SvTFOE: Bad Dreams

Star Vs. The Forces of Evil - Bad Dreams

Early morning at the Diaz residence, a familiar figure was sitting at the table for breakfast: Star Butterfly, Princess of the Kingdom of Mewni.

"Hey Star, how do you like your toaster pastries again?" Marco called out from in the kitchen, "Want me to let the toaster run a bit more?"

"No thanks, just the normal way you make them."

"Okay!"

A few minutes later, he came through the the doorway with two plates, toaster strudels and icing packs on both.

"One for you," he set it down in front of her, "and one for me."

"Thanks." Star said languidly, her hand propping up her head on the table.

"Hey uh, Star." Marco started as he sat down, "Thanks again for helping me out yesterday. You know... with Jackie."

"Oh, no problem." She replied.

"No, I really owe you one. One favor, from Marco Diaz."

It was yesterday that Star saved his possible future with Jackie. That is, she managed to talk Jackie, THE Jackie Lynn Thomas, into sitting with Marco for a group project in Miss Skullnick's class: a research paper on battles of the American Revolution. They chose the Battle of Lexington. Not only could Marco talk to her, but also show off what he knew. Of course, Star would need Marco's help for her portion of the group's work. Still, that enough couldn't make up for the favor she had done.

Star looked at the plate, disinterested. Rubbing her eyes, she pulled it closer. Next to her, Marco was chowing down on his icing smothered pastry. It was toasted to the point of a faint but audible crunch.

She took the icing packet and aimlessly spread it about the pastry.

"No cute breakfast doodle?" Marco asked.

"Not today, Marco."

"You okay?" He asked.

"I'm just not feeling it today." She yawned, stretching her arms, "I'm still sleepy."

"Didn't sleep well?" Marco said with his mouthful.

"I couldn't sleep much, but... I think I'll be fine." She sat up and raised her wand, "Glitter Enchanted Espresso!"

While she started on her breakfast, Marco already finished his pastry and a glass of orange juice.

"If you say so." He picked up his dishes and paraded to the kitchen, "I'll wait up for you."

Friday morning. The anticipation for the upcoming weekend was so strong, one could taste it floating around and about in the air. Just a few hours of school and they were through for the week. Star's mind was focused on just getting through those few hours without dozing off to much.

It couldn't be that hard.

---

"Matrix? Like the movie we saw?" Star stared at the paper.

"No, Matrices. Weren't you paying attention this whole week?" Marco looked through the packet," The test is on Monday."

She raised her wand. Marco motioned her to put it away.

"Star, this is a review packet."

"I know, I know. I can just get it done with magic as—"

"C'mon. You can use a calculator on the test, not math-smart mantis imps," Marco admonished.

"I can just... look on your test," she rubbed her eyes and inhaled deeply, "I wanna take a nap."

Star rested her face on the desk and closed her eyes. Marco looked at her. She had been like this all morning. Looking closer at her eyes, he noticed dark rings.

"Are you okay?"

"Really, really, reallyreallyreally sleepy, that's all."

"Did something happen last night?"

She opened her eyes and looked at Marco, still resting her head.

"No, it's just..." Her eyes darted off to a random corner, "hmm... a bad dream."

Marco looked at her, and then at his packet. Picking up one corner, he looked at the contents. It was a review/study hall period, but no one actually used the time to study.

"Do you wanna talk about it?"

"Welllll..." She took deep, pondering breath, "It's... nothing. Really," she affirmed.

Star sat back up.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah!" She said. Somehow thinking about it made her more responsive to Marco.

"Are you sure you're sure?"

"Yeah, i'm fine, come on. So, matrix-cees... do we have to free the numbers from these prisons or something?"

Marco furrowed his brow.

"Okay..." He nodded, "So, these numbers that go up and down are a column—"

"Like the columns in a palace?"

"Yeah! And these ones are the rows, like... like the army marching outside of the palace."

"Are they going to kill this smaller matrix-cee? Cuz' 'three-four-two-one' is a lot bigger than 'zero-one-one-zero'

"Not quite..."

---

The school day passed quickly. Tests moved to Monday meant free periods. Study hall meant the day went by quicker and teachers had scheduling to argue about. Before they knew it, they were home. A movie night and a few plates of nachos later, Friday was drawing to a close. After a couple hundred "you should probably go to bed's" the two parted ways to their respective bedrooms for the night.

Marco tucked himself into bed and fell asleep after a few minutes.

It would be that a few hours later, a sudden noise stirred Marco, who was still deep asleep.

"-arco"

That weird semi-awareness of sleep started to creep over him. The feeling that anyone gets when they're being woken up, slowly thawing out of sleep and moving towards consciousness as minutes passed by like seconds.

"Maaarco"

He started to shift around before finally—

"Marco!"

"Huh, what?" A disturbed Marco jerked awake. Across from him, standing in the crack of the ajar door of his room, a shadowy silhouette stood.

"Marco? Are you awake?"

"S-star? It's..." he looked over to the nightstand, "two in the morning."

"I know..."

"Is th—w—what's wrong?"

Star entered his room and stepped a little closer, a pillow in one hand and a blanket in the other.

"I—uh... I had a..." she started.

Marco sat up further, ambient light from the open door casting on his face.

"I had another... nightmare." She said.

"Oh. Here, come in. Are you alright?"

She stood still, mute for a few seconds to build the audacity to ask:

"Can I sleep with you?"

"S—sleep... with me? Star, it's like two in the morning and... and you can't.. can't you just..."

"You said that you owe me one, right? One favor?"

"No, I mean yeah but... but this is..."

"Marco." She said softly. He thought back to all of today... or yesterday considering it was two o'clock in the morning.

"Fiiiine..." He made room, shimmying over and pulling his pillow with him. She walked forward and found her way into his bed in the dark. Marco pulled his covers aside to make room for her.

"I promise I won't try to disturb you." Star attempted to assuage her disturbance.

"Good night, Star." He said with a sigh.

"'Night, Marco."

Once more, he found himself welcomed back into the realm of sleep.

---

Unfortunately, moments later he was brought to an unwelcome awakening. Something kept moving around in the bed, rustling and bumping into him.

He woke up once more, admittedly perturbed by whatever disturbed the peace. As he started to regain his senses in consciousness, he realized the source of it.

It was Star.

"N—no..."

Star shifted around in Marco's bed. He noticed her blanket was practically off the bed. She'd shaken it off.

"Wh-what..." She uttered with grunts and groans of pain.

This was the nightmare she was talking about. She was having another one of them.

"Star." Sitting up, he gently shook her shoulder, "Star, wake up."

She jolted awake with a sharp gasp.

"Ah!" She exclaimed, panting heavily.

"Star?"

She looked around, frantically, finally fixating her eyes on Marco. She stared at him for a few seconds, panting heavily. The first words she uttered were:

"M—Marco? Y—you're... alive."

"Star."

She hugged him, burying her face in his chest.

"Of course i'm alive, Star..." He didn't know what her nightmare was about. It was probably three or four in the morning, he was dazed by being woken up like this again.

Whatever she cried was muffled by both her his chest and her actual crying.

"It's okay. I'm not going anywhere, Star." He reciprocated the hug, wrapping his arms around her.

"I'm not going anywhere."