Hello again! I know you just came out with a Sashannarcy wedding fic of your own (loved it, by the way), but I have my own head canons I wanted to share with you because I'd like to hear your thoughts on them. (Part 1 of 2.) (Also, fair warning: several walls of text incoming. XD)
In the immediate aftermath of Amphibia, the girls all stayed at Anne's for a good month or so, trying to process everything that happened and everything they'd said and done. During this time, the first symptoms of trauma and PTSD/CPTSD began to manifest themselves among the girls, especially poor Marcy. Such trauma usually manifested itself in horrible nightmares for the girls of all their death, near-death, and murder-attempt experiences and their worst possible outcomes, which quickly resulted in their collective sleep schedules going to shit in record time, as well as big-time, short-term struggles with St. James schoolwork. At the same time, it gave the three of them an opportunity to unload their collective emotional baggage with each other (Anne and Sasha in particular) and not only finally begin to get a grasp on their deeply confused feelings for each other, but also a very quick education on how to handle everybody's traumas, triggers, and newly-established boundaries. The three remain quite physically close to each other during this period, and all three share Anne's bed for comfort and refuge from their psychological and emotional pain.
Mr. and Mrs. Boonchuy, meanwhile, are more than understanding of everything that's happened, and do all they can to give the girls the space they need while also providing nourishment and advice whenever they can; they're the ones who actively encourage each of them to seek out therapists, and--thanks to how much of a help they were during Frogvasion--are able to enlist Mr. X's help in both finding the right ones and managing any confidential information that they may need for their sessions. The girls are, understandably, skittish about the process at first (especially Sasha), but each of them warm up to the idea over time and are able to begin getting the help they need to walk through their thoughts and feelings about everything that's happened. This has results both positive and negative.
After a brief deeper dive underwater as far as her grades go, Anne finds the motivation to get back in the academic saddle once she realizes that she doesn't have to leave Amphibia and the Plantars completely behind, but can instead use it as inspiration to care for and preserve Earth frogs once she learns about the existence of herpetology. As a result, she's able not just to improve her grades enough to graduate St. James in the nick of time, but to become a model straight-A student in high school and college afterward.
Sasha, meanwhile, becomes fascinated with the subject of psychology thanks to the long and winding journey into her own psyche that her own therapist guided her on and her subsequent desire to better understand herself and what she was going through; combined with the realization of both her own innate protective nature and her desire to help prevent people from becoming like she'd been pre-Amphibia, she decides to also work to improve her grades and becomes a hard-working student in her own right, oftentimes working with Anne well into the night to relearn things both had either not paid attention to or skipped out on altogether.
By contrast, Marcy's grades took a considerable dip from her previous straight-A status not just from all the time missed in Amphibia, but her wrecked state of mind as well; unlike Anne and Sasha, she wasn't quite able to get back to the level she'd once been at, though she still did well enough to pass all her classes. In fact, because of how screwed-up her attendance record and grades were from the whole affair, it was agreed by all concerned that it would be best for Marcy to move back in with her parents and move to her new school as originally planned as soon as the school year was over, though Anne and Sasha did have one last opportunity for a tearful, heartfelt goodbye before she left, with the promise that she could ALWAYS reach out to them if she needed comfort or advice about anything.
Meanwhile, the girls tried as best they could to iron out all the differences they had with each other as a result of the hurt each of them had put the others through. Though each of them swore never to lay a finger on each other again (a promise they more than made good on, even after they married later in life), many arguments and angry tears were still had between all three, to the point where even sweet, bubbly Marcy lost her temper and screamed at the others on multiple occasions (an enormous shock to Anne and Sasha, as you might imagine), all of which led to a considerable loss of life for Anne's bedroom possessions and furniture. By the time Marcy decided to move back in with her folks, the three had come to the stone-cold realization that, while all of them deeply cared about each other and wanted nothing more than to help each others' recoveries, they also needed time and space away from each other to sort themselves, and their issues, out before establishing any kind of firmer hold on their collective relationship and continuing their healing together.
Thus it was that, though they still talked, kept tabs, and thought about each other as often as they could, the three found much less time for each other as school (and later work) took up more and more of their lives. Though Anne wound up quitting the tennis team and Sasha the cheer squad while each worked to make up for years of lost academic time at St. James, both still remained quite physically active in high school and college, with Anne often jogging and making good use of a membership at a nearby gym and Sasha discovering her new passion/hobby for weightlifting as a result of her time being the Holder Of Strength in Amphibia. The two of them also found new, healthier friend groups thanks to their respective newfound interests in herpetology and psychology, especially as college rolled around. Marcy, meanwhile, coasted throughout the rest of middle school and much of high school with no real clue of what she wanted to do for the rest of her life--until she ran into a couple of people in her new chess club (she dropped out of the one she was in at St. James, but picked it up again in high school at her parents' insistence) who noticed her doodling, complimented it, and encouraged her to do it more. This, combined with her passions for gaming, anime, and fantasy that had continued unabated (though she did become very withdrawn from each of them for a long while after what the Core had tried to do to her), resulted in her getting to know several members of the school's artist and gamer cliques, which in turn got her connected to a wide variety of online communities that helped her improve both her craft and her confidence, especially when she realized just how much comfort and happiness she got out of sketching out her characters, worlds, and stories. Her subsequent decision to enroll in art school riled up her parents a fair bit--until she made a point of showing them the potential for industry contacts she could make in the animation and comic industries that could, if not make her and the family rich, at least give her a steady enough income to live on her own, at which point they left her alone on the subject aside from the occasional well-intentioned, good-natured snark at the dinner table (something that gets under her skin for years afterward, even with continued counsel from her own therapist about how to fix her complicated relationship with her parents).
Even as all this is happening, however, the three of them always shoot messages checking in with each other whenever any of them had a free moment with nothing else to do, the one "drop-everything-and-help" exception being if any of them were experiencing PTSD, CPTSD, and/or anxiety attacks, in which case they would ALWAYS prioritize each other's immediate health, 3 a.m. video calls or awkward excusals from presentations be damned. Sometimes (though it's more the case for Anne and Sasha as time goes on), if any of them can tell one of the others is having a rough time of things, they'll just go over and hug/cuddle them for as long as they need--something that goes a long way towards rebuilding everybody's trust and love for one another--or just ask them to talk about anything they've been into lately (this goes a long way towards helping Marcy in particular) before departing with quiet, grateful thank-yous to each other as they each go about their days again.
