boughs out to the forest and Sprig sits by her and tries to be comforting.
But one day she can't muster the strength to cut through the last half inch of branch, and Sprig rips it off for her.
It becomes a monthly thing, and Anne starts offering the limbs to Maddie for experiments. The young spellcaster is thrilled with the new material to study and morbidly fascinated by Anne's…condition.

She grows older in Amphibia, and she looses any hope of going home. The box is drained and without Sasha and Marcy the stones can't be charged.
The branches keep growing, sticking out of her hair at odd angles and making her head ache if she doesn't prune them regularly. They grow with her, too. Thicker and stronger, growing leaves that change with the seasons.
She wonders, sometimes, what they've done to her insides.
She bleeds sap, red and sweet with a tang of metal.
She wonders if her bones are wood now, if her skin will start turning to the soft-but-rough bark of her branches.
She tries not to think about it.
She gets her answer after a bad fall off a cliff.
She hears a snap and pain shoots up her leg, followed by the warmth of her blood-sap welling up.
Her skin is split from the inside, a yellow-brown bone sticking out, the end sharp with splinters.
She knows that's not how bone is supposed to look.
God she wishes her girls were here.

The stumps rot.
The bases of the old cut branches soften and slough off and leave the skin raw and marked with punctures where the roots grew through her skin.
It is a horrible sensation to feel your body rot around you.
Because she feels them rot.
The nerves go dead after a few weeks, but by then they're nearly ready to come off anyway.
It's a tingling, acid sensation, as they break down. And keeping the things that feed off is a nightmare all its own.
The things that grow and thrive on decay.
Mushrooms and larvae and flies.
They stay away from her living body, but they latch onto the stumps.
The larvae squirm, and the mushrooms…They think.
Not in any way Anne can really understand, but there is a…noise in her head when they grow.
A quiet drone, and sometimes, some species, simple words.
She cuts the stumps as close to her skin as possible.