Work Text:
Letting Go
“You have to let go, Anne.”
Anne Boonchuy-Plantar barely registered the words.
She stood on a windswept, barren plain where Toad Tower once stood, looking over the ruins. In the distance, she could hear the cries of the strange birds and creatures that call Amphibia home, but the land here was dead, and had been for some time. It was a relic of a bygone era, the lost time of Andrias, gone forever.
She came here every year, without exception. It had been five years now, and four since she gave up hope of returning home - since she and Marcy denied Andrias his Calamity Box in the most final way possible. Since she realised she’d never get to take Sasha home.
She could still see her fall, even now.
“Maybe you’d be better off without me. ”
In her mind’s eye, she could still see her let go, still see Captain Grime miss her tumbling form. She could still see the stunned faces of the toads, the very real grief in their eyes. She still felt the sickness in her stomach, still heard the sickening thud.
And then the silence.
She’d looked almost like she was sleeping when the Plantars reached her, and maybe she could have fooled herself into thinking she was alive. But Sasha Waybright would never wake again, no matter how much she shook her and pleaded and tried to wipe the gore away.
She remained where she was now.
It was a nice grave, all things considered; they’d buried her where she fell, at the foot of the tower with a view of the distant mountains. It had been a lonely funeral; just Anne, Hop Pop, Sprig and Polly, and she had been consigned to the eternal Earth clad in her full armour. It had seemed appropriate.
It had only meant to be a temporary grave, but it had become a permanent one.
Anne stood quietly beside the grave of Sasha Waybright - her name still roughly carved in the stone above her resting place. Sprig stood a ways back; Anne knew he was never quite comfortable here. He’d much rather have waited with Bessie on the other side of the old drawbridge - but he was never one to leave Anne hanging.
“Anne?” He spoke again.
“I know, Sprig,” she replied softly. “I’m trying. It's just…”
She wipes a sleeve over her eyes.
“It still feels like my fault.”
Sprig walks over, standing by the grave with her.
“It wasn't,” he says firmly. “It was just a horrible, horrible… thing.”
“Yeah.” Anne looks up at the skeletal remains of the tower.
“I want to let go, Sasha,” she says quietly. “I just… I need to feel like you’d forgive me.”
She leans down.
“Would you?” Anne asks, her voice cracking. “I never wanted to drop you. I…”
“Anne?”
Spring puts a hand on her shoulder.
“Maybe Sasha doesn’t need to forgive you, Anne,” said Sprig. “Maybe you need to forgive yourself. Like you forgave her, and Hop Pop, and Marcy…”
Anne runs a hand over the grave, picking up a handful and letting it run through her fingers.
“Why’s it so easy for me to forgive other people,” she asked, “and not myself?”
To that, Sprig had no answer. He stood there, watching Anne’s shoulders sag as she broke down in the barren, lonely courtyard, and knew deep down that they’d be here again next year.
For Sasha Waybright, letting go had been easy.
For Anne Boonchuy-Plantar, it had proved entirely impossible.