Chapter Text
~🐸~
The ring of metal on metal never got any better, no matter how many times Anne heard it. Especially not when she could feel it reverberating up her arms and down her spine, leaving goosebumps in its wake.
Sasha growled, her teeth clenched so tightly that Anne could hear them grinding together, before pushing off of the parry with all of her strength. A good few feet suddenly sprung between them.
“You should’ve backed down Anne, you know that you’re not cut out for this.” The words should’ve been biting, maybe even taunting, but Anne just couldn’t find the energy within herself to care. She barely had the energy to keep her sword point away from the floor.
Following Sasha through the Newtopian catacombs had been one thing, dealing with the several, worrying number of toad guards posted along the way had been another. She was almost certain that she’d broken a few ribs and her ears were still ringing from one too many knocks to the head.
“Just shut up and come at me,” the words tasted wrong in her mouth, heavy with breath and tinged with an iron taste that was growing stronger by the second.
Sasha sneered and Anne hated how familiar the expression was.
Her sword flashed in the dim lighting, an arch of flame screaming towards her face. Anne just barely deflected it’s arch before it could impale itself into the side of her head. She lunged, sweeping towards Sasha’s legs, and the blonde jumped back to wind up for another attack.
“This is pointless, Anne!” She punctuated the sentence with an overhead strike and Anne stumbled back under the weight of it. She was lucky this part of the catacombs wasn’t covered in water or she’d have certainly slipped.
Sasha pressed in close, their faces only inches apart.
“We’re not staying in this world! Our actions don’t matter, our allegiances are fake! You’re defending a group of fucking frogs you’ll never see again!”
Anne willed the strength to keep herself from crying. Her ribs certainly were and the edges of her vision had turned fuzzy.
“They’re not frogs!” the words tore from her throat, guttural and primal. She shifted her weight to throw Sasha back, away from her. She skidded across the stone, boots scrambling for purchase. “They’re my family, and I am done with you deciding what I can and can’t do!”
Anne lunged, impaling the floor where Sasha’s foot would’ve been.
“I am done with you deciding who I get to value!” She swung her weight, using the sword as leverage to get a good kick into Sasha’s midsection, “I am done letting you control my life out of some stupid fear of rejection!”
Sasha’s glare could’ve melted steel.
“I was trying to protect you!”
Anne felt like vomiting.
“You were protecting yourself!”
Sasha screamed and swung her blade with all of her might.
Anne lurched on the handle of her own, but found that it wouldn’t budge.
The world froze in its motion.
Sasha’s blade, red in the dim light, lowered fractions of inches, her jaw wide open and teeth bared for the world to see. Her swing wasn’t stopping, getting closer and closer to Anne’s face with each millisecond. She could practically taste the steel of the blade, she could see the reflection of her own wide eyes swimming within it.
She moved without thinking.
___
You’d be amazed at the sound flesh makes when it’s torn asunder.
Eyes watched as the appendage fell, coming to rest on the stone with a sickeningly wet thump.
It was remarkable, really, the colour of the flesh hadn’t even begun to fade. Still the same warm tan that it had always been. A thick, crimson liquid was just beginning to pool beneath it.
Someone screamed.
The red sword clattered to the ground as the world slammed back into motion. One of the girls stumbled back, clutching at the gushing stump of her arm. She only made it three steps before her legs gave out, spilling her to the ground.
___
~🗡️~
Sasha’s eyes were wide, the pupils turned to pinpricks implanted deep within the irises, shaking like leaves in the wind. She felt light-headed, dizzy, sick even, as more and more of the crimson began to stain the stone… as Anne’s panicked cries started to peter off, her body slumping back against the wall.
“A-Anne…” All of her fight had abandoned her. All of the righteous anger, gone like a dream. It had left the moment the sword fell from her hands, the moment Anne screamed, the moment her sword met flesh and blood sprayed across her face.
She couldn’t even look at it, the… thing… laying between them like a declaration of war.
No. A monument to her cruelty.
This was too far, way, way too far. She felt like she was going to be sick, there was no way this had happened, right? No way she’d become so invested in this stupid little game of hers and Anne’s that she’d actually… actually…
Anne’s body shook- no, twitched- violently. A sob pulling at her ribcage before cutting off in a pained wheeze. Sasha could only stare at the blood pooling beneath her feet.
She took a step forward, hand raised tentatively.
“A-Anne…. I-I-”
Something slammed across her face and a bright popping sensation filled her nose, forcing her eyes to water as more of the crimson began to gush down her lips. Her wrists were seized in an iron-like grip and she was wrenched backwards until her spine made a painful connection with the wall.
Twin green flames danced before her eyes, a shadow cast around them by the cloak pulled low over her attacker’s face.
“You.”
Sasha felt what little remained of her spirit crumble because she recognized that voice.
“Marce-”
That hard and metal thing connected with her jaw once more and she was forced to become acquainted with the taste of Newtopia’s walls. Then a hand wrapped around her newly sore chin and yanked it back around. The fingers squeezed tight.
Marcy looked exactly like she’d left her, round-faced and wide-eyed with a cute little button nose to match, hardly an intimidating appearance. But her shoulders were covered in armour, her hand gloved and armoured and covered in blood that Sasha would bet money on belonging to her own bleeding nose.
And her eyes… that was new. They glowed a sickly shade of green, illuminating her whole face beneath her hood and turning her scowl into something that would haunt Sasha’s nightmares for years to come.
“This…” when she spoke her voice hurt. It was hard and hot and sharp enough to kill, her whole body shook with the effort of producing it. “Is not a game! ”
Sasha’s head made another connection with the wall as Marcy lifted her and slammed her back against it.
“W-wha-” she managed to splutter in spite of her shock. Marcy silenced her with another glare.
“This is real life, Sasha!” Her voice shook with the volume, trembled beneath the weight of the rage she could feel pouring off of her in waves. The white-hot fury that seemed to just coax the intensity of those venomous eyes until they bore straight into Sasha’s soul. “Real- goddamn - life! This might not be our world, but it is a world, and there are real!" She lifted her and slammed her against the wall again, "Lives!" and again, "At stake!” and again.
Marcy’s hand, still clenched around her jaw, loosened just a fraction so that she could trail it up the side of her face to rest on the scar Anne had given her in their last encounter.
“This scar is not going away.” Suddenly, violently, Marcy wrenched back and Sasha screwed her eyes tightly shut in anticipation of another slam into the wall. Instead, she was yanked downwards, away from the wall and onto her knees.
Left in front of that damn appendage.
Marcy’s voice hissed behind her ear, hot and wet, “Anne’s hand is not going to reattach itself, and it is not going to grow back.”
She was shoved once more, landing flat on her back to stare up into the venomous eyes of one Marcy Wu. A boot planted itself directly atop her chest.
“I could kill you, right now.” And, suddenly, the heat was gone. The words were cold. Empty. Void of all of the white-hot rage she’d been subjected to just a moment ago. Marcy pressed down with her boot, forcing all of the air from her lungs. “I have a fully powered crossbow mounted on my wrist, you have no protection on your neck, and we’re at point-blank range. I could kill you in a fraction of a second and there is nothing you could do about it.”
A chill ran down Sasha’s spine.
Then the pressure was gone. Marcy’s boot risen from her chest, but her eyes remained that sickening green glow.
“But I’m not going to do that because I understand the consequences of my actions.”
The venom in her words burns.
Marcy’s gloved hand reached down and grabbed Sasha by the collar, yanking her upwards until she was nose to nose with the girl in question.
“This is not a game, Sasha, and you have to live with the consequences. Anne is never going to be the same because of what you did.”
She gave her one more shove for good measure, leaving her to land against the wall in a final painful impact.
“Anne and I are going home.” She said the words so finally, so confidently that Sasha found that she actually believed her. “You can decide whether you want to come with us or keep playing your stupid little game until you realize that it isn’t one after all. Until you realize just how much blood you have on your hands.”
She stood so straight, so tall, so… unlike the Marcy she once knew. With her back to the light, cape fallen around her shoulders, in front of Anne’s broken body, she looked like a guardian angel poised to attack.
Poised to defend Anne from her.
Because she’d done this.
Something landed in Sasha’s lap and it took her a full thirty seconds to register just what it was.
Bile danced in her stomach.
“Take your trophy back to your friends, Sash.”
Words had never sounded so cold.
"And I'll take my friend home."