Chapter Text
Marco Diaz hadn't always hated showers.
At first, when she was tiny and first had to take a shower by herself, they were only scary in comparison to taking baths. But then again, at that age, she was more than a bit of a fraidy-cat and hated getting water in her eyes. (Weirdly, now, Marco didn't like baths instead but if you'd seen Glass Shark 3: The Final Cut you couldn't blame her because that post-credits scene with the invisible baby sharks swimming into the town's water supply…? *shivers*)
But for a long time she enjoyed showers. She enjoyed being clean—or at least had a strong enough germophobic compulsion so that if she didn't shower every night she felt all gross and couldn't sleep. Most of all, she enjoyed that moment where you rinsed the shampoo out, and got to run your fingers through your hair, and kept your eyes closed and it didn't seem like anything existed outside of the warmth of the water all around you.
But that had started to change a year or two ago… specifically around the same time other things had begun to change. In a strange way, it was being alone that made it the worst. Not that she'd be very comfortable taking a shower with someone else, because, like, that also seemed totally weird. But being alone meant it was just Marco and her insecurities and her body and anything would be better than that. Even the constant low-level freakout of having to be socially aware and acting normally around other people—at least then it'd mean she wouldn't be left alone with her thoughts.
And of course, it was in the shower that Marco noticed more hair where it wasn't supposed to be.
It shouldn't have come as a surprise. She knew her Dad after all, and being able to cook great nachos wasn't the only thing in her DNA. And that led her on a panicked examination to make sure that there wasn't something else she had missed, and a realization that the peach fuzz on her face was back. Everything was wrong and…
And that chest hair. Rodrigo.
It was funny, in a bitter way. She could remember being so, so proud of it once, not even that long ago. Back then it seemed exciting—it meant that change was coming, and finally—finally!—something would click into place and she would suddenly change, and her body would actually make sense so she could actually take a deep breath and feel like she belonged inside of it.
That wasn't how things worked out though. She knew that now.
Now when she thought about her single chest hair, she couldn't help but relive her most recent return to St. Olga's. It had only been a few nights ago, but Marco knew how her brain worked, and felt certain she'd be stuck obsessing over the memories for a long time to come. It was all tainted now, even the good moments, the times when she forgot everything and just got to look up at her statue and see herself as the beautiful princess everyone else saw. That too was mixed up in a complicated tangle of guilt and deception and inauthenticity.
"Living by your true colors," she had said. "Loving who you are." And she was so close to saying it all, to explaining. For once it seemed like maybe things would be okay, and maybe the other princesses would understand, and maybe Marco could even find the acceptance she so desperately craved.
But then Miss Heinous had arrived and everything unraveled.
Miss Heinous had made it clear what mattered. Marco's body proved she was male. And even if the princesses didn't care, they didn't disagree either.
"Why does it matter if he's a boy?"
"He can be a princess if he wants to!"
But that was the thing, wasn't it? Marco had never really cared about being a princess. Marco just wanted to be a girl. But she wasn't. She couldn't be.
That was when the creeping deadness in her chest had really set in, like her emotions had frozen over. She forced a smile on her face and made some comment to Star about the dress being uncomfortable, the words tasting like ash in her mouth. She took selfies as "Marco Turdina, Boy Princess," and felt like her own consciousness had floated away somewhere, looking down on her body as it went through the motions of being social like it was an unfamiliar, alien thing.
Marco still didn't feel like she had figured out how to come all the way back. She wanted to cry, she really did. But she couldn't even do that. As she stood there in the shower, shampoo stinging her eyes, she just felt that numbness in her chest, like even her emotions had deserted her.
When she got out of the shower, she stood in front of the mirror for a long time, pulling her towel up high against her chest and staring into the fogged-up surface where she could just see a vaguely Marco-shaped blob.
That was really the only way she could stand mirrors. She could pretend the obscured, blurry person looking back was someone happy with themselves, who looked on the outside like they felt on the inside. It was kind of silly, but it was nice, too. Most nights, she would just say something encouraging to her blurred reflection and then dart out of the bathroom before the fog could fully dissipate. Something reasonable and moderate, like "You know what? You're okay, Marco Diaz."
But tonight, she had to shave. And so she wiped off the mirror, averting her eyes until she couldn't avoid it any longer.
When she finally saw herself clearly, all of the doubts and disgust and dread hit her like a wave. Everything was wrong. She hated it, so, so much. She could see the shadow of hair across her lip now and it made her sick, multiplied by the memories of Star's magic and the beard incident, which still was a recurring feature in her nightmares.
But even aside from that, everything was just off. Her face was shaped wrong and her arms gangly and shoulders too wide and hips too narrow and she knew that everything was only going to get worse soon. Even her hair—
Marco had been thinking about growing her hair out for a while now. She figured that was a way to feel a little in control, a little more secretly like herself, even if she also had no idea how to respond to curious remarks by Star or her mother. Even now, it was ever-so-slightly longer than usual, brushing down across her ears or at the back of her neck in a strangely nice way, like a quiet reminder that it was okay to be who she was.
But then when she looked in the mirror she knew it wasn't anywhere near the cute style that she secretly imagined it one day being. She just saw a stupid, ugly boy who needed a haircut soon. And it wasn't like any haircut would help either. She hated those too, because it was another reason she had to look at herself afterwards and still see the body she felt stuck inside.
It made her stomach tie itself up in knots. It made her want to just do something drastic. Like— like shave her hair off entirely, not because it would help, but just because nothing she could do would ever actually work and the despair made her feel like it would be better to just wreck everything than have to keep suffering.
Instead, she picked up the razor, hand shaking slightly. She focused on the things that mattered, ignoring the vice crushing her heart. She needed to shave her face and chest.
"You're okay, Marco Diaz," she whispered, so soft that she could barely hear it herself.
She just wished she could believe herself.