Chapter Text
September 23, 2019.
Jackie Lynn Thomas sits in the office of her therapist, fingers twisting a twine bracelet. She had been going for a while, but it didn't make it any less nerve wracking. Not that she disliked her therapist; so far, it had been a good experience. She was still nervous anyways. If she wasn't, maybe she wouldn't need therapy.
"How are you?" her therapist asks.
Jackie brushes her hair back. "Uh, I've been mostly okay, but over the weekend I saw something and it's made me feel... something."
"What did you see?"
"It was just an old post from an old friend but for some reason it made me feel like trash. Probably just because it reminded me of stuff I did that I regret."
"Do you want to talk about that?"
Jackie pauses.
"...yeah, we probably should."
iii. call me sentimental but i want to go back
September 21, 2016.
The room is silent after Jackie finishes telling her story. The silence is broken by the doorbell. Janna hesitates before speaking.
"You two, stay in here. I'll get the door." Janna hops out of her seat, mumbling something about her mom being home early underneath her breath. Jackie desperately tries to read her girlfriend's face. She knows that Marco sometimes has trouble with eye contact, but it would help her feel better, at least a little bit, if she would just look at her-
"Star?" Janna is shouting, presumably so that they could hear it. The two exchange a couple of words, and then Janna closes the door again and rushes back to her bedroom.
"Star is here and she wants to talk and so I need you to hide."
"Where?" Jackie asks.
Marco and Janna look at each other. "Basement," they say, nearly simultaneously. "Please, hurry," Janna asks, and the pair sprint to the basement. "I'll get you when me and Star are done," Janna whispers, and then closes the door behind them.
Star takes in Janna's room. It's not quite what she expected.
"This isn't quite what I expected."
"What did you expect?" Star shrugs. "Well, that's me... a woman of many mysteries." Janna laughs, weakly, at her bad joke, before looking away from Star in an attempt to hide her blush.
"Why do you have three cups of tea on the ground?" Janna pauses.
"You know me... I just love tea..." More nervous laughter. Janna picks up the cups and pushes them underneath her bed before sitting down on her bed. "So... what did you want to talk to me about?"
Star sits down on the bed. "So, uh, about the party-" Janna begins to raise her hands to form a response, but Star grabs them. "Let me talk, please." Janna nods.
"When you said that you loved me at the party, I didn't know what to say back. And even after that, I still didn't know. It was like I was one of those big circly Earth storms where everything is all jumbled up. So, on Mewni, I found out that there a guy that could tell me what would be the right thing to do.
"The thing, the Canajoharie, showed me three doors that apparently were my future, and I looked through all three of them. And they all sucked. The doors took me back to moments with you, and Marco, and Jackie, and somehow somebody ended up getting hurt. And then the guy told me to pick one-"
"Which one did you pick?"
"None of them. I told the guy to fuck off and then came back here."
Janna nearly bursts into laughter. "Star, I told you, you're not supposed to say that to people!"
Star grins. "You're the one that I learned it from."
"And that's why it's doubly important that you never get caught saying it."
Star bumps her shoulder into Janna's shoulder. "That guy sucked and he deserved it." Janna continues to laugh, and then pauses.
"What happened in the door that I was in?"
"Actually... that's what I wanted to talk to you about."
Five minutes after entering the basement, Jackie realized that the door was locked.
Six minutes after entering the basement, Jackie realized that she would have to wait for Janna to let them out, instead of yelling and banging on the door.
There are worse places to be than stuck in a basement with your girlfriend, although that rings hollow when you're pretty sure that your girlfriend is about to break up with you. Or, she would, once she said anything. But instead of saying things, Marco was just sitting on the floor, her knees up to her chest, completely silent.
Jackie continues to pace in the basement until the silence becomes unbearable. "Marco, please, can you just tell me something?"
Marco mumbles.
Jackie stops. She kneels down next to her. "What was that?"
"This is all my fault."
"Marco, no-"
"Yes, it is! If I had been there, if I had won the war faster, if I hadn't freaked out about Star at the party-"
"Marco, no! I'm the one that fucked up here! Why can't you see that?" Jackie can feel her scream resonating in the basement. "God, when are you gonna figure out that I'm the most fucked up person that you know?"
She looks at Marco, and then sits in the opposite corner of the basement.
"...and that's what happened."
Janna desperately hoped that Star didn't notice how hard she was blushing. "...so, what did you think?"
Star scoots closer to Janna. "Janna, you're my best friend, and even though I don't believe the Canajoharie guy at all, what if he's right?"
Janna shrugs. "I mean, we would have to find out, if we got there." She watches Star nod in agreement. "Do you... want to... try?"
Star nods, looks at Janna, and then swallows.
Janna leans in and kisses Star on the mouth. It's soft, quiet, everything that the kisses in the void of the Canajoharie weren't.
It's real.
The Canajoharie sat at their desk, watching the sands of time move.
Their interactions with Star Butterfly had been... interesting. They could see the little spot where Star was located, and watched that area shift in shape. It appears that she made a decision.
Good for her.
"I'm sorry."
"Marco. Why are you apologizing to me?"
Marco's head is resting on her knees, still curled up in the corner. The sun had started setting and they hadn't turned on the light when they went into the basement. Everything was awash in purples and deep blues.
"Jackie, you were right. I've had this idea of you in my head as a perfect person who couldn't do anything wrong, and that's not fair to you. I have this bad habit of trying to make sure that everything goes perfectly, and I guess that kinda extended to how I think about you?"
Jackie gets up from where she is sitting and walks towards Marco. "I'm the one that should be apologizing to you. I guess I haven't been clear when talking about how I feel. It's not like you can read my mind or anything."
Marco looks at her. "Yeah, we tried that."
Jackie laughs. The sun dips below the horizon, leaving the basement swimming in a purple darkness. Marco laces her fingers in between Jackie's fingers.
"I still think you're a great girlfriend, Jackie."
"I'm sorry about all the stuff with Brittney. And Star. I probably should have started with that."
"It's okay. Nobody's perfect, and you're great."
Her eyes adjust so that she can see Marco looking at her in the basement darkness in the same way that she had seen so many times. It seemed miraculous that someone would be willing to put up with all of her issues. It was even more incredible that somebody could be foolish enough to believe that all of those issues didn't exist.
"Marco, I'm really not that great."
"Well, you are to me. You're one of my best friends. There isn't much I wouldn't do for you."
"Even fight in an inter-dimentional war?"
"I thought you were going to say something actually hard."
Even though they're both laughing, alone together in the now dark basement, part of Jackie still doesn't believe Marco. For most of her life, she had been quick to forgive people over lost necklaces and broken skateboards but having that level of forgiveness offered back to her over something way worse seemed so foreign. And even as laughing turned to kissing turned to Jackie lifting Marco's shirt over her head—
("Are you wearing one of Janna's old bras?"
"...is that bad?"
"It's cute.")
--she still felt like she still owed Marco more. She felt like Marco would figure her out at some point, and then decide to leave. Not that she wanted her to leave, it just... why delay the inevitable?
They had the foresight to put back on the shirts that they had discarded when the lights from a vehicle pulling into a parking lot flashed into the still-locked basement. Two minutes later, Janna opens the door to the basement, bathing the two in light.
"Two things: one, sorry for forgetting about you two down here. Two, my mom ordered pizza if you want any."
Marco and Jackie look at each other.
"I'm down for pizza if Marco is."
"I'm down, I'll just need to text my parents." Jackie squeezes Marco's hand.
Jackie: did you know the basement locks from the outside?
Janna: fuck
Janna: my bad
Janna: anywaysy did uou make up with marco?
Jackie: yeah
Janna: *make out
Janna: if you two banged in my basement im gonan be so pissed
Jackie: janna i'm gonna kill you
"I mean, I don't know why I get so worked up while thinking about that. Maybe it's just the anxiety talking again, but, I don't know, when I saw that post... every part of my brain that tells me how bad of a person I am comes back as loud as ever, and I haven't- hadn't smoked for a while before then but I just couldn't take it. When everything in your life reminds you of how much of a failure you are, it's.... I don't know.
Like, I kind of miss being a dumb kid and worrying about girls and shit instead of worrying about making rent and my job and getting groceries. All this stuff that I thought was the end of the world back then doesn’t even matter now. But I still think that if I could go back in time knowing what I know now, I would do so much different."
The therapist looks at the clock. "We're almost out of time, so can we stop here and talk about it more next time?"
Jackie runs her tongue over her lip piercing.
"Yeah, let's do that."