A week after I got my email back from Levi Rivaille, Eren left his hospital bed in Memorial behind in favor of going to some facility in Wisconsin that would spend a month teaching him how to do Blind Guy Things. His absence left my calendar so empty that there was probably a proverbial tumbleweed blowing forlornly across my abandoned social life, although I didn't really notice it until finals were over and summer had started and I was sitting in my room, alone, doing my own playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Armin had dropped by a few times since school let out, but he'd left with his family for the beach two days ago. The Reapers were attacking my ship, I was out of ammo, and my eyes were starting to hurt from staring at the screen for eight consecutive hours. I tried to think of the last time I'd left my room.

My phone was sitting right beside me.

"No, I'll sound desperate," I shook my head, going back to the battle.

Right there. So close. "Gotta play it cool."

Sitting in a dark basement at nine-thirty at night, losing spectacularly at a nerdy video game, talking to myself and eating half my weight in taquitos. Very cool. I sighed and grabbed my phone, desperation be damned.

Marco picked up on the second ring. "Please tell me you're incredibly bored and want to do something."

"You know me too well," I sighed, saving my game and slumping back in my chair. Marco and I had hung out a few times since Eren's departure, but the encounters had been small, fleeting, a trip to the coffee shop on the community college campus again, a quick run to the bookstore so I could help him pick out his next Palahniuk book. Like most school-aged cancer patients, Marco had a tidal wave of doctor's appointments that crashed down on his head the second he was out of school for the summer, some of them as far away as Chicago, and when he wasn't running back and forth to his appointments he was exhausted from running back and forth to his appointments. In the past week, I'd been lucky to get a few texts a day out of him. But he sounded awake enough now, which gave me a little bit of hope. "Why, are you free? No appointments tomorrow?"

"No appointments for the next three weeks," he replied victoriously. I could hear crickets in the background. He was outside. "You should come over; it's beautiful out here tonight."

I hummed contemplatively. "I haven't been outside in three days. Don't want to break my streak."

"Jean!"

"What, I'm not allowed to be a hermit?"

"Hermits live off the land, bozo, not processed frozen food," Marco laughed, the sound of it ending in a raspy cough. "Come over. I miss you."

Those last three words lit me up from the inside until I could have sworn that my skin started to glow. Grinning stupidly and holding my phone between my ear and my shoulder, I got up out of my gaming chair and started hunting around for my prosthetic, which had somehow ended up under my bed. "Yeah, yeah, whatever. You only like me because I stalked your favorite author on the internet."

"You have good taste in books, too," Marco chimed in. I could hear the smile in his voice. "I have a present for you."

"Oh God, tell me you didn't bring me back a tacky souvenir t-shirt from Chicago."

"No. It's a homemade gift."

"Your mom's pot brownies?"

"Get off the phone and get over here!" he cackled, hanging up on me.

I smiled all the way to his house.

There was a little gate beside the Bodts' garage that led to their fenced-in back yard, and since it was late, I decided to go that way rather than knocking on the front door. Marco had mentioned that his mom was an avid gardener before, but I hadn't quite realized the extent of it until I was walking along a carefully-kept walkway lined with dozens of different flowers I couldn't name, beautiful and very obviously loved. The only ones I could identify were the blue hyacinths in the planter boxes hanging from the windows, the same flowers that Marco had stolen from the coffee shop's flower bed for Eren. I reached over contemplatively, plucked a single bloom from the soil. There were so many that I was sure Marco's mom wouldn't miss one.

The back porch light wasn't on, leaving the yard fairly dark. Marco was stretched out on his back on the slight slope that led from the porch down to a koi pond by the back fence, and I would have probably tripped over him if it hadn't been for the silhouette of his oxygen tank standing upright beside him.

"So what's this about a present?" I asked, and he jumped a little, startled. I couldn't see very well in the ambient suburban glow and moonlight, but I thought he looked a little paler than usual, wheezing with effort by the time he sat up.

"A simple 'hello' would have been nice," he rolled his eyes, reaching down beside him and bringing forth an empty mason jar with a small slot carved into the lid, decorated with resin gems and other craft supplies that looked like they had fallen out of a kindergarten classroom. "Family Craft Night. I'd made enough macramé jewelry to last me a lifetime, figured I'd do something especially for you. I get to keep it, though. It's more of a new system than a material gift."

"I'm touched," I smirked, sitting down beside him and messing with my leg until I was at least somewhat comfortable. The pain had gotten to the point of almost being chronic whenever I had my prosthetic on. I'd never had a liner wear out so quickly before, but I had an appointment with my prosthetist in two weeks' time to get the situation checked out. Besides, it was easy to ignore, sitting in the grass beside Marco, the air of the yard fragrant with his mother's flowers and his close proximity to me going anything but unnoticed. Settling in, I grabbed a cigarette from the pack in my pocket and held it between my teeth, tilting my head. "So explain this new system."

"It's a Metaphor Jar," he said.

"A Metaphor Jar?" I asked.

"A Metaphor Jar," he nodded, waving the empty jar in my direction. "A customized version of what is commonly referred to as a Douchebag Jar. Every time you unnecessarily draw metaphorical or otherwise existential implications from mundane activities, you have to put a dollar in the jar. The loss of your money acts as negative reinforcement to keep you from being such a pretentious asshole all the time."

I pulled my wallet out of my back pocket and drew from it a crisp fifty dollar bill, pretending that I had an overabundance of money when the truth was that my Gran had a fondness of slipping me cash every time I visited. "This should cover about one hour of me in my usual state," I grinned, leaning over and stopping with the bill just short of the jar's mouth. "But Marco, you have to swear to me that the proceeds of this jar aren't going to a cancer charity. That would make you pretentious in an entirely different way, not to mention that it's lazy, horrible irony."

He blinked. "Actually, I was going to make it ironic by using the money to take you out to dinner sometime."

"I knew there was a reason I liked you." I slipped the money into the jar with a flourish. "Can we go to Olive Garden?"

"Sure," Marco laughed, setting the embellished container carefully between us. "You're buying, after all."

"Eren says hi, by the way." A redirection of the subject brought on by me looking down to the the hyacinth held carefully between my fingers, its sweet, heavy scent settling over my consciousness.

"Oh, I know. He Skypes me, too."

I blinked. "He does?"

Since Eren was obviously no longer capable of texting in the traditional sense, the easiest way for the two of us to communicate was Skype. It allowed him to practice with whatever Blind Guy OS was running on his computer now, and allowed me, at least, to see how he was doing. He'd graduated from the god-awful mummy bandages to an admittedly pretty stylish pair of Ray-Ban sunglasses, and the swelling in his face had gone down to the point that it looked normal. It was almost possible to pretend that the person on the other side of the webcam was Eren in his prime, if not for the few times when his brand-new cane or the piles of Braille books on his desk slipped into view. Still, it was good to get the chance to talk to him, see how he was doing. Perhaps it was selfish of me to assume that Marco wasn't doing the same, but it still surprised me a little.

"Yeah, I just talked to him today, actually," Marco nodded, coughing a bit and laying back down, staring up at the incredibly clear sky. "He seems like he's doing better, and not just physically. He was so sad, even before the surgery, you know? He's getting a little of the fire back now."

"And what about you?" I blurted out, cursing my mouth and cursing it more when it didn't stop. "The doctor's appointments, I mean. Are you doing any better, or-"

"Indefinitely terminal. Same as ever." His lips were thin and pressed when he spoke, cutting me off in a way that wasn't unkind but still showed that he didn't want to talk about it. "No new growth, but no shrinkage, and I'm still apparently in no state for them to try another round of chemo, which is fine by me. It never worked before, anyway, and I don't like the idea of feeling like absolute death without the promise of progress."

"Oh," I said flatly, not knowing how else to respond. "Well, I guess that's better than-"

"Why do you care, Jean? I thought you didn't like focusing on prison tattoos."

And there, right in the undertones of his voice was a little bit of unkindness. I'd never heard Marco sound so hard, so clipped, and although my adjusting visibility still wasn't the best, there was no softness in his face either, the oxygen lines cutting across his cheeks like smears of war paint, eyes dark and impassive as they reflected the emerging stars overhead. He was very pointedly not looking at me. Usually, I was aware of the extent of my assholery, always knew exactly what it was about me that pissed people off, but this time I had no idea what I'd done other than ask a simple question born of genuine concern.

"I was under the impression it went without saying that I care because I care about you," I replied, taking the cigarette out of my mouth and balancing it between my fingers as though it were actually lit, a frown pulling at the corners of my lips. "And I… well… you just don't look like you feel well."

"I have cancer, Jean. I never feel well." Marco spit the word cancer like a profanity. I could hear the rattle of his lungs the next time he inhaled. I tried for all I was worth to look like I didn't notice it. We were both silent for a few moments after that, and Marco finally deflated with a raspy sigh, carding a hand through his hair. "I'm sorry. It's just been a long few days with all the travelling, and I've got a killer headache. I didn't mean to snap at you, but can we… Can we just talk about something else?"

Nodding slowly, I stretched out on the grass beside him, popping the cigarette back between my lips. I let him lead the conversation this time, his hand raising to point at different stars hanging over our heads as he rattled off facts he'd learned in his Astronomy class this semester. I'd known from the day I met him that he was wickedly smart, but what caught my interest more than all the equations and scientific laws was what he could recite about the softer side of the stars. Marco knew more about constellations and the stories behind them than anyone I'd ever met, and I didn't have to feign my attention as he pointed out different ones and launched into long narratives about them. Cassiopeia, the vain queen who'd been doomed to an eternity upside-down in the night sky. Orion the hunter, who could match even the goddess of the hunt herself with a bow. The Pleiades, seven sisters who had been so lovely that the gods immortalized their beauty in the stars. It seemed like every little pinprick of light up there had a story to go with it, and as Marco rattled off some obscure fact about how Orion's right shoulder is actually one of the largest stars known to man, I started mentally tracing little pictures between the smattering of freckles across his cheeks, drawing constellations of my own and wondering what sort of stories I could make up for them.

All of the talking was hard on him, though, and he fell into a wheezing silence after a while, leaving the task of continuing the conversation to me. I fumbled for a moment, trying to remember something from my past few days other than video games and food. "I've been emailing back and forth with Hange Zoë. She's an interesting character, that one."

"Is she?" Marco said cordially, obviously trying to sound like he wasn't struggling for air even as he fiddled with the settings on his tank to increase his oxygen intake.

"She's been obsessively asking when you're coming to Paris. She wants to give you a personal tour of the city. Apparently you'll love the Sorbonne campus. It's a literature nerd's wet dream."

He laughed, a little sadly. "As if I could afford a trip to Paris."

Frowning confusedly, I rolled over on my side to look at him. "Don't you have a Wish, though? My God, I've seen them hand those things out to kids with leukemia that's gone in a month, you have to have gotten a Wish."

The St. Rose Foundation, the same philanthropic medical group that funded the private hospital where Marco went, did this thing where they'd give kids with cancer One Great Wish. Meeting famous athletes, cameo roles on their favorite TV show, getting front row at a concert and spending a day with their favorite band, that sort of thing. A plane ticket to Paris would be nothing compared to some of the stuff they'd pulled in the past; Marco's pessimism made no sense.

Until it did.

"I, uh… I used my Wish already," he mumbled, looking pointedly at the sky and not at me. "Three years ago."

"What did you do?" I asked. Marco remained silent, but even in the dark I could see him blush. My jaw dropped, the cigarette falling to the ground. "Oh my God, you didn't."

"I was fourteen and fairly certain I was going to die!" Marco protested, going an even brighter red.

"So you went to Disney World?!"

"It was actually the Wizarding World of Harry Potter," he offered lamely.

"A theme park, Marco!"

"I got Emma Watson's autograph, though!"

I shook my head disbelievingly, picking my cigarette up again. "And the fact remains that you threw away Paris and Levi Rivaille for a theme park."

"Well maybe I did," he said testily, crossing his arms, "But the fact remains that what's happened has happened and I no longer have a Wish."

I was quiet for a long, long time, well over five minutes and past the point that we had both reclined on the grass again before I softly said, "It's a good thing I still have mine, then."

Marco's head whipped to the side so fast I could almost hear his neck crack. "What?"

"Oh yes, I still have my Wish," I said airily, sitting up and plucking the cigarette from my lips, waving it around between my fingers as I continued. "I was never certain of what I wanted my One Great Wish to be, so I sat on that pinch of pixie dust like a mother hen with her last, most precious egg, waiting for it to hatch into a cheeping little miracle of potential."

"Put a dollar in the jar," Marco said.

"I paid in advance!"

"That stupid cigarette is a fifty dollar offense in itself. Pay up."

Grumbling, I dug my wallet out and tossed a crumpled one dollar bill in the Metaphor Jar before continuing. "At any rate, my Wish expires when I turn eighteen next March, and there is nothing more I'd like to do in that time than go to Paris, kick down Levi Rivaille's door, and demand some answers from that unethical bastard."

"You're not spending your Wish on me," he sputtered, shaking his head. "I'm not letting you spend your Wish on me."

"You misunderstand me, Marco," I laughed, raising a hand and tracing the line of Orion's belt with my fingertip. "I want to find out the end of that damned book more than I want anything else I'm going to come across in the next nine months. I'm spending my Wish on me. I'm also taking you along for the ride."

A slow, incredibly beautiful smile stretched across his face. "You're going to use your Wish to go to Paris and meet Levi Rivaille."

"Yup."

"And you're going to take me with you."

"That's the plan."

His hand came up and pressed over his mouth, muffling the giddy laughter that still managed to leak out. "Oh my God. Oh my God, Jean, I… I don't know what to say. I don't know what to do."

I smirked. "Well, you did mention your inclination to kiss me a few weeks ago at the hospital."

And just like that, every ounce of brightness drained from the situation. In that moment, watching the smile die on Marco's face, it felt like even the starlight had dimmed, darkening the sky in time with the look on his face as he fixed his eyes on the ground, voice tight when he spoke. "I shouldn't have said that."

My stomach sank all the way to my shoes. But to my credit, I at least tried to cover it well, clearing my throat and nodding. "Okay. I can accept that. Do you have any reasoning behind that statement?"

"I just…" he exhaled shakily, sitting up and rubbing a hand down the side of his face. "I don't want to hurt you."

"There's no one else I'd rather be hurt by," I said, and there was no sarcasm in that, no twist of wit. Just strangely raw honesty.

"God, Jean, you don't get it!" Marco snapped, slamming his hand down into the grass so hard the that Metaphor Jar tipped over, rolled down the hill and sank with a wet plop into the koi pond. "You don't get it because you've always had a chance. You've always had remission. I've never been anything but terminal, and I…" he trailed off again, his breaths raspy and ragged. "How much do you know about astronomy?"

"Not very much," I answered truthfully, knowing that trying to be smarter than I was could make the situation far worse.

"Do you know what happens when a star dies?" Marco asked. I shook my head. It was bright enough to see that there was something wavering and liquid swimming in his eyes. "It gets bigger and bigger the older it gets, and everything around it starts being pulled to its gravitational field. And then it dies and collapses inward into a black hole, and everything around it gets sucked in and destroyed. In some other universe, in some other situation, I could be what you want, but not here. Not now. You're acting like I'm a normal person, Jean, when the truth is that I'm a fucking supernova. And one day I'm going to collapse and suck in everything around me, and I don't want to hurt you."

"Your logic is flawed," I finally said.

"You're just trying to-"

"No, you've said your piece, now let me say mine," I pressed on, holding up my hand and looking at him stubbornly. "You told me the first time I met you that Oblivion is inevitable, that it is an indisputable fact that one day we are all going to fly into the sun and everything that humankind has worked for will be for nothing. You also know a lot about space, and how massive it is, how many worlds are orbiting around how many trillions of stars. You also know that the universe is infinite, which means that somewhere out there, there are many different worlds flying into many different suns, many civilizations reduced to nothing but ash. Right now, there are a million different Oblivions happening. Life hurts you, Marco. People hurt you. It's a law of nature. That law of nature says that someday, I will inevitably be drawn into someone's supernova. I'd prefer if it was yours. If I'm going to hurt, which is implicit in the human condition, I want to at least have a choice of who gets to hurt me."

Marco looked very small, and sounded even smaller, his voice barely audible. "I don't want to have this conversation."

"Fine," I shrugged, tucking my cigarette back into its pack and pocketing the little paper carton again. "I'm still taking you to Paris."

"Fine," Marco said.

"Fine." We glared at each other for a moment, eventually breaking into small, grudging smiles.

"Your trip to Olive Garden is at the bottom of the koi pond," he mumbled.

"I'll get it out sometime when the sun's up so I don't grab one of the fish by mistake," I laughed, getting slowly to my feet and stretching. "At any rate, my mom will be calling to demand I come home soon; might want to head her off at the pass."

Marco walked me over to the gate, but he was panting like we'd just run a marathon by the time we got there, a sheen of sweat on his forehead. Frowning, I reached up and pressed my palm to his cheek, feverish and flushed. After our argument about black holes and multiple Oblivions, I half-expected him to pull away, but he just leaned exhaustedly into the touch, his eyes fluttering shut.

"You need to go inside and get some rest," I said, brushing my thumb across his cheekbone beneath the plastic tubing and popping the latch on the gate with my free hand. "Go take some ibuprofen for that headache. Probably wouldn't kill you to sleep in tomorrow. I'll come over and get the Metaphor Jar out of the pond and then we'll go down to the St. Rose Foundation and start our Paris plans, okay?"

Marco nodded wearily, leaning on the gate after I closed it behind me and watching as I unlocked my car. I stopped right before I climbed in the driver's seat, though, looking at him for a long time until he finally tilted his head and rasped out "What?"

"I was just thinking about how your very noble efforts to keep me at arm's length do absolutely nothing to the way I feel about you," I shrugged, tossing my keys up and catching them again. "And how all those Oblivions out there are what make up the constellations we see, and how I wonder what the story of ours will end up being."

"You owe me a dollar in the jar tomorrow," Marco said.

"I'll deposit it happily," I replied, grinning crookedly. "Goodnight, Marco."

The drive home passed in an odd skip of time, a fatigue I didn't know I had pulling down like lead in my bones as I finally rolled into my driveway. My leg throbbed as I walked inside, the pain climbing slowly up my spine as I stood in the kitchen and talked to Mom for a while before I went downstairs and got ready for bed. I ended up falling asleep on top of my covers, passed out before I even hit the pillow. A simple trip across town had taken that much out of me. Weeks of video games could really suck the life out of a person.

I woke up hours later to the muffled, shrill shriek of our home phone going off upstairs. My alarm clock read three in the morning, and I squinted against the red light of the numbers, frowning as I sat up on the edge of my bed. Grumbling something unintelligible about fucking telemarketers and time zones, I got up and hopped to the stairs, shuffling my way up, although the ringing had stopped by the time I got to the top. I could hear Mom's voice, low and muffled on the other side of the door, but I couldn't make out what she was saying. I managed to scoot out into the hallway just in time to see her put the phone back on the receiver, pulling her blue bathrobe tighter around her like she was fighting off an invisible chill, her face death-pale.

"Mom?" I asked, something making my hair stand on end. I knew that look from too many parents in waiting rooms. "Mom, what's wrong?"

"Sweetie, you need to go downstairs and get dressed," she said. She was being very calm. It terrified me. "That was Marco's mom. They just took him to the hospital. He's in ICU. It's… Jean, baby, I'm so sorry. She said it doesn't look good."

And I felt it, right there in that second, what it was like to stand in the center of a supernova.