STLTH 100

This chapter, while I don't expect it to be too hard, I have to think more.

What would be the first thing that Marco – at the end of his character development at the end of season 3 (& beginning of season 4) – do in response to finding out the truth?

So he'll just do what Marco would do.

Then again, this is sort of an AU. I'll find a way to remind you of this in the fic soon.

12.

Marco stared at his scissors before he started spinning them around idly with his fingers in the loop. He didn't know what would be his next move. He didn't know where to go, what to do. Thoughts crowded and emptied out of his head.

He had them back. He could go anywhere. Star and Tom. His parents. Kelly. Hekapoo. Curiously enough, he also thought of Higgs, but she was just a few corridors away.

"… Can't believe this," he mumbled angrily. "She tried to kill me. And who the heck is this Rocam guy? And what's up with how that he looks so much like me that she mistook me for him, both her and the smuggler?" His thoughts derailed, then scattered. He must've been around here for a while. No one else has been saying anything to me about it. It's just them. Those two are the only ones who know of him.

Sometimes, he wondered if this Rocam guy even existed.

Marco glanced into a handheld mirror that hung on the wall and saw himself staring back. There was someone out there who had his face, making people hate and fear him so much that they wanted to kill him. He couldn't deny that something like this could happen. His world was already a big place before Star showed up in his life, and magic had expanded it.

So what if Rocam exists? He's not my problem. I'm supposed to be fixing things with Star.

Another issue altogether. The one thing he could and should not ignore was the fact that Tom had cursed him for getting too close to Star. Star wasn't his. She was Tom's girlfriend.

Tom shouldn't have cursed him. It was a terrible thing to do to anybody, but it was an act of reprisal for kissing Star. Not one to punish his own girlfriend, he took it out on Marco instead. Marco felt that if the roles were reversed, he would've confronted Tom, and maybe they would've come to blows. No wonder that Tom hadn't apparently done anything.

He was okay with how things turned out. He was with Star. Marco, now cursed with hatred and supernatural kleptomania, was far away from them.

Marco twirled his scissors one more time around his fingers, before catching them. With a sigh, he realized that despite now having his scissors, he still wasn't sure what to do next. Most importantly, he needed the cure to his afflictions. He couldn't be around anyone and be stealing like this. At the very least, afterward, he could go work with Eclipsa without fear of incident. Eclipsa said that she could cure him if she knew who was responsible, as well as a sample of the original hex, but he thought that if he talked to Tom privately, he could get cured faster, as well as hopefully getting any of the ill-will and bad blood out of the way.

It wasn't his first choice and had to remind himself that he wasn't confronting Tom. It would be more out of penitence; Marco thought that with all things considered, he couldn't blame Tom. The curse probably wasn't supposed to affect him this much, but according to Higgs herself, she had given him the contents of a whole bottle when he was meant to be given a capful. It was from her admittance, and it was the same that confessed that she was a liar, a vindictive and terrible person. He was better off leaving her alone.

She had looked so miserable. The truth had not come easily and knowing this made him want to understand.

Trying to oust her from his mind, he cut open a portal. Entering and exiting it on the other side, he found them: River, Star, and Tom. They were talking in varying degrees of excitement around a map that was placed on a tall tree stump and looking at a castle. They hadn't noticed him yet, so he called out to them while he closed the portal. "Hey Star, Tom, River!"

Their reactions were animated, but they did look surprised to see him. River hastily told him to keep his voice down because they were going to sneak into the castle, but Marco didn't pay him much mind. Star wasn't exactly subtle, and neither was River, to begin with. Star looked like she was going to run up to hug him, but he stepped backward from her, reminding her that he was still cursed. Before he could become acidic towards her, he told them that he'd come to talk to Tom.

"Eh?" Tom looked noticeably nervous all of a sudden. "Me? About what?"

Gotcha. Didn't even need Higgs to tell me. Still, I ought to keep this private. Marco's reasoning made sense to him. He didn't want to clue in Star on this. All three of them knowing about the kiss caused the mess in the first place, and although he wanted to be with Star, he couldn't allow them to fight and break them up over something that he did. "Eclipsa wants to make something to, uhh…–" He tried to think of a plausible-enough lie, " –She says you can help me get more of the ingredient to make the potions that bring back the stuff I steal. Like my scissors. See? It was missing, and she helped bring it back," he rambled. "She made a potion, but Tom could be able to help her make more of it."

Star stared in surprise at the dimensional scissors. "I didn't even realize, Marco. That's great! And she can help with the hate-thing too, right?"

He wasn't about to involve the woman anymore in his lies. "Maybe, maybe not. But it's a start."

"But why do you want to talk to him in private?" River queried.

Quick, Marco, think! "I don't want anything to happen to Star because of the curse." This was the truth, but she interpreted in the way he wanted her to, despite how much he disliked it. She was, no doubt, thinking about the night he had nearly assaulted her with the rock when he was implying causing tension by openly revealing that Tom had been the one to curse him. Without waiting on anyone's say-so, he started pushing Tom away who looked annoyed with the act. "Move your legs, Tom," he hissed discretely into the demon's ear, "or I could stay, and start talking about who cursed me."

In shock, Tom almost took off running, keeping stride with the Diaz until they left the small clearing and into a forest of dying trees and rotting vines. Making sure they were out of earshot, Lucitor turned on Marco. "I didn't curse you! And besides, don't you have a list of people you should be looking for? You know, one of the people who's actually responsible?" he asked sarcastically.

"Yeah, you did. She told me it was you!"

"What? Who?" Tom demanded.

Marco hesitated, suddenly not wanting to implicate Higgs and her admittance. "A squire told me. Someone saw you making Higgs do it," he lied.

Tom was indignant. "That's a lie, dude. I didn't curse you."

"Quit lying. I know you did. You KNOW you did, so why are you dragging this out?!" Tom looked away for a moment. During this, Marco wondered if he was going to continue to refute the claim, but he gave in easily.

"Okay. So what? Yeah, I did. But I didn't force her. I was paying her. She hardly needed convincing, 'cause I heard she hates your guts. But I didn't figure on the curse ending up so bad though, honest."

I know about that. "I don't need the explanation, I just want to be done with all this. You got your revenge, the prank, whatever the heck this was. I kissed Star, and you cursed me to put distance between us. You got the distance. It's not fair, because she's still my friend too! I wasn't trying to break you guys up. I didn't want to get between you two. The kiss just happened, and this crazy goblin guy in the booth wouldn't stop bothering us about it–"

"Funny how we don't intend for things to happen, but they still do. All she talks about is you, wishing you were out here helping her," Tom said bitterly. "See the castle? Gonna storm it for the third time to look for Moon. If anything, I'd want you here to talk some sense into her, but I can't trust you within talking distance with her. I heard that you came close to attacking her. The curse is too bad, too dangerous."

"So cure me. I won't even stick around that much. I'll just stay with Eclipsa, or search for Moon somewhere else," Marco suggested. At this, Tom looked even more apprehensive, and Marco caught it, realizing that something was wrong. "What is it? You can cure me, right?"

"It's not that kind of curse, Marco. It'll go away on its own, as soon as you love somebody else."

Marco froze. "What? Love somebody else–… are you serious…?" He grabbed Tom by his collar, yelling in the demon's face. "Are you serious?! What kind of stupid curse is this? And how stupid are you to put one like that on me?"

"Kinda like Naysaya. It has to run its course," Tom answered demurely, afraid that they were about to come to blows, "I thought it was a good idea. It would make you annoy her, not hurt her. Get on her nerves. She'd spend more time with me, instead of you. Eventually, you'd crush on somebody else, and when that happened, the curse wouldn't be necessary anymore and it'd go away on its own. I really didn't mean for it to end up like this."

He could understand it, as much as he didn't want to. Worse yet, he could tell that Tom was speaking the truth. Marco wanted to throttle him, but Star was close by. No telling how much she might've heard, and the sounds of a scuffle would bring her running. He let Tom go and turned away, not wanting the demon to see how upset he was. "Couldn't we have worked it out like normal people? Do you just curse everyone for anything they do wrong?"

"Nothing about this is normal, Marco. I've already got my mom and Relicor looking to see if anything can be done about it. Tell Eclipsa about the curse if you want. But please don't tell Star."

Marco exploded, turning on Tom. "That's bullcrap! I ought to tell her everything! I'm the victim in all this. Why do I have to keep quiet just to keep you happy?"

Now it was Tom's turn to get angry. "I'm the one the two of you let down, kissing one another behind my back. I had enough rights in the Underworld to fight you to the death for it, and I didn't even bring it to a dispute."

"Then the Underworld's stupid too."

"Oh? And what would you have done if it had been you in my place, huh Marco?" Tom demanded. Marco didn't know. It didn't matter if he had Tom's powers or if he was still plain Marco. He didn't know what he would've done if Star and he had been together, only for Tom to come between them. Talk to Tom, maybe. Admonish Star. It would've strained all of their relationships. It would've also sparked a dangerous question.

What if she loves him more than me?

No doubt the same question that was going through Tom's head.

The demon's solution had been a clean one –…extremely selfish… – but it was clean. The idea behind it was simple, only that it was worsened by the middleman that Tom hired to help keep suspicion off of himself. If Marco would only have annoyed Star, at its worst, then it wouldn't have been such a bad curse. They would've grown apart. Maybe still be friends, or break up and become friends again later, but Star would've moved on, continuing to be with Tom.

So that's all he had to do. He had to stay away from Star long enough to not love her anymore. It's what he would've wanted Tom to do.

He didn't know if he was being nice, being forgiving, or simply having enough restraint to not punch Tom in the face.

"Try to find a cure or a workaround for me, Tom," he said at last, giving up, "I'll help search to find Moon too, on my own. I'll stay away from Star. But you need to talk to her about what happened. If it's one thing I learned today…" Marco's cracks widened, almost breaking. He tried not to sound emotional as he realized that he'd been losing ever since the day started, "If it's just one thing I learned, it's that we shouldn't pretend that important things like this didn't happen. It's not fair to any of the others involved. You need to talk to her, and find out how she feels, and tell her how you feel about it, and about her."

Tom sputtered. "It'll make things awkward! And because of you! What if…" Lucitor became dejected. "What if she doesn't even like me anymore–"

"And if she doesn't, are you going to pretend that she does, trying to keep her to yourself?" Marco asked. It was a question that didn't need answering and all it did was make Tom wretchedly depressed. It didn't make Marco feel any better for dragging the demon down to his emotional wavelength. "Take care of Star, try to keep her out of trouble. And all three of you need to take a shower, you reek."

Despite himself, Tom sniffed his armpit briefly. "And what'll you do?"

Marco thought about his answer in the time it took for him to use his dimensional scissors to open a portal. Before he made his exit, he checked his pockets to see if he had stolen anything from the demon and found nothing.

Finding nothing reminded him of the fact that some of the things he stole apparently went to some sort of magical space.

"I guess I'll go get drunk."