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She knows he misses that place.
How couldn't he? He had like, a pet lizard lion motorcycle thing and and a super hot body when he was in that dimension ( super hot bod, like, those abs man…). He couldn't just leave those things behind.
He talks with her about it, voicing his concerns a week after he had come back. She was totally on board for it; if it makes him happy, then there’s no reason not to go. He had his own pair of dimensional scissors after all, there’s nothing stopping him.
If it makes him happy, then she’s happy.
So, sometimes, he goes back.
He let’s her know the first time, that he’s going to go back to see if his aged up body returns with him, just to see if it's possible. She wholeheartedly agrees, knowing how much of a waste it would be if all that hotness to his body just vanished.
She’s there when he cuts a dimensional hole, his scissors gleaming with the engravement of his own name. The portal shines a still rather unsettling shade of orange, and she readies her wand, letting him know that she’s ready if anything goes wrong.
He just gives her a knowing smile, one that she can’t read, and tells her that there’s no need.
He steps in.
...and immediately steps out, not even a second later.
His face is beaming.
She listens to him ramble all about how yes, it is still there and he’s still as buff as ever and have you seen Nacho?
She listens, because he’s happy.
The next few times, he still lets her know.
Granted, they’re never often, it’s really only once every few weeks he decides to go, but when he does it’s on days that the two of them are never doing anything, days usually spent walking the laser puppies or shooting tennis balls out of the sky.
He always tells her in passing, hollering to her room as he heads to his own. And she always yells something back, like take care, or say hi to Nacho (she almost says to send her a picture of his hot bod, but for once she wisely decides against saying anything).
And he always passes by her room five seconds later, a bounce in his step and a hum in his throat.
So she just keeps shooting tennis balls.
He stops telling her.
It was only a week later that she catches him opening the portal.
She’s passing by, his bedroom door open, when she spots him. She hides herself behind the hallway wall, peering surreptitiously to the unsuspecting boy.
His back is turned to her, and she’s wondering when he’s going to yell out something to let her know he’s leaving.
But he doesn't.
He leaves without a word.
The portal closes, and she just stares numbly for a full seven seconds before it opens again and he steps out, rejuvenated.
He heads out of his room, and she manages to hide herself as he unsuspectingly passes her by.
He practically bounces down the stairs, his smile radiating through his entire being.
She stands there, dumbfounded.
They’re getting more frequent.
He never tells her anymore, either.
But she knows when it happens, when there’s that gleam to his face that was never there fifteen seconds prior, and she tries to convince herself that it doesn't matter, so what if he’s spending maybe a few seconds out of an entire day having fun, he still spends the rest of it with her, he doesn't have to tell her anything, she’s not his mom.
But it bothers her.
And it shouldn't.
He should be allowed to be happy.
…
She fails at convincing herself of that.
He’s changed.
Only a little, though. He’s still the same, fleshy meatbag he always was, always the good kid who got perfect test scores.
He’s still him. But there are times when his hormonal teenage feelings don't impact his actions much, and at the forefront is a sort of rationality so refined it only stems from years of honing it.
He’s smarter now. He gets them out of whatever trouble they’re in much faster, because he comes up with solutions that a fourteen year old boy should not have the wisdom of knowing.
She wishes she could believe that’s a good thing.
He’s late to school.
It’s only for at most five minutes, but still.
He’s never late.
And every time he slides into his seat, his detention slip carelessly stuffed into his bag (doesn't he care? He’d be freaking out over something like detention, right?), she can't help but give him a worried look.
He just smiles that same unreadable smile and turns his attention to the front of the classroom.
But it’s different.
This time, she can read it.
And there’s a sort of sadness that she suddenly wishes she could never identify.
She can see it in the way his expression forces a neutrality that he doesn't want her to know about it.
But she does.
And she pretends she doesn't. For his sake.
She stalks him wherever he goes during school.
Sometimes Janna joins her, but even Janna knows how far she’s taking this, how morally dubious it is.
Oftentimes, then, it’s just her.
It’s been like this for several days, all of them days he’s late for class. She’d spy on him during passing periods, he’d be getting his supplies for his next class, and everything would be normal enough to make her wonder if she even had a point to doing this.
...But then it stops being normal.
It stops the moment he approaches Jackie in private.
And dumps her.
He's ever the gentleman about it though, saying how things would be better if they broke up, how she’d be better without someone like him in her life, and they part ways still on good terms.
But he still breaks up with her.
He voluntarily took someone he cared about and put them out of his life, does he even care that he just left her alone without him?!
The two of them go their separate ways as the bell rings, and she's left sitting dumbfounded in a potted plant.
Alone.
He catches her.
“You were spying on me?!”
"Because I was worried!” she exclaims in exasperation, throwing her hands in the air. “What am I supposed to think when you’re breaking up with your girlfriend for no reason?”
“You saw that?!” he squeaks out in his puberty voice, and she curses herself for the slip up. “How could you just do that ?! Don't you trust me?!”
She feels her own anger flaring up. “Oh, like how you trusted me to take care of myself during the Blood Moon Ball?” she shoots back.
“So that makes it okay when you do it?”
“This is different!”
“How, Star?! How could this possibly be different?”
“B-Because!” She fumbles for an answer, one that she knows would make him see things from her side if she could just get it out. “You-You’re just… just-”
“Just what?” he says, and there’s an edge to his tone, one she would agree was justified had it not become such a heated conversation.
“You!” she blurts out. “I need you to be okay!”
“Yeah, well, I don't need you babying me, Star!” he storms towards the exit. “Just once can't you trust that I can handle things myself? What kind of friend are you?”
She knows his words are only spoken out of anger, that he doesn't mean what he says. But she’s angry too, and his words sting more than she likes to admit, and he has no right to say that to her. “Maybe I don't want to be your friend.”
He stops at the doorframe, and from the way he stills she’s reminded of the night he was kidnapped by Toffee. How their argument that night ended just as how this one is ending now.
She remembers that Marco almost died, all because she drove him away.
And all at once the anger washes away from her, and she’s left regretting everything she just said. “Marco-”
He runs out of the room, and she shouts his name again as she gives chase.
She doesn't have to go far, she realizes as she follows him into his room.
She sees him grab his dimensional scissors and thrust them into the air.
The sickeningly orange portal opens once more, and before he can take a step inside she lunges to grab his wrist.
“Marco wait I’m so so sorry Marco I- ” she finds herself scrambling to have some sort of apology that could make up for what she just said, but the words die in her throat when she sees his face.
He stares at her, his eyes puffy and stained with tears and damp streams are riddled all over his cheeks, but the more she stares back at him the more she sees it in him.
He’s old. The gleam in his eyes is no longer there, only replaced with the emptiness of age.
She can’t think of anything but that. She has questions now, questions she needs to know.
“Marco,” she says, her tone void of emotion. “How old are you?”
He averts his gaze, staring right at the portal. “Fourteen,” he says robotically.
She tightens her grip. “That's not what I meant.” She knows he knows it.
He falls silent for a moment.
“Four hundred and twelve.”
She doesn't realize her hand falls limply to her side in shock. She doesn't realize that he gives her a look of sadness that she would never be able to decipher in her lifetime.
She doesn't realize he walks through the portal until it's too late.
It closes unceremoniously, and she falls to her knees.
She waits.
She knows time fluctuates differently there than in here.
Eight minutes here, sixteen years there.
One minute, two years.
Thirty seconds, one year.
She feels awful for not realizing how substantial the difference was, and how quickly it could rack up.
One minute goes by.
She waits.
Five minutes go by.
She waits.
Ten minutes.
Twelve.
Fifteen.
By eighteen minutes she’s at the edge of having a breakdown. She wants to sob into her arms, she wants to scream and kick and wreck things in his room, she wants to see him again if only to tell him how much he means to her, how she needs him and she doesn't know what she’ll do without him, aren't they friends doesn't he care about her please she can't lose him too.
She can't do any of that.
Instead, she waits.
After twenty minutes, the portal opens.
He steps out, another forty years evident in his face, and he stands sheepishly, unsure of if he’s even welcome anymore.
She throws her arms around him, holding him as tight as she can, and the tears start pouring.
She tells him she’s sorry, she’s so sorry she didn't mean it, she cares about him she needs him she needs him she needs him.
She wants to hear him say something back, like how he missed her, that he needs her too, that he’s sorry he left her alone.
He doesn't try lying to her. He just reciprocates the embrace and holds her just as tight as she held him.
She pretends that's enough.
She wakes up in the middle of the night to find a pair of engraved scissors on her nightstand.
Marco is nowhere to be found.
Star throws her head back and wails.