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Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum drew in a deep, steadying breath, then let it out slowly. A bead of sweat rolled its way down her forehead, and she brushed it away irritably with the grimy sleeve of her once white lab coat.This was it. One more teaspoon of that odd glowing green goo she had found at the bottom of that contaminated lake. Two pieces of the Candy Kingdom’s best—and rarest—black mentos, carefully cultivated over four long months of mining in the Candy Caves. And finally, one. Last. Drop. Of the Candy Kingdom’s finest and most refined brown cola.Steady now… steady…Gently and oh, so carefully, she pinched the head of the dropper…“BONNIE WHAT ARE YOU UP TO?”Bubblegum let out a startled eep. The dropper slipped out of her hand and the whole thing fell into the glass beaker, which was followed by a massive BOOM that shook her bones, sent a cloud of probably toxic smoke into her lab, and seemed to rattle the very structure of the rock candy that the old tower was built from.Coughing, eyes watering, Bubblegum slammed her fist onto a large red button on the wall beside her marked ‘emergency.’ Water rained down from the sprinklers on the ceiling and the smoke began to clear, revealing a certain floating, surprised, and—much to Bubblegum’s extreme agitation—laughing-her-fangs-off, vampire queen.“Woah, PBubbs.” She laughed, plugging her nose and waving the air in front of her. “I may not need to breathe but have some class!”Bubblegum sighed, righting a chair that had been knocked over in the small but incredibly foul-smelling explosion. “What do you want, Marceline?”“Oh, you know.” Marceline stretched lazily from the tips of her fingers to her toes, still suspended in midair, stretching so far that she somehow ended upside down. She stayed that way but she relaxed, long black hair swaying slightly with the movement. “I just wanted to ask if you wanted to hang out.”“Hang out.” Bubblegum intoned, her face a pink marble mask of incredulity.“Yeah, you know, hang out? Chill and play videogames? Toss pebbles into the abyss, like we used to?” Marceline cartwheeled back to an upward position and floated toward Bubblegum. “Hang out.”“I know what hanging out is, Marceline.” Bubblegum said coldly, crossing her arms over her chest. “And I shouldn’t be surprised that you haven’t even apologized for ruining four months of research and planning.” With one arm she gestured toward the floor, littered with broken glass and green liquid that was now beginning to bubble. “Cleaning this up is going to be almost impossible.”The sprinklers sputtered out, leaving Bubblegum fuming and dripping wet.Marceline just shrugged, shaking her hair out like a dog would shake water from its fur. “I’m sorry Bonnie. Pep Buts can clean it up though, and now you and I can hang out.” Her grin was wide. The dim red glow of the emergency lights glinted off of one of her fangs.Bubblegum closed her eyes and counted to ten backwards, then she did it again. “Look.” She said. “I have so much work to do.” Her words were clipped, angry. “And now I have to clean up the mess that you made. Even if I wanted to ‘hang out’, I can’t. Not tonight.”“Tomorrow then?”Bubblegum scoffed, continuously amazed that someone could possibly be so clueless about how little they were wanted. She pointed at the open window, where moonlight was streaming into the darkened lab. “Get out.”“Yeesh.” Marceline frowned, apparently just now grasping the situation. “I’ll leave, Bonnie. Sorry.” She drifted toward the night sky.“And close that window!” Bubblegum demanded, not deigning to look in Marceline’s direction.The window was slammed shut, and Bubblegum shook her head at the wreckage in front of her.The mixture was already starting to seep through the floorboards.Marceline the Vampire Queen drifted aimlessly through the night.Now I have to clean up the mess you madeBubblegum’s words buzzed around Marcy’s head like an angry bee: they were ultimately harmless, but they sure did sting.“Sometimes it feels like you clean up all my messes, Bonibell,” Marceline said aloud, turning her face to the sky. The night was warm, the sky partially overcast, speckled here and there with starlight that had managed to make its way through the clouds. A light breeze lifted her hair from the nape of her neck, which would probably have felt wonderfully welcome had Marceline not been a vampire and, as such, unbothered by trivial mortal things like the weather.“Princess Bonnibel.” Marceline muttered under her breath.It wasn’t like Marceline had known Bonnie before she was Princess Bubblegum. They had met when the Candy Kingdom was still just a Candy Village, but Bonnibel was ever so princessy, even then. Things were different, though. Bonnie was less restrained, less rigid. She wasn’t so piled with responsibility. A bit naïve, but she was free.Well, as free as she could be watching over seventeen candy children who might explode at any moment from even the slightest bit of surprise.Marceline shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and landed on the edge of a rocky cliff. She had been moving without a destination, but somehow she had ended up here anyway. The Abyss. With a dry laugh, she kicked a rock off the cliff, into the swirling chasm.It wasn’t the same.Marceline was hundreds of years old. She had seen friends, loved ones grow old and die. Seen seeds grow to mighty forests; forests chopped down and cleared for settlements. She had fought and killed and she had survived. But the people she grew close to, just about everyone she had learned to love was gone now, buried underground.Worm food.Not Bonnibel. While the world aged around them, the two of them stayed the same. Never changing among the constant churning of the rest of the world’s mortal butter.Well, there was Simon. But he was a different story entirely.Marceline kicked another rock into the Abyss.“Princess Bonnie,” she said.She sighed and turned to leave, but then she caught a slight movement out of the corner of her eye. Rolling toward her was a rock, a small pebble not unlike the one she had just kicked into the Abyss. Frowning, she moved closer to examine it, when another rock hit her square in the eye. “Ow! What the hey?”Marceline jumped back into the air and glared over the Abyss, as if she would find someone there, throwing pebbles at her as a prank, a lame attempt at humor. “This isn’t funny!” she yelled into the void. There was no answer. No laughter at her expense. Nothing. The strange, roiling mass of black clouds and darkness below gaped at her in complete, eerie silence.She and Bonnie had discovered and named the Abyss when they were younger, playing at explores and adventurers. They visited it only a handful of times, mostly to hide from Bonnie’s growing responsibilities. Marceline gulped, remembering now why they had eventually decided not to return.A sudden shadow loomed behind her.The moon, obscured for a moment by a drifting cloud?Marceline turned.It took a lot to frighten the Vampire Queen. She had seen countless deaths: bloody; violent; planned; spontaneous. She had seen and known more monsters than she cared to remember, and had learned long ago that most of the monsters this world had to offer turned out to reside within the people you thought you knew. She had laughed in death’s face, and death had laughed back. Her father was the actual ruler of the Nigh-O-Sphere, for Glob’s sake.But when Marceline turned and saw the creature belonging to the shadow that had fallen over her, she screamed.Unfortunately, no one was there to hear it but the clouds of perpetual darkness below.
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Princess Bubblegum tapped impatiently on Marceline’s front door, again. “Marcy? You home?”There was no answer. Bubblegum sighed and looked down at the box in her hands, tied nicely with a large pink ribbon. “I brought rocks,” she yelled at the silent house. “You know, for the Abyss?” Bubblegum bit her lip, setting the box down at the bottom of the steps and then plonking herself down beside it with a huff.Leave it to Marcy to make her beg.“Look, I felt bad about yesterday and I moved my schedule around so we can hang out.” Bubblegum twisted a lock of pink hair around her finger. “I know I don’t make a lot of time for you, and it’s not your fault and I’m trying to fix it.” She rested her chin on her knees, blushing slightly, although it was always hard to tell against her pink skin. Nevertheless, she was almost glad Marceline wasn’t out here with her now. “I guess I’m not so good at apologies either, huh?”After a few more long moments of silence, she stood again and banged on the door. “Marceline it’s still daytime, I know you’re in there. Open. Up!”On the last pound of her fist on the door, it creaked open—she had to remind Marcy to fix that lock one of these days—revealing nothing but an empty house. “Hiding, are we?” she scoffed. “Marcy, you know I always beat you at hide and seek.” The halfhearted taunt died between the four walls of the front room, much to Bublegum’s immense surprise. Marceline wasn’t usually one to pass up an opportunity to tease her, especially when it came to such a blatant lie as that one.Bubblegum never won at hide and seek.“Okay, getting worried now,” Bubblegum called weakly at what was clearly an empty house, abandoned and quite obviously missing one sassy half-demon queen.Bubblegum frowned. Where could she be? It was close to evening, but the sun had only just began to set. Marceline didn’t usually venture out of her house during these hours; the sun had much more opportunity to make contact with her skin when it was so low in the sky.Unless she had spent the night somewhere else…Bubblegum placed her hands on her heated cheeks and closed her eyes, shook her head, told herself it didn’t matter, that she wasn’t allowed to be upset about stuff like that, even if it were the case.Which, knowing Marcy, it probably wasn’t.But still…She was startled by a sudden buzzing and a sharp rrrrrnnnnnngggg coming from her backpack. She fished it out roughly, dropping it only once, willing her heart to slow it’s panicked beating. This whole Missing Marceline business was freaking her out more than it should have. “Come on Bubblegum, it’s just your phone,” she muttered to herself before bringing the phone to her ear and answering with a clipped “yes?”“It’s me.”“Peps?” Bubblegum raised her eyebrows. “You never call me on this phone unless it’s an emergency.” He stomach dropped. “Has something happened to the candy people?”“It’s Marceline, actually.” Peppermint Butler intoned from the other side of the line. “She’s here at the castle. You should probably get back right away, your majesty.”“On my way.” She was already walking briskly toward the cave’s entrance as she said the words and hung up the phone.The ride back to her kingdom was agonizing, Bubblegum having almost immediately realized upon mounting her bird that she should have asked just exactly what the problem was. Unfortunately, she had not, which gave her the whole stretch of the flight to worry and fret and invent scenarios in her head.She burst into the front doors of the castle minutes later. “Marceline!” she cried, prepared to fight with fists or words if it became necessary, but all she was greeted with was confusion as she beheld the scene in front of her: Finn and Jake and Marceline, crowded around a small table, sipping tea out of small plastic cups and eating cookies. An odd scene, but nothing compared to what Marceline was wearing. The punk-rock, half-torn clothes she usually wore were replaced by a lacy pink gown, and her usual bedhead was twisted into ringlets of curls.“Weiird, right?” Peppermint Butler was beside her now—although she hadn’t seen him come in—leaning against the wall and staring at Marceline with a look of blatant horror.“Yeah it’s weird.” She agreed irritably, “but I thought you said it was an emergency.”“A fashion emergency.” Peppermint Butler agreed, nodding his entire body. “Look at that dress.”“Peps, that’s my dress.”He held up his hands. “I tell it like it is, Princess.”“Princess!” Finn yelled, having just noticed her. “Come join our party!” He waved his arm above his head, as if she hadn’t heard him.She stomped over, was about to start in on where Marceline had been and what had she been doing etc. etc., but that fluffy lacy number really did look bizarre on the Vampire Queen. So bizarre that Bubblegum found herself laughing instead. “Marceline why are you dressed like that?”To her surprise, Marceline’s eyes began to water. She looked helplessly at Finn and sniffled. “Why is this pink lady laughing at me?”Bubblegum opened her mouth to answer: “You must be joking.” But Finn was out of his chair with his hand over her mouth in seconds.“HAHAHAHA, she’s kidding! You look great Marceline!” He pulled a confused and struggling Bubblegum aside, expression turning darkly serious, and removed his hand. “We found her wandering around Breakfast Kingdom last night. She didn’t remember her name and she has no idea who she is. It’s some crazy bananas stuff, Peebles. Like her whole brain has been wiped or something.”"Last night? Why didn't you call me? Why did you bring her here?"Finn shrugged. "Taking care of her was a lot of work. She's been really confused, and I think pretty scared. We brought her here because, well, we figured you'd know what to do."Bubblegum furrowed her brows. "How long have you guys been here?" Princess Bubblegum had left the castle to gather pebbles just a few hours before. How had she missed them?"Not long." Finn scratched the back of his head. "Long enough to get her some new clothes. She insisted on changing out of hers. Something about wanting to wear pink instead."Finn sat back down before Bubblegum even had a chance to process his words, smiling once again, and poured Marceline some more tea.Princess Bubblegum crossed her arms over her chest and frowned. She would have to get to the bottom of this, somehow.Well at least there is one upside to all of this, she thought, looking at the vampire with appreciation. She’s certainly never dressed better.
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“How are you feeling Marcy? Do you want a glass of water? Some juice?”“No thanks, pink lady.”The two of them were seated on the bed in one of the palace’s ridiculous amount of guest rooms. The window was shuttered shut. Although it was still nighttime, it would be daylight in just a few hours, and Bubblegum figured out that Marceline hadn’t slept at all since losing herself. Sleep deprivation wasn’t something to take lightly, as Bubblegum knew all too well from all those times she had locked herself in her lab for days on end, never sleeping, seldom eating. Marcy deserved better.Bubblegum sighed. “You can call me Princess Bubblegum.”Marceline beamed. “Okay. Thanks for the pajamas, Princess.” She picked at the lacy pink nightgown Bubblegum had found in the back of her closet. “I’m sorry I spilled tea all over your dress.”Bubblegum laughed. “It’s no problem. It wasn’t one of my favorites anyway,” she said fiercely, thinking about Peppermint Butler’s words from earlier.Bubblegum’s smile faded as she watched Marceline play with the fabric of her nightgown. “Do you remember anything?” she asked softly. “Do you have any idea how any of this happened, how you lost your memories?”Marceline wrapped her arms around her legs and rested her chin on her knees. “Not really. I remember feeling… lonely. And just wishing I wasn’t lonely anymore.” She smiled up at Princess Bubblegum. “I can’t imagine why, though. Apparently I have all kinds of friends.”Bubblegum winced. “Right…”Marceline’s smile dimmed. “We were friends, weren’t we Princess?”“Ah… of course we were!” Bubblegum scratched the back of her head nervously. “Really good friends.”Marceline’s smile was back in full force, and Bubblegum almost toppled over backwards. Marceline hadn’t smiled at her like that since… since—“I can tell.” Marceline continued, completely oblivious to Bubblegum’s flustered thoughts. “You’ve been so nice to me.”Bubblegum looked down at her hands, shame coloring her cheeks. Some friend she was. She had neglected to tell Marceline that they had fought mere hours before her mind was wiped, that Bubblegum hadn’t been a good friend for a very, very long time. The princess squared her shoulders and lifted her chin. She could fix this. She would fix this. She would get Marceline’s memories back and then she could deal with her feelings later.“Hey Marcy? Can I ask you something?”“Sure, but I don’t know how much I can answer. My head still feels like goop.”“I was just wondering… why the pink dress? That isn’t the type of thing that you normally wear.” Not that this version of Marceline would know that.“Oh, yeah, well when I came to I was wearing different clothes, black ones, but they were full of holes. I figured I must have fallen into some bushes or something, so I asked the bear kid and the stretchy dog to find me something else to wear.”Bubblegum burst out in giggles. “That’s just how you wear your clothes, Marceline.”“Oh!” Marceline looked genuinely surprised, but then she looked down at the pink nightgown and shook her head. “That wasn’t all, though.” She smoothed down the fabric over her knees. “I did remember one thing when I came to. Just one.”“Oh?” Bubblegum sat up straighter. Maybe she could use this to begin to figure things out. Perhaps this memory would be the key to getting all of Marcy’s memories back. “What was it?”Marceline shrugged, then looked up at Bubblegum. “It was just the one thing. The color pink.”Bubblegum froze. A fierce blush began to make its way up her neck. “Pink.”Marceline nodded. “Yeah. I just remembered that I really, really like pink.” She shrugged again. “I assumed it was my favorite color because it stood out so much.” She grinned up at Bubblegum. “I must have just been thinking about you.”“M-me!” Bubblegum’s voice rose to a squeak. She cleared her throat, tried again managed a much more normal voice. “Me?”“Yeah, you. All of you. You, this building, even those little sticky people outside.” Marceline threw up her hands in joy. “Everything here is pink!”“R-right, the Candy Kingdom! Of course!” Bubblegum swallowed her surprised disappointment. Dear Glob, she was so stupid.“I must live here, right?”“Actually, no.” Bubblegum smoothed down her shirt, regained her composure. This was not like her. She was not one to get flustered and flushed so easily like this. She decided to attribute it to stress. She would have to ask Peppermint Butler to make her some chamomile tea after this. “But I can show you your house tomorrow, after the sun goes down. I have some stuff to take care of first.”“Because the sun hurts.” Marceline rubbed at her arm, nursing a small burn that Bubblegum had not noticed before. “I learned that the hard way.” She shuddered. “Your bedroom window is much too big, Princess.”Bubblegum blinked. "You were in my bedroom?"Marceline nodded. "That stretchy dog fixed my hair." She twirled a black ringlet around her finger.It made sense, as that was the only place with the necessary tools to get her hair to curl like that. Although when exactly Jake had learned to fix hair like that was a mystery Bubblegum wasn't sure she wanted to solve.On another note, it was just like Marceline, to go wherever she wanted whenever she wanted without thinking about consequences.“You seem like yourself,” Bubblegum finally said. “Mostly. Sort of.”Marceline yawned, stretching out her arms. She laid her head down on the pillow but held Bubblegum’s stare. “Is that good?”“Very good.”Marceline smiled as she closed her eyes, and Bubblegum pushed herself up off the bed, making her way to the door.“Goodnight Princess.”“Goodnight Marceline.” Bubblegum paused with one hand on the door, gripped the frame. “And you can call me Bonnie.” “What do you mean you’re taking a break?”Princess Bubblegum finished tying one pink combat boot into a neat pink knot, then moved to the other. “I mean I’m taking a break,” she said. “It’ll be incredibly short, and if everything goes according to plan nobody will even know I’m gone. I’ve built a remote controlled body double that’s exactly like me in every way, physically.” She stood, reaching for her coat and backpack that hung ready for her on the wall. “I left a manual for her operation with Finn and Jake.”“But—”Bubblegum knelt and patted her increasingly worried butler on his small peppermint head. “Everything is going to be just fine, Peps. I promise.”Peppermint Butler muttered something about fragile candy hearts and explosions, but Bubblegum ignored him and instead stood up, glancing out one of the numerous throne room windows.The princess had thought about it all day, her mind unable to focus on her duties and her subjects and instead fixated on the vampire sleeping upstairs. She had finally decided, after hours of stress and deliberation, that the best course of action would be to stay with Marceline for a few days and then decide where to go from there.“I suppose I’ll fetch the vampire.” Peppermint Butler drawled, clearly still unhappy, leaving the room before Bubblegum had a chance to answer.The princess sighed, eyes still fixed on the sky. The sun had finally began to set, thank Glob, casting light through the glass to paint the palace floor with vibrant swatches of orange and scarlet and pink. As if the sky had been waiting for an audience, darkness began to creep into the colors of the sun, the shadows of the city elongating until finally dissolving into the blue-velvet shimmer of night.She wasn’t entirely sure what to do about Marcy, but she had several tentative ideas she was going to test. The main problem was the fact that she didn’t know how Marcy’s memory had been altered, nor did she know how deep the loss went. She could still speak, she still understood certain words and actions. She knew a dog, a human, a candy person when she saw one. It was just her personal history, it seemed, that had been taken from her.Bubblegum had experimented with mind erasure before, of course. But that was the easy part: the taking. Bubblegum had long ago learned that breaking something down was often easier; deconstructing machines, substances—even people—to find out just what those things are made of, their methods of operation. It was putting things back together that was tough, and it almost always required the knowledge of how something worked, why it was set up the way it was, how it could be taken apart.And to her utter dismay, she hadn’t a clue how Marcy had been taken apart.If she had that knowledge, fixing Marceline would have been a snap, but that was the entire problem: Bubblegum didn’t know where to start.When Marceline and Peppermint Butler showed up several minutes later, Bubblegum was frowning, arms crossed, still staring out the window. Her expression softened when she turned, and she offered Marceline a red apple from her pack, which the vampire sucked on greedily.“Thanks, Bonnie. I was starving.”Bubblegum nodded, pulling out a small notebook and a pencil. “So you remember what—how you eat?”Marceline nodded as the two of them headed to the door. “It was something that seemed really obvious,” she said, sinking her teeth back into the apple for another small taste. “Like, I need red or I die. There was no uncertainty about it, even though I’m confused about almost everything else.”“Survival instinct.” Bubblegum scribbled in her notebook before returning it to her pack and opening the front door for Marceline. “After you, Marcy.”The walk to Marceline’s house took twice as long as it should have. She kept stopping to look at the sky like she had never seen it before, to marvel at mundane things such as bugs and puddles and grass. On one occasion she even teared up at the sight of a particularly smooth rock.Bubblegum didn’t comment but merely observed, pulling out her notebook every so often to jot down a few notes. Even though she knew the situation was dire and she wanted Marceline back and she was fairly certain Finn and Jake would find a way to destroy her robot body double before the night's end, Princess Bubblegum actually felt… content. This break from her duties was the first thing she had done for herself in probably a hundred years, and seeing Marceline like this, although it was sad—of course it was sad—it was also sort of… interesting.It was fascinating, really, seeing Marceline with such enthusiasm for life, reacting to the things around her with such innocent wonder. The worst part about being Marceline’s friend had been watching her life stagnate while Bubblegum’s had began to flourish. The princess had created a living, thriving kingdom full of candy people for her to protect, had given herself responsibilities and duties that she couldn’t ignore for the sake of creation, of building something greater than herself.Marceline, though, was different. She did not have the desire to build or to create or to even make much of herself at all. Bubblegum wasn’t even sure Marceline had the capacity to change even if she had wanted to. Marcy was the last living vampire, which meant Bubblegum had no way of knowing whether or not that bite had altered her ability for emotional or mental growth. Sometimes she wondered if that was why the two of them hadn’t worked out, because deep down Bubblegum knew that while she was growing and changing, Marceline was stuck being exactly who she was when she received that bite.“We’re here.” Bubblegum said at last. The moon had risen but it was barely a sliver, and all she could see clearly was Marceline’s pale skin, the darkness around them causing her to appear paler still. The mouth of the cave yawned before them, blacker than the night sky above.Marceline raised her eyebrows. “I live in a cave?”“Yep. Follow me.” Bubblegum ignored the buzz of uneasiness she felt heading alone into that inky darkness and took a step forward, just to have Marceline grip her hand and pull her back out.“I’m sorry,” Marceline said, biting her lip. “It’s so dark. Do you mind?”Bubblegum had to clear her throat several times before she could get any words out. Even then, a strangled “not at all” was all she could manage.It wasn’t just holding Marceline’s hand that had her so flustered—although that was enough to make Bubblegum glad of the darkness that hid the faint flush of her cheeks. It was the tremble in Marceline’s voice. The fear. Bubblegum couldn’t remember the last time she had seen Marceline scared; in fact, she didn’t think she had ever seen the emotion on her face like that, flickering through her eyes like a ripple in a pool of crimson. Bubblegum reminded herself to add that to her notes, later.The darkness lasted only a moment, then the two girls were stumbling toward a single light that had been left on somewhere inside the Vampire Queen’s house.“Thank Glob you’re forgetful,” Bubblegum laughed, glad for the excuse to release Marceline’s hand.Marceline didn’t answer. She floated up to the front door, then around to the side. Glancing through windows, examining the chipped paint on the wooden exterior. Around to the porch she flew, circling the house, until she finally landed softly next to Bubblegum back on the front steps.“Well?” Bubblegum prodded. “Do you remember it?”“Not really. But it feels… familar.” Marceline tapped her chin thoughtfully, stepping back to take in what she could see of the enormous cavern by the light of that one window. “It feels right.”Bubblegum stayed in the front room while Marceline explored her own house like it was brand new. She lowered herself down to the floor and pulled out a sleeping bag and her favorite travel pillow from her pack, then she pulled out her notebook. She proceeded to jot down a few more lines in her neat script, then began to doodle while she waited for Marceline to come back.She was just finishing up an absentminded sketch of Marcy, rough and plainly unlearned, when the vampire appeared right next to her, startling her to the point of flinging her notebook across the room.“Hey Bonnie, did you know I could turn invisible?” Marceline frowned, looking from Bubblegum to the couch and then back again. “Why are you on the floor?”Bubblegum tried to keep the irritation out of her voice while she retrieved her notebook and pencil, remembering that blowing up on Marceline was what started this whole mess in the first place. “Your couch is uncomfortable and hard as a rock. It’s like sleeping on concrete.”Marceline looked thoughtful as she drifted over to the couch, hovering just above the cushions. “That makes sense,” she said. Then: “How do you know that?”“I’ve slept over a couple times.” Bubblegum said, dismissive, as she shoved her notebook back into her pack.“I see.” Marceline lowered herself down to the couch, winced in confirmation, then floated back up. “Did we have many sleepovers?”Tense laughter bubbled out of the Princess’s throat. “Um, yeah. More than a few.”Marceline looked taken aback. “And I made you sleep on the floor?”“Well, no...” Bubblegum’s face began to heat again. “Actually—”The princess was interrupted by the ringing of her phone from within her backpack. “Again with this?” She mumbled. “What now Peps?”Marceline watched her, eyes narrowed, probably wondering what she had been about to say.“They already broke the robot.” Bubblegum rubbed her brows with a thumb and forefinger. “How?”She glanced up to see Marceline float smoothly toward the kitchen, grab a bag of cherries from the fridge, sniff them, pop one into her mouth.“Well did you try turning it off and on again?”Marceline drifted back to the front room, to a rack holding dozens of tapes, looked through them, sucked the red out of another cherry.“The button on the neck, Peps. Underneath the hair. Read the manual.”Marceline pulled a tape off the rack, turned it over, pulled out another.“It worked? Excellent.” Bubblegum hung up the phone without bothering to say goodbye, then she turned it off altogether. She didn’t want any more distractions, not until someone over there figured out the real definition of the word ‘emergency’.“Hey, Bonnie. How do you work this thing?” Marceline asked, attempting to slot a tape into the television upside-down.“Hold on, I’ll do it.” She grabbed the tape from Marceline and shoved it into the machine before settling back on the floor. “What are we watching?”“Heat Signature 5.” Marceline answered, offering Bubblegum a cherry. “It sounded interesting.”Bubblegum pulled out her notebook again. “So you can still read?”“Apparently.”Princess Bubblegum set her notebook to the side and made herself comfortable inside her sleeping bag. It was weird sitting here next to Marcy, watching one of her favorite movies, eating cherries by the light of the television. It was familiar, yet odd, like she had stumbled into a version of her past self that she had never thought she would see again. They hadn’t hung out like this in so long, it almost felt like they were kids again. It felt good. Normal. So normal, in fact, that Bubblegum almost forgot their earlier conversation, what she had been about to confess.Almost.
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The first night was… strange to say the least.Bubblegum woke every few hours, tossing and turning in an attempt to find any sort of comfortable position whatsoever on the floor. She supposed it could have been worse; it was carpeted, and the room was warm. But the carpet was too thin to provide any sort of cushion, and Bubblegum would have sworn she felt a chilled breeze dart through the room every so often, despite the fact that all the windows were closed.Then there was the fact that everything smelled like Marceline.It made sense, what with it being her house and all. But there was something about the silence and the darkness and the stillness of the night that made everything feel sharper. More intense. That made goosebumps sprout along her arms and heat crawl up her neck as Marcy’s scent wrapped around her.It shouldn’t have been a big deal, it wasn’t a big deal. Bubblegum had spent too many nights here to count—nights of laughter and excitement and friendship. Nights spent laying outside under the dome of the enormous cavern, listening for the flutter and the rustle of the bats that made this place their home, shivering in the damp air but content to stay because Marceline’s arm was touching hers. Nights that could be summed up by the words the two of them used to whisper, giddy and enraptured, huddled under sloppy blanket forts in the living room while Bubblegum could still pretend it would last.But that was a long time ago.Now this place felt empty, and Marceline felt so very far away even though Bubblegum knew she was just upstairs. Bubblegum turned and squeezed the pillow over her ears, trying to ignore the echoes of memory bouncing around the room and focus on breathing. She was no good to Marcy without sleep. She needed to be as clearheaded as possible if she was going to figure this out. Go to sleep, she told herself. Go to sleep. She repeated it over and over like a mantra, until eventually she could detect the faintest bit of light peeking through the window: the sun rising beyond the cave.Bubblegum sighed and rubbed at her bloodshot eyes. This was fine. She was no stranger to sleepless nights.She got up and helped herself to whatever she could find in Marceline’s fridge—which, unfortunately for her growling stomach, wasn’t much. Some of it wasn’t even food. Bubblegum sorted through red bouncy balls, lipstick, even a sharp-heeled shoe, before finally finding a bag of strawberries shoved into the farthest reaches of the fridge.She looked them over carefully, making sure they were still good before popping several into her mouth at once. Her stomach settled and Bubblegum let out a small sigh. She never quite knew why, but Marceline was incredibly talented at picking out the best fruit, as long as it was red. She always had the ripest raspberries, the crispest apples. Perhaps it had something to do with the quality of the red, or Marceline’s vampire vision. Bubblegum didn’t care either way. These strawberries were divine.Bubblegum bit into the last strawberry before tossing the box in the trash and cracking her knuckles. It was time to get busy.She went to unload her backpack, which was full of her Travel Science Kit, but she hesitated. She didn’t want to take up the entire living room, not when Marceline might want to spend time in there. Bubblegum was going to need privacy, not to mention more space to conduct her trials and experiments. Fortunately, she knew the best place for it. Unfortunately, it was Marceline’s favorite place in the entire house.Bubblegum told herself that Marceline would understand, slinging her bag over her shoulder and heading up the ladder that led to the second floor. Of course Marceline would understand. She probably wouldn’t even remember her music room. The thought of Marceline not remembering her own music was heartbreaking, but Bubblegum pushed through the pang of sadness and continued to the third door on the left.It really was the best place for her equipment, or it would be once she cleaned it up a bit. Sheet music littered the floor, along with stray guitar picks and strings. Instruments were in disarray, scattered throughout the room like land mines, so obstruent that it almost seemed intentional, though Bubblegum knew that Marceline was the only one who ever came in here. A deep black curtain hung over the window, odd considering what little light came from outside anyway. Bubblegum ran her hand along the wall, which was crowded with unfinished lyrics written in black marker with Marceline’s chaotic handwriting. And despite the circumstances, Bubblegum was excited to see this room. She had only been inside a couple of times, with Marceline’s hesitant permission and strict supervision. It was kind of thrilling to be able to glimpse a piece of Marceline’s heart like this, so explicit and wide open.She began moving Marceline’s things out of the way, careful to be as quiet as possible. She shoved the instruments into a pile in the corner—something the old Marceline probably would have had a heart attack over—then got busy picking up the scattered papers. Bubblegum had half a mind to march back to the Candy Kingdom and grab a few dozen file cabinets for all this music, reorganize the room to her own standards. She would never do that, though. This was Marceline’s headspace. Bubblegum felt bad enough disrupting it like she was, but she needed to get started on a cure, and fast. There was no telling if Marceline’s amnesia was even actually curable, but the longer she waited the harder it would be to find out.Something clattered to the ground from the pile of music and trash Bubblegum had cradled in her arms. Curious, she dropped the armful in a heap in the other corner then bent to see what had fallen. It was a cassette tape, the kind Marceline best liked to record her music on. Bubblegum sucked in a quick breath of air when she saw the title, scrawled in black marker on the front of the tape: ‘to the girl with the candy eyes.’She shouldn’t listen to it. She should throw it in the corner with the rest of Marceline’s stuff and ignore it and pretend she had never seen it and she should let it go. She told herself all of this even while she was pulling a worn stereo from the pile she had made, sliding the tape into the deck, and pushing play.The tape didn’t start for a long, long moment. Bubblegum slumped to a seated position and balled her hands into fists, anxiously anticipating the first strum of the guitar or worse, finding out that there wasn’t actually anything on the tape and being left to ache and wonder what that title meant for the rest of her long life. But then it began, a slow, somber melody plucked with the expert ease of someone who played sad music often, and Bubblegum leaned forward to listen.To the girl with the pink candy eyesCandied heart and candied mindI want to hold her hand so badBut I’m not made of sugar so I just stand backWon’t even look me in the eyes anymoreWhen that’s all I’m asking her forI don’t want the moon I’m just asking for youTo hold my handTo drop the maskLose your disguiseBut your heart has crystalizedThe girl with the pink candy eyesBubblegum pushed pause, not wanting to hear anymore, one hand covering her mouth as if to better hold in the cry of grief she was barely keeping at bay.Did Marceline really think…Bubblegum suddenly felt claustrophobic. She leapt off the floor and ran for the door, pulling it open and shutting it behind her as quickly as she could, leaning against the frame with shuddering breaths in the darkened hallway.Marceline really thought Bubblegum was that bad? It was enough to feel like Marceline blamed her for the breakup, but it was so much worse to have to hear it out loud like that, cut with the raw and brutal emotion of Marceline’s voice. It didn’t help that she was such a brilliant musician, either.But Marceline really thought Bubblegum didn’t care? Sure, she initiated the breakup. But that was for the good of her people, not for lack of feelings. It was a sacrifice on her part, too. And Sure, Bubblegum could barely make time for her these days, but that was only because she was so busy doing what she loved, caring for and ruling over the Candy Kingdom… and sure, all they really did anymore was fight…“Hey Bonnie,” Marceline appeared suddenly from the bend in the hall, rubbing sleep from her eyes. “I am so ready for some breakfast. There’s a strawberry smoothie that’s calling my na—oof.”Marceline was knocked back by the force of Bubblegum’s hug. Surprised and confused, she didn’t miss a beat before hugging her back and laughing. “Woah, Bons! Did you have nightmares or something?” Marceline’s voice turned softer when she felt the shudder of Bubblegum’s tears. “Hey, are you okay? What’s wrong?”“Nothing’s wrong.” Came Bubblegum’s voice, muffled by Marceline’s nightgown. “I’m just sorry.”“For what?”“For not being a better friend.”Marceline held her fractionally tighter, and it was all Bubblegum could do to stop from melting at that familiar scent and that simple, naïve embrace. It wouldn’t be fair to either of them if Bubblegum lost her composure now. So they stood there a few minutes too long, lingering in the dim light of the hall, and Bubblegum held Marceline hard, desperately, as if she could make up for years and years of lost time.“Your fridge is full of weird stuff, Marcy,” she said against her shoulder. “Stop scratching your head.” Bonnie smacked Marceline’s hand away from the strange wires taped to her head and neck.The two of them were in what Bonnie had been calling the ‘music room’, which it probably used to be. There was messy handwriting all over the wall, and instruments stacked in the corner, but over the past few days Bubblegum had turned it into her own personal science lab, having pieces of equipment brought over from the castle until the room was full of things, complete with something that looked like a giant fridge covered in buttons and flashing lights. Machines clicked and whirred all around them, including the large square box to which Marceline was basically attached by the brain.“I’m trying. It really itches.” Marceline sat on her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make it stop.“I know, but you’ll corrupt the data if you keep doing that, and then you’ll have to keep them on even longer.” Bonnie situated her glasses on her face, then typed something into her computer. “It’s just logic, Marcy.”Marceline’s eyes snapped open, then narrowed. “I’m not stupid you know.”The large machine that had been letting out steady, intermittent beeps on the floor near Marceline’s feet suddenly let out a series of furious noises, much to the surprise of both of them. Bonnie’s face disappeared behind the screen of her overlarge computer, and when she again appeared she was frowning, a deep line between her brows. “The machine is picking up an anomaly in your brain waves, but I’m not sure why…” Her expression only grew more troubled as her eyes scanned the screen.“What’s wrong?” Marceline craned her neck in an attempt to view the screen herself, but Bonnie was shaking her head.“It’s fading.” She said. Indeed, the machine’s frenzied beeps were growing quiet once again, and Bubblegum was staring at her with squinted eyes. She tapped her chin. “There’s no need for you to look at the screen anyway, Marcy. I doubt you’d be able to understand what any of it means.”Marceline’s eyes widened. Bonnie was probably right; in the few days since Marceline had found herself in the company of the princess she hadn’t found herself to be particularly scientifically inclined, but still… that tone…“You were never really smart enough to understand my work,” Bonnie continued, seemingly oblivious to Marceline’s feelings. “I’m honestly surprised anyone ever even had the patience to teach you to read.”Marceline couldn’t help it; she snapped. “I may have lost my memory, and I don’t know who I was before, but I know I'm not. Stupid!”The machine began beeping again, this time even more incessantly than before. “I knew it!” Bonnie whooped, adjusting her glasses and staring at her screen. “The sensor reacts when you’re in a state of heightened emotion.” Bonnie leaned forward to study the words on the computer a bit closer. “Which means your brain does too.”“You made me angry on purpose?” Marceline was shocked, although she didn’t know why. For all she knew this Bonnie person had always been like this. She suddenly realized, there in that tiny room with all those strange machines, that she really did not know this woman at all. She had seen photos of them together throughout the house, but they all looked awfully old.With mounting anxiety, Marceline realized that she had no way of knowing whether or not this woman had malicious intentions toward her or not. Sure she had been kind enough so far, but when it came to this science mumbo whatnot, she almost seemed like a different person than the one with which Marceline had been sharing her food and personal space.Marceline watched Bonnie gleefully adjust some knobs on her machines and told herself that this was all for her. It was all to get her memory back so she could get her life back, return to normal—whatever that was. But an insistent itch started at the back of her mind, worse even than the itch caused by the stupid wires on her head: what if her old life wasn’t what she imagined it to be? She didn’t feel particularly sad to have lost her memories. No sense of loss tugged at her mind when she looked upon the people who were supposed to be her friends or the music she was supposed to have created in the house which she had supposedly lived in for years. And she could still remembered that crushing sensation of loneliness when she had first awoken. It was fuzzy and fading, a blurred remnant of emotions the old Marceline was feeling. But it was there all the same, and it terrified her.She wasn’t lonely now. She had Bonnie, whatever her intentions. And she was supposed to be going to visit that human and his dog-brother soon—what were their names?—Finn and Jake! They had been so nice to her when they found her, and she had a feeling they would get along pretty well. What if all of this was a mistake? What if it was better to start over? Make new memories instead of desperately trying to recall old ones?Marceline wrung her hands together in her lap. “Bonnie, I don’t know about this.”“About what?” Bonnie replied absently, still toying with her machines.“What if… what if this is a mistake?”Bonnie looked at the machine on the floor which had started to make noise again, then looked at Marceline, really looked at her for the first time since she had surrounded her with all this science stuff. Took in her nervous countenance and the uncertainty written on her face. “What do you mean?”“What if I’m happier this way?” Marceline twisted one of the wires that hung in front of her. “Maybe losing my memory was for the best.”Bonnie didn’t say anything for a long time. When Marceline looked up she almost expected her to be angry, but the princess only looked thoughtful. “I suppose I get where you’re coming from,” she finally said. “If you don’t want to go through with this of course I’ll respect your wishes. But I’m going to keep working on it, at least until the Candy Kingdom needs me again. That way in the end it’s available, whatever you decide to do.”Marceline bit her lip, contemplative, then grinned. “That’s fine, Bonnie. As long as we can keep hanging out.”Bonnie gave her a strange look, something between kindness and distress. “Of course we can hang out, Marcy.”“Good.” Marceline settled back into the chair, somehow more comfortable now. “Take it away, Princess. Make me feel things.”Bonnie laughed. “That’s the plan.”It turned out that nothing else Bonnie said made Marceline angry now that she knew that was the goal. Sadness didn’t come, either. Everything Bonnie said to make her sad went right over Marceline’s head; she had nothing to compare it to. Eventually it was decided that Marceline didn’t have to be hooked up to all those wires anymore, for which she was immensely grateful. Instead, Bonnie instructed her to tape some similar wires—connected to a small box that fit snugly in her pocket—to her chest to monitor her heart rate before leaving the room to give her some privacy. Those were irritating too, but they were preferable to the alternative.As soon as Marceline taped the final wire to her chest and pulled her shirt back on, her stomach growled noisily. How long had they been in there?“I’m ready for some grub, Bonnie!” she yelled as she floated down the ladder leading to the first floor of her house.“It’s your house Marceline. Get it yourself!” Bonnie’s words were harsh, but there was laughter in her voice. She was seated on the living room floor, munching on a package of crackers and going over her notes on Marceline’s brain. The fact that her brain was being analyzed in such detail made her a bit uncomfortable.Marceline grabbed a red shoe from the fridge then sat herself on the ground beside Bonnie, wincing in discomfort. Maybe she should re-carpet this floor.“You really need some groceries.” Bonnie said without glancing up from her notes. “For those of us that actually eat,” she amended, looking up. “I found some emergency crackers in my pack but I can’t keep going like this.”Marceline nodded, watching Bonnie’s lips as she chewed. She sucked a bit of red from the shoe thoughtfully. Pink wasn’t too far off from red, and in the dim light of the living room Bonnie looked… very tasty.Marceline pushed the thought from her mind even as she scooted closer to that inviting pink.“Soo, what did we used to do for fun?”Bonnie looked up from her notebook and blinked, surprised to see Marceline so close. “Fun?” she said.“What? Did we never have fun?”Bonnie looked at the ceiling. “Well. We used to run away from responsibilities a lot, but I don’t know how fun that would be now. Uhhh.” Bonnie put her notebook on the floor and pulled her knees to her chest, thinking hard now. “We used to have these long conversations, long like neither of us would get any sleep. We used to stargaze. Sometimes you would sneak me out of the castle and we would go up to the roof and stay there until Peppermint Butler found me, which he always did. We used to dance” Bubblegum laughed. “We were both terrible at it.” Her smile faded as she picked imaginary bits of lint off her pink pants.Marceline rose to her knees to peer over Bonnie’s knees. “Those all sound like good things, so why do you look so sad?”Bonnie looked up and tried to smile. “It just seems like it happened to a different person, in a different lifetime, you know?”Before she even really knew what she was doing, Marceline was on her feet and pulling Bonnie to hers.“Woah, Marcy, what are you doing?”“Having fun.” Marceline gripped Bonnie’s hand in hers. “Is this okay?”Bonnie’s cheeks were turning a lovely color now, slightly darker than normal, almost red. “We don’t even have any music…”Marceline grinned. “I’m not hearing a ‘no’.”Bonnie laughed as Marceline twirled her about the room, pulled her in close. Pretty soon both of them were laughing so hard tears were streaming out of their eyes and they stopped moving altogether, because to move would have caused them both to fall. Marceline just held Bonnie tight to her chest as they rocked with laughter. “Jeez, Marcy.” Bonnie pulled one hand away and wiped at her eyes. “We haven’t done that in so long.”Marceline looked at the princess and had a abrupt heated, intrusive and unexpected urge to get her old life back. She wanted to remember Bonnie when they were both young, when they had done this for the first time. She wanted to remember…Bonnie stopped laughing when she saw the expression on Marceline’s face, leaned forward at the same time Marceline, struck with sudden inspiration, did the same.A moment after their lips met, Marceline gasped as she was slammed with the weight of a hundred memories hitting her at once: she and Bonnie eating ice cream on a bench on a moonlit night; the two of them running barefoot through the sand on a beach in the dark; Bonnie pointing up at the midnight sky, announcing the name of some constellation or another; Marceline, alone, heading away from the Candy Kingdom.The memories were strong and they were rapid, but just as quickly they began to fade. Some lingered, and she was able to hold on to them, but others left nothing but the echo of a feeling, a single sentiment and nothing more.Marceline snapped back to the present at the sound of an incredibly annoying high-pitched beeeeep coming from her pocket. She was on the floor, though she couldn’t remember falling.Bonnie was hovering over her with a hand on her mouth.“Oh my Glob," she said. Marceline jumped up from the floor to put her hands on Bubblegum’s shoulders. “Bonnie, I remembered something!”Bubblegum was still trying to get over the shock of Marceline’s kiss, and then the shock of her sudden drawback, but she tried her best to process the vampire’s words. She looked excited to be sure, but there was a troubled aura about her, as if she didn’t really know how to feel about whatever it was she had remembered.She relayed a few memories that had to do with her and Bubblegum together, doing mundane things that Bubblegum didn’t really remember to be significant, but then it hit her.“Oh!” Bubblegum scrambled to grab her notebook from where she had left it on the table, she began to scribble quick notes that would probably be illegible to the average person. “I’d bet you my left arm that you’re having flashbacks that are parallel to the elevated levels of emotion you’re feeling at that given time.” Bubblegum tapped her chin with her pencil. “You kissed me, so that means you most likely remembered things that corresponded to the way you felt doing so, yes?”“Uh, maybe…?” Marceline rubbed at her temples with her fingers. “I guess that makes sense.”Bubblegum was fired up now. She began pacing back and forth, mumbling to herself about the possibilities of inducing feelings and emotions in Marceline’s brain artificially using some sort of neurological transmission, but then paused when she remembered what Marcy had said earlier. About not being sure if she wanted to remember.With that sobering thought, Bubblegum deflated a bit.“I’m still not sure,” Marceline said, as if she had read Bubblegum’s mind. “I’m not sure if I want to remember.”Bubblegum raised an eyebrow.“Okay, I wanted to!” Marceline admitted, throwing up her arms. “In the moment I wanted to. But now?” She shook her head. “I don’t know.”Bubblegum sighed and ran a hand through her great blob of hair. “We’ll take it slow.” She promised. “You don’t have to do anything you aren’t comfortable with.” Marceline smiled, looking immensely relieved. Which made what Bubblegum was about to do all the more guilt-inducing.It wasn’t that Bubblegum didn’t want to respect Marceline’s wishes—because she did! But Bubblegum was exactly 94.7% positive that the old Marceline would have wanted to remember. Scientifically speaking, those odds were more than favorable in an experimental sense, even in a situation as delicate as this one. But anyway, Bubblegum was pretty sure Marceline would be thankful that she wasn’t going to stop trying, once her memories were back. She would understand. Besides, this version of Marceline didn’t have to know what Bubblegum was up to. She could conduct her experiments in secret, hidden out in the open where experiments such as these were rarely noticed.Even if she couldn’t artificially induce strong emotional reactions, there were plenty of other, less direct ways for her to persuade Marceline to feel certain things… Bubblegum stored her notebook in her pack, then stretched her limbs and cracked her knuckles. She would have to be subtle.“So, what do I do all day?” Marceline asked, interrupting Bubblegum’s internal scheming. “Aside from watching movies and making music?”“Oh, uh…” Bubblegum frowned. “I guess I’m not totally sure. I know you have friends other than me and Finn and Jake, although I’m not really sure what you guys do together..” Bubblegum trailed off, wondering when she had lost track of Marceline’s interests.“Huh.” Was all she said in reply.Bubblegum clapped, struck with a sudden rush of motivation, eager to get her plans moving. “Let’s go camping.”Marceline, who hadn’t been expecting such a loud sound just now and had jumped into the air in surprise, put a hand on her chest as she floated near the ceiling, looking annoyed at the beeping coming from the box in her pocket. “Camping?”Bubblegum nodded enthusiastically. “I can only stay away from the kingdom for so long, and if you want to put the experiments on hold we might as well have fun, right?”Marceline looked mildly suspicious, but nodded anyway. “Right.”Bubblegum smiled somewhat triumphantly, and pulled her phone out of her pack. She pushed the button to turn it back on. “Great. I’ll call Finn and Jake.”“They’re coming?”“If they want to.” Bubblegum paused halfway through dialing the castle’s main number. “Would you rather not invite them?”“No!” Marceline was quick to wipe the indecision off her face, shaking her head hastily. She smiled a full-fanged smile. “That sounds perfect.”Bubblegum bit her lip as she finished dialing and put the phone to her ear, wondering exactly what Marceline was thinking. It was almost impossible to tell these days, for obvious reasons.Nobody answered, so Bubblegum left a message. She explained that Marceline wanted to get out of the house for a while, did tomorrow night work for them? “Peppermint Butler can take control of the robot for a while.” She said. “Please call me back when you get this.”She hung up, but stared at the phone for a long moment, indecisiveness rattling her brain, then she turned to Marceline, who had floated back down to the floor and was picking dirt from under her nails. Bubblegum squared her shoulders, bunched her hands into fists of bravery, having finally made a decision on her next move. She swallowed, startled to find that her mouth had gone dry. She cleared her throat, and Marceline looked up in askance at the sound.“I’d rather not sleep on the floor tonight,” Bubblegum said, turning a fierce shade of magenta.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
The rest of the day passed in a blur.Bubblegum helped Marceline pack for the camping trip, although they both knew full well that she would have to leave before the sun came up. It would most likely end up being less of a camping trip and more of a sleepless night in the dark with a fire. It seemed fine with Marcy though; she was obviously just excited to have something to do besides eating and being subjected to experiments.“Finn and Jake will supply the marshmallows, since you don’t have any here, and I don’t really want to risk going back to the Candy Kingdom just yet.” Bubblegum was saying while she stuffed her own sleeping bag back into her backpack. “We’ll set up the tent, even though we won’t be staying. It’ll provide better atmosphere. Do you still have that old tent somewhere around here?”Marceline raised an eyebrow, kneeling in front of an overflowing bag of blankets that was proving to be impossible to zip up. “How would I know?”Bubblegum stood up, smacking the dust off of her pants. “Right. I’ll check the closet.”The tent was there, wrapped in plastic and walled in by a lofty pile of Marceline’s junk, covered in several years’ worth of dust. Yeesh, when was the last time they had used this thing? When was the last time Marceline had so much as opened this closet door? To Bubblegum’s relief, the tent slid out smoothly, and Marcy’s stuff didn’t tumble from the closet avalanche-style like she had worried it might.“So… camping.” Marceline said, running a finger through the grime coating the plastic bag that Bubblegum now had hoisted over her shoulder. “The only thing I remember is a couple constellations, I think there’s a fire.” She looked to Bubblegum for reassurance. “Right?”“Essentially,” Bubblegum answered offhandedly, wondering at the same time the best way to clean this thing. She decided they might as well just set it up as it was, considering they probably wouldn’t so much as set foot inside it let alone sleep in it. She dropped the bundle on top of the rest of their stuff. All packed. “It’s about that stuff, sure. But it’s more about being connected to your surroundings. Returning to your origins, you know?”“Not in the slightest, Bonnie.”Marceline’s voice was so deadpan that Bubblegum couldn’t help but laugh. “You’ll see, Marcy. Sometimes things don’t make sense until they do.”Marceline chuckled and tossed a couch pillow in Bubblegum’s direction. “Yeah that doesn’t make sense.”“But it will!” Grinning, she swatted the pillow away. “You’ll see.”Before Bubblegum knew it, the already dim light coating the inside of the cave melted into darkness. Nighttime at last.Marceline had graciously offered her bed to Bubblegum with the idea that the vampire queen could sleep suspended in the air somewhere else in the room. It wasn’t quite what Bubblegum had planned, but this was fine. At least she didn’t have the unforgiving discomfort of the floor to deal with tonight.As Bubblegum was fluffing up Marceline’s pillows, a crease formed between her brows. “Marcy?” she said, turning to the vampire. She was floating in the corner, arms behind her head in a relaxed posture, hair cascading toward the floor in a waterfall of onyx. She almost looked like she was sleeping already, and Bubblegum pursed her lips. Perhaps it could wait till morning.“Yeah Bon Bons?” Marceline answered. She didn’t bother to open her eyes, and Bubblegum looked toward the ceiling. It was interesting that even though she didn’t remember much, Marceline still managed to come up with those dang nicknames.“I was just wondering… I was wondering if, now that you remember some things, if maybe now you might… view me differently?” Bubblegum winced. Well, that hadn’t come out right. She had meant to confidently ask if Marceline’s opinion of her had changed in the last few hours, then she would pretend not to care either way. She had not intended to spill that mess of word soup like she had.Marceline still did not open her eyes, which would have been frustrating had Bubblegum not been so embarrassed. “Nah.”“Nah.” Bubblegum’s eyes narrowed. “Nah?”Marceline shrugged, cracked one eye open. “I mean what I remembered seems to line up with the way you’ve acted so far.” She closed her eye again. “I’m just gonna roll with it.”Bubblegum hadn’t been expecting that, especially that last part. Over the last few days Marceline had, for the most part, acted like another person entirely. But every now and then it was as if the old Marcy resurfaced just to launch a sassy remark in her direction only to sink back into this new version of herself. Bubblegum itched to hook the vampire back up to that machine and run more tests, but she refrained from even mentioning it.“That’s good, I suppose.” Bubblegum laid herself down on the bed, thankful that it was actually soft, and that the sheets were clean enough. She flipped the switch on the lamp next to the bed and the room was submerged in darkness. All was silent enough for a while, but Bubblegum could hear Marceline tossing about, could hear her hair smacking the wall as she thrashed and her grunts of annoyance—quiet as she was trying to be—when she obviously couldn’t find a way to get comfortable. She was most likely fighting the age-old instincts that told her that night was the time to be awake.“Ugh!” Marcelene’s internal frustration was finally voiced. “I can’t sleep.”Bubblegum coughed to cover up a laugh. “Try counting sheep.”Marceline didn’t say anything, but something soft—albeit thrown with a very firm hand—hit Bubblegum smack in the face. No swatting it away this time. “Marcy!” Bubblegum didn’t bother to hide her smile in the dark as she sat up and chucked the pillow back in Marceline’s general direction.Bubblegum was hit again, this time with enough force to know that Marceline was much closer. Instead of going on the offense right away, Bubblegum closed her eyes—a tactic she often used while concentrating intently—and waited for the telltale whoosh of the pillow before ducking underneath and sending her own pillow careening straight at her target. It hit its mark, if Marceline’s surprised “oof“ was anything to go by, and Bubblegum laughed out loud.After a second, Bubblegum felt Marceline drop onto the bed beside her, and she turned in her direction, smirking. “Admitting defeat already?”“Course not,” Marceline’s disembodied voice was haughty, but it softened as she went on. “We’ve done this before.”It wasn’t a question, but Bubblegum nodded anyway as she laid her head back onto the pillow, wondering how clearly Marceline could see her in this inky darkness.Perhaps Marceline had grown bold in the dark—as she often did—or perhaps she was just tired, but she went on. “I have all of these memories of us, together. But they all feel old. Stale. And this whole time I’ve been wondering if it’s because my brain is just super messed up or…”She didn’t finish, and Bubblegum didn’t say anything. She felt Marceline’s sigh more than she heard it, and Bubblegum closed her eyes. “It’s a long story,” she said, “but I’ll tell you if you want to hear it.”“That’s the thing, Bons. I know I should want to know, but all I have are happy memories and I kind of want to keep it that way.” Marceline’s voice became muffled, and Bubblegum surmised that she had covered her face with the pillow. “Have I always been this much of a mess?”Bubblegum thought for a moment, wondering at the best angle of answering that question, but Marceline interrupted her thought process with a groan. “Never mind, don’t tell me. That pause does not feel promising.”“You’re not a mess, Marcy.” Bubblegum reached for her friend, hesitated, took the leap and placed her hand on Marcy’s shoulder. “Well. Maybe a little. But that isn’t your fault. Something happened to you and now you’re confused. We—you’ll sort it out.”“I dunno. The more I remember, the more confused I get.” Marceline patted Bubblegum’s reassuring hand. “I’m glad you’re with me now.”Bubblegum withdrew her hand. “I can’t stay forever Marcy. You know that, right?”“Yeah, I know.”Bubblegum probably should have left it alone, but her stupid mouth kept saying words. “You’ll be all alone. Without knowing anything.”“Yep, thanks for that.” Marceline sounded a bit miffed, not that Bubblegum was surprised.“I’m just saying that maybe you should think about your other options a little more. Like,” Bubblegum just couldn’t stop at this point. Maybe she had some sort of brain-to-mouth word-vomit disease. The idea was almost reassuring, or at least it was easier to blame her thoughtlessness on something she couldn’t control. “Like how are you going to navigate Ooo without knowing anything about it? How are you going to find food if you can’t even find your way to the store? Do you even know what day it is? I’m pretty sure you don’t own a calendar—”“Yeesh, Bonnie, stop it already!” Marceline’s hand was firm over her mouth, much to Bubblegum’s surprise. “I get it, you don’t think I can handle it, and that’s fine. I can change my mind any time I want to, right?—You said so yourself. I’m not stupid. I can ask for directions and I can buy. A flippin. Calendar. Ouch!” Marceline’s hand was yanked away.Bubblegum was seated in an instant, trying to assess Marceline’s condition in the dark. Was she okay? Was she hurt?“Yeah, I’m fine, I’m just angry. And how many times have we fought in my bedroom? It’s like my brain’s about to blow up with the force of all these dang memories.”Bubblegum withdrew without a word, frowning. It was true she had planned to force some more memories out of Marceline’s head, but none of this was going as planned, and nothing was more maddening than when Bubblegum’s carefully laid plans went astray.“Look. I’m not even mad. I get that you think you’re helping, but you have to let me figure this stuff out on my own. It’s my choice.”“Of course Marcy. I’m sorry.” Bubblegum was not, in fact, sorry. She was angry and frustrated and she just wanted to make Marceline understand.But most of all she wanted her friend back. The real Marceline, not this shell of a person laying next to her. And maybe that wasn’t entirely fair. Maybe this—the way Marceline was now—maybe that should have been enough. Heck, it was the perfect opportunity for their friendship to start over, for Bubblegum to be more honest and open and less antagonistic, less judgmental. (Although, she grudgingly admitted to herself, that hadn’t necessarily been the case so far.)“I’m sorry,” Bubblegum said again, this time a bit more sincerely. “This whole thing is just rattling and—and I’m used to being in control.”“Don’t sweat it Bonnie.” Marceline yawned, and Bubblegum could imagine her fangs in clear detail. “All this remembering is making me sleepy.” She tensed as she felt Marceline’s arm drape over her chest, but she relaxed just as quickly and leaned her head on the vampire’s shoulder.But Bubblegum didn’t close her eyes. “We can’t stay like this.”Marceline pulled back a little, hurt evident in her voice. “Not even for tonight?”“No, I mean we literally can’t stay like this.” She stifled a giggle. “We used to try this all the time, but you always end up floating toward the ceiling in your sleep.”Marcy laughed and again moved closer to Bubblegum, squeezing her arms around her tightly enough to elicit a smallish gasp from Bubblegum’s mouth. “Well if I hold you tight enough, maybe I can take you up there with me.”“Maybe,” Bubblegum said. She nestled closer to Marceline and closed her eyes at last.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
When Bubblegum woke up she wasn’t surprised to see Marceline’s prone form had floated toward the ceiling sometime during the night. Bleary eyed, she glanced out at the darkness beyond the bedroom window only to remember that they were in a cave and it would always be dark. Her watch read 9:00 a.m.She groaned, then stretched fully from her fingers to her toes. She didn’t usually sleep this long but it was a welcome change to her typical early mornings at the castle. Generally she rose with the sun, but the meager amount of sunlight making its way into the cave apparently hadn’t been enough to wake her. She decided not to complain; it had been a much needed rest.She looked at Marceline, smiling unabashedly while the vampire couldn’t see her. This fool never got up early. Come to think of it, Marceline just kind of slept whenever she wanted to. It was sort of… endearing, even though it was wildly annoying.Bubbleum slipped out of bed, careful to make as little noise as possible, although Marcy probably could have slept through a plane crash. The thought brought another smile to Bubblegum’s lips and she padded downstairs to make herself breakfast, finding herself in a better mood than she’d been in ages.Pulling the fridge door open, her mood soured just a bit as she remembered that Marcy didn’t have any real food here. But there was an easy fix for that.From her backpack in the living room she pulled her phone, made a quick phone call, and twenty minutes later there was a knock at the door.“Sorry it took so long Princess.” Finn said as soon as she opened the door. He handed her a plastic sack full of eggs, bacon, flour, cheese—the works. “Jake just had to eat his pre-breakfast breakfast.” He rolled his eyes as he crossed the threshold into the house.“Hey!” Jake barked, following his brother through the door with a stern expression. “It’s not my fault, Finn. You know I’m hypoglycemic.”Bubblegum didn’t appear to have heard a word the two of them were saying, she just clutched the bag of groceries to her chest. “Thank Glob!” She ran to the kitchen and began getting breakfast ready. Well, at this point it was more like brunch.The eggs were large and brown and had probably come from Finn and Jake’s own chicken. The bacon was clearly cheap, and the cheese was a bit old, but Bubblegum was so hungry she could have eaten one of her own candy people. Stomach growling, she turned on the heat and laid some strips of bacon down to sizzle.“Where’s Marcy?” Finn asked, glancing around while Jake stretched himself into a more comfortable couch.“She’s still asleep.” Bubblegum cracked the eggs into a bowl, added cheese and red food coloring, began to whisk. Her voice was not without humor, and Finn perked up when he noticed.He had just sat down on the Jake-couch, content to rest leisurely until breakfast was ready, but now he sat up straight. “You’re in a good mood”—he sounded almost… suspicious. Bubblegum bit her lip and dismissed the thought while she stirred. Finn wasn’t implying anything, it was just her imagination.—"How is Marceline? Have you learned anything?”Bubblegum made a show of pouring the beaten eggs into the pan, which she had washed out earlier while she waited for the boys to bring the ingredients. Marceline’s house was full of cooking supplies, but the vampire had stopped using most of them when she and Bubblegum had stopped seeing each other, and as a result everything that wasn’t regularly used had acquired a coating of several years’ worth of dust.“Sort of,” Bubblegum said at last, pulling out the flour and milk. She began mixing pancake batter, sure to add plenty of red food coloring. “She’s remembered some things.”“That’s great!” Finn said, lifting his arms. “Things like what?”“Um.” Bubblegum turned toward the counter so neither of the boys would see the slight reddening of her cheeks. “You know, just. Little things. Nothing major.”“Isn’t the fact that Marceline remembered anything at all kind of major?” Jake rumbled from the floor. “I mean. Isn’t this sort of a big deal?”Bubblegum gently pulled a spatula across the pan of eggs, forming large soft scrambles. “Look guys, I should probably tell you something.” Leaving the eggs to cook just a bit longer, she poured some pancake batter into yet another skillet. “Marceline… she’s not sure if she wants to continue with the experiments. She’s been… confused, I think.”“What do you mean she doesn’t want to continue?” Jake said with a giant, couch-like frown.Finn frowned as well. “She doesn’t want her memories back?”Bubblegum sighed and flipped the bacon onto a plate. “She’s not sure. She’s been remembering things little by little on her own”—Bubblegum did not mention how much she had ‘helped’ Marcy remember. She didn’t think it was important.—“and I think eventually she might regain a lot of herself back but—” She spooned the eggs onto four plates along with the bacon, then flipped her pancakes once. “from what I can tell, she doesn’t seem to want any help.” Bubblegum hoped neither of them caught the annoyance in her voice.“But, why?” Jake shifted his couch-feet so he was facing the kitchen more fully. “I don’t get it.”“I don’t really get it either,” Bubblegum lied. “But it’s her choice.”Okay, maybe Bubblegum was bitter. And maybe she was just a little bit offended that Marceline didn’t want to remember her old life, especially since so much of it revolved around Bubblegum. Maybe she should just leave Marceline alone, let her live out this new life in peace. But placing the filled breakfast plates on the bar-style counter, Bubblegum knew she wouldn’t listen to her own advice.“Something smells like actual heaven,” Marceline’s yawning voice drifted down from the top of the ladder before the vampire appeared, still in her pajamas. “Oh, hey!” She blinked, noticing Finn and Jake in her living room. “Bear Kid and Stretchy Dog!” She darted over to hug Finn and sit on Jake.“Marceline.” Finn’s expression was strained, as if she was trying to squeeze the mortality out of him. “Um. Hi.”“Did you really forget our names?” Jake sounded miffed, and Marceline laughed. “Of course not!” She leaped off of Jake and into the air. “You’re Finn,” she said to the couch, “and you’re Jake,” she pointed at the human child.The two boys adopted wary expressions and glanced at each other. From Marceline’s cackle of joy, neither of them could tell whether or not she was actually kidding.“Anyway, I’m starved.” She flew through the kitchen window and landed gracefully on the floor next to Bubblegum, who had been trying to ignore everyone. Marceline stuck her nose in the air and sniffed. “It smells really good Bons.”“I know,” Bubblegum said with a grin. Marceline seemed closer to her old self today. Perhaps because of all of the memories she recovered yesterday. At that thought, Bubblegum’s grin wilted a bit. A lot of those memories had to do with the two of them fighting. That wasn’t reassuring. But it did explain Marceline’s shift from Confused Cutie to Sass Princess.Maybe when Marceline remembered a bit more, she would level up all the way back to Sass Queen.Bubblegum kept a straight face long enough to yell to the boys that breakfast was ready, then began scarfing down her own food. Marceline chuckled and sucked the color from her plate, sighing in satisfaction.“Dang, Peebs.” Finn licked the very last drop of syrup off his plate like a champ. “I didn’t know you could cook like this. You should make breakfast every day.”Bubblegum rolled her eyes and collected everyone’s plates. “You can do the dishes,” she said to Marceline, who looked appalled. She ignored the vampire and instead looked toward the boys, who were sitting in food-filled stupors on the bar stools. “How’s my kingdom?”She had been avoiding the question, worried that the two of them had screwed up somehow and just hadn’t had the heart to tell her, but to her relief Finn just waved away the question. “Fine, fine. Everything’s fine.”“Really? Everyone’s getting along? The banana guards are doing their jobs? No risk of explosion?”“Everything’s fiiiiine,” Jake said smoothly, rubbing his bulging tummy. “The banana guards are… well they’re doing their jobs like usual anyway. No explosions. We’ve got this under control so good, nobody even knows you’re gone.”“Because the kingdom runs so efficiently thanks to your leadership!” Finn cut in quickly after seeing a crease form between Bubblegum’s brows.“Right! Of course, they would know you were gone if anything went wrong, which it hasn’t! Because you’re such a good leader!” Jake laughed too loud. “It’s not like we’ve been parading the robot around town and nobody’s asked any questions because they all think it’s you or anyth—ouch.”“What Jake means,” Finn ground out, elbowing his brother in the gut, “is that nothing has gone wrong so far. Everything is fine. Peppermint Butler has control of the robot now, and he’s really good at it.”“Yeah PB, he’s scary good at it,” Jake piped in. “Like, you-might-want-to-keep-an-eye-on-him kind of good at it.”Bubblegum rubbed her temples with her fingers. She knew it had only been a couple of days, but she should get back to her people sooner rather than later. Even if nothing had gone bad so far there was always a chance for misfortune. With a sinking feeling, Bubblegum realized that there was no longer any reason for her to stay in Marceline’s house. If she didn’t want her memories back, Bubblegum might as well pack up her makeshift lab and go home.She glanced at Marceline, who was dutifully trying to do the dishes. Perhaps if she mentioned that—the fact that she would have to go home really soon—maybe Marceline would change her mind about the whole thing.Bubblegum decided to leave it for later. This would be an interesting camping trip, if nothing else.Speaking of the camping trip… “Did you boys remember the marshmallows?”“Of course!” Finn slung off his backpack. “I always have marshmallows on me. In case of emergencies.”Jake nodded approvingly. “Always good to be safe, bro.”Finn rifled through his pack. “Marshmallows, graham crackers, chocolate. We’re all set.”“Oh, don’t forget!” Bubblegum grabbed the red food coloring off the kitchen counter and tossed it at Finn, who caught it expertly. “For Marcy.”“Whew.” Marceline floated through the kitchen window, looking fatigued. “I am never doing another dish again, that was exhausting.”Bubblegum crossed her arms. “Marcy, there were four plates.”“Four plates too many, am I right?” Marceline slumped down on the couch before wincing in pain and sliding all the way to the carpet.Bubblegum opened her mouth to chide but Finn jumped out of the bar chair and punched the air. “What do you girls wanna do before we go? We have about—” he glanced slyly at Bubblegum’s watch—”eight hours until dark.”“We could explore Marceline’s cave,” Jake suggested. “See if there’s anything lurking in the dark that’s a threat to our Marcy.”Finn tapped his chin. “Maybe, but we explored it pretty thoroughly when we first found it, didn’t we? There aren’t any other tunnels, right Marcy?”They all looked to Marceline, who just raised her eyebrows and shrugged.“Right, my bad.” Finn scratched his neck in embarrassment. “You’ve been acting so much like yourself that I forgot.”Marceline huffed. “I am myself,” she said. But then her harsh look wavered and she looked down at her feet. “I think,” she amended.“Of course you are.” Finn blew off the encounter like it wasn’t a big deal, and Marceline visibly relaxed. “Now, hows about some BBall? I’M ON MARCELINE’S TEAM.”“What? No fair.” Jake jumped off the stool and put his fists on his hips. He glanced at Bubblegum, then very slyly whispered to Finn, “the princess is terrible at bball, man.”Bubblegum stared at him, straight-faced. “Jake, I can hear you.” It was no secret that she wasn’t incredible at sports, but come on.“Oh, uh, I just said ‘the princess is fairer than us all.”Bubblegum pursed her lips. It wasn’t her fault she didn’t get to practice as much as the rest of them. She crossed her arms. “If I could practice mundane stuff like sports all day like you guys, I would be able to take you all down.”“Um, guys?” Marceline interrupted what could have been a terrible argument judging by the fire in Jake’s eyes and the fear in Finns. Everyone looked at her. “What is bball?” Bubblegum and Jake lost, bigtime. Jake wasn’t allowed to use his stretchy powers and Marceline wasn’t allowed to fly, but once the rules were explained to her she and Finn dominated. Afterward, they explored the cave a little at Bubblegum’s insistence—Jake looked like he was about to combust. What a sore loser.There really wasn’t much in the cave besides bats and rocks. They did find a single tunnel that was just big enough for them to squeeze through to explore, but the only thing at the end of that tunnel was more bats and rocks, so they retreated to the house to eat a late lunch.Eventually, finally, the sun began to go down, and the group donned their backpacks and boots.Jake stretched himself big enough for everyone to climb on his back, and off they went in the direction of the woods. “Hey, stay away from Lumpy Space Princess’s campsite.” Finn yelled to Jake over the roar of the wind. “She’s not self-aware enough to be around Marcy yet.”Bubblegum sure didn’t protest on that count.Jake stopped in a clearing pretty much directly in the center of the forest, a place soft with grass and bathed in moonlight.“Jeez,” Bubblegum sighed as her feet touched the ground. “I can’t remember the last time I went camping.”“Hey, me neither,” Marceline said, earning laughter from Finn and Jake. Even Bubblegum smiled as she set about pitching the filthy tent. The two boys pitched a tent of their own, and pretty soon the area was beginning to feel sufficiently cozy.Before long they had a small fire going, and everyone clustered around it in anticipation of smores.“So it’s chocolate and marshmallow inside of crackers?” Marceline made a face. “Weird.”“Don’t worry, we can dye your mallows red so you can join.” Finn pulled the red food coloring out of his pack along with the bag of marshmallows.While Marceline was staring cautiously at the reddening marshmallow, Bubblegum took the time to study her. You know, for science. The cool glow of the moonlight boosted by the warm glow of the fire complimented all of her best features, and it added a luminous shine to her night-black hair. It was strikingly lovely, and Bubblegum had to look away.An interesting camping trip, indeed. Marceline sucked one of the marshmallows dry. It wasn’t bad, but she’d discovered that most red things tasted pretty much the same anyway. Her eyes drifted to Bonnie, seated on the log closest to her, only to find that the princess’s eyes were already on her.“Enjoying your mallow?” Bonnie asked with a raised brow. Marceline just shrugged and threw the white glob into the fire, wondering absently what pink tasted like.“This reminds me of that one time that we lost all our important stuff and we had to form a band to open that singing door but we failed because we were missing the truth,” Jake said. “But then we triumphed in the end because we’re so awesome.”“Oh yeah.” Bonnie placed a finger on her chin, nodding. “I guess that was the last time we all went camping.”Marceline blinked. Had that really happened? It all seemed so ridiculous and far-fetched.“It’s too bad we don’t have our instruments now,” Jake said, itching his head.“We should tell ghost stories,” Finn cut in with a gooey grin before biting back into his s’more. Crumbs fell out of his mouth while he talked, earning a laugh from Marceline. She was finding weirder and weirder things funny as she gained more memories, she realized. Almost as if whoever she was before was leaking back into whoever she was now.She didn’t know how to feel about that.“Princess, you start.”Bonnie, who had just stuffed her face with chocolate and cracker and candy, looked up at Finn in shock. “Me?” she said around a mouthful of food.“Yeah, why not?” Jake stretched part of himself into a blanket and draped it over himself and Finn. “Scare us good, Princess.”“Alright, let’s see…” Bonnie wiped the chocolate off of her hands and onto the log beneath her. “I’ve got it. Let me tell you about the doppelgangers.” She waggled her fingers and everyone laughed.“Legend tells of a creature so horrifying that even uttering its true name can make someone wet their pants,” Bubblegum started, eyes narrowed and hands folded into claws in an attempt to be scary.Cute, thought Marceline. So cute.“Because of this, they are known simply as the doppelgangers.“They say this creature looks like a friend,” she continued, dropping her hands to her lap. “Someone you’ve known before, maybe even someone you’re close to. Someone you love. It draws you in with smiles and warmth, sings your favorite songs and laughs out all your favorite jokes. It knows things nobody else knows and it will want you to follow it to a place you both love, but you’ll hang back, because something is off.”Marceline crossed her arms and raised an appreciative brow. Bonnie was actually pretty good at this. By the looks of wariness on the boys’ faces, Marceline wasn’t the only one who was enthralled.“Beneath those familiar eyes something else is shifting. A shadow. Something black and wrong and twisted and you’ll try to step away but you can’t, because fear is taking over.”Finn gulped.“You won’t even know why you’re afraid. ‘This is my friend,’ you’ll think. ‘I’ve known you all my life.’Jake’s tail twitched, and he made a small noise that sounded almost like a growl.“Don’t be fooled,” she said, “because the shadows don’t care about you. No, the shadows want to devour you. They want to eat your eyes and replace them with their own so they can live your life and destroy what you love. They want to smell your fear while you stand there, frozen, while they circle you and smile their broken smiles and laugh their fractured laughs and run their talons down your spine with the fingers of a friend.”Bubblegum shifted her hooded gaze from Marceline to Finn to Jake; slowly, deliberately, she looked at each of them in turn. “Don’t be fooled, because these creatures could be anyone," she intoned. "They could even be you!”With a burst of movement Bonnie pointed to Finn with one outstretched finger and Jake with the other. The two boys looked at each other and screamed, pushing themselves off one another while Bonnie looked on and laughed. “You boys are too easy.”Marceline shivered, though it was warm outside. It was a story meant for children, that much was obvious, but something about it didn’t sit right. Didn’t match. Something itched at the back of her mind, insistent. She knew that story, and that wasn’t how it ended. Marceline clutched her head in her hands, trying to remember. How was it supposed to end?“Not you too Marcy.” Marceline’s head shot up and her eyes landed on a grinning Bonnibel. “I knew the boys would fall for it, but not you too?”Marceline laughed, but it sounded hollow. “Yep, you got me. Haha. Ha…”Jake groaned from the ground where he had been pushed by Finn. “I need some ice cream.”“You and me both, kid,” Marceline mumbled in the direction of the fire. Jake got up off the ground and faced her.“We brought some. It’s in the cooler.” Jake pointed his thumb over his shoulder at a small blue box laying on the grass beside the boys’ tent. “We have strawberry, I dunno if that’s close enough to red or not.”Marceline blinked. “It is,” she said, and rose from her log.Marceline followed Jake the thirty or so feet to the tent, hands shoved into the pockets of her hoodie. She shivered again, thinking of Bubblegum’s story. Of eyes made of shadow…“Tell me about it,” Jake said, guessing at her train of thought as he, too, shivered. “She’s always been good at that stuff.” They reached the cooler and Jake noticeably relaxed. “Thank Glob for dessert,” he said. “Sugar fixes everything and that is a fact.”Marceline wasn’t so sure about that, but some of the tension fell from her own shoulders anyway. “Jake, were we good friends, you know, before?”Jake opened the cooler and rustled around for a bit before producing an awfully large tub of ice cream and a few bowls. “Yeah, I mean, sure.” He pried the lid off the tub and started scooping. “When we met I kind of had this predisposition towards hatred of vampires due to a societally-influenced mindset of prejudice and ignorance.” He handed her a bowl filled with pink ice cream. “But yeah, we’re cool now.”Marceline chuckled. “Well that’s good.”Jake leaned against the tent and stretched his arm into a spoon. “The princess said you’re not sure you want your memories back.”Marceline shrugged, staring down at the pink blob in her bowl. “I don’t know. A fresh start sounded nice, even though I’m not really sure what I’m running from.” She watched the ice cream melt in the heat of the night. “The only thing I remembered when I woke up was loneliness and—” Marceline didn’t want to mention the color pink, especially since she now knew why that color was so important to her. “—and I’m scared of where that loneliness was coming from, and now I don’t feel so lonely anymore.” She glanced back at Bonnie and Finn, who seemed to be having some kind of intense conversation. Finn had moved from his log to the one Marceline had been sitting on before. She looked away. “My brain has other ideas, anyway.”“How so?” Jake said around a mouthful of ice cream.“I keep remembering stuff.” Marceline scooped a bit of ice cream into her spoon and sucked the pink out before letting the now-white glob slip to the ground. “I don’t want to, it just happens. I’m just worried about remembering something that matters too much, and getting lonely all over again.”Jake nodded, contemplative. “Well the way I see it, nothing in life actually matters because we’ll eventually all give in to the abyss someday.”Something prickled in the back of Marceline’s mind. “The what?”“You know, the abyss? The void? Oblivion?” Marceline stared at him blankly. Something was clawing at the edge of her mind… “Death?” Jake poked her with his spoon-hand, and the feeling was gone.Marceline looked at her hand, at the blue-grey skin that marked her for what she was, what she would be forever. “Vampires don’t die,” she said.Jake just shrugged. “Maybe not naturally. Nobody knows for sure, though, because nobody’s lived long enough to find out.” He shoved his spoon-hand into his mouth. “But you are the last one, which means all the others met their ends some way or another, right?”Marceline frowned and sucked more pink from her snack. It didn’t taste as good as she’d thought it would. “So nothing matters, eh?”Jake shrugged. “Nothing. And everything.”“Do you always talk in cryptic circles?”Jake tossed his empty bowl aside and began to eat from the tub. “Nah. I’m just saying that if nothing actually matters then we get to decide what to care about. And—and if we deicide to care about something, that just makes it mean a whole lot more than nothing. It’s everything!” He brought the tub to his face and licked the inside clean. “It’s all about perspective, Marcy,” he finished, voice muffled from within the tub.“Huh,” she said, tilting her face back toward the stars. “Perspective.” “That was a wicked story, B,” Finn said, brushing dirt and dried grass off of himself as he rose from where he had fallen off of his own log. He took a seat on the one next to Bubblegum, where Marceline had been sitting before she’d gotten up to follow Jake.“Thanks,” she said smugly, satisfied with her audience’s reactions to her little story.Well, nearly satisfied.Truthfully, it hadn’t been her story at all, but one Marceline had told her years and years before, during one of their own impulsive camping trips. Bubblegum had hoped telling the story tonight would trigger a response in Marceline, and for a moment, she had been sure it was happening. The vampire had looked disturbed, at least, as if she were on the edge of a memory.But for the life of her, Bubblegum hadn’t been able to remember how it was supposed to end. She settled for fear by comedic timing, and had scared the boys well enough, but maybe that was why Marceline hadn’t remembered. Because it was Bubblegum’s ending, and not hers. Or maybe Bubblegum just hadn’t told it right…“How’s Flame Princess?” Bubblegum asked Finn as she risked a glance in Marceline’s direction, not really caring about his answer. She and Jake seemed to be deep in conversation about something important, judging from that crease between Marceline’s eyebrows that always appeared when she was thinking hard. But what on Earth could those two have to talk about?“Phoebe? She’s good.” Finn prodded the fire with his stick. “I still haven’t totally forgiven you for trying to, you know, kill her.”Bubblegum sighed and looked back at Finn. “Right. The science was sound, though. It was very likely—there should have been an explosion.”Finn’s face twisted into a grimace and Bubblegum waved her hands frantically. “Okay, okay, I’m sorry! I could have handled it better, I guess.” Her gaze drifted back to Marceline. “It won’t happen again.”Finn nodded, but he didn’t look thrilled. “Marceline seems like she’s doing well.”Bubblegum sighed. “I suppose.”“What does that mean?”“I’m just worried we’ll never get the old Marceline back.”“I don’t know about that.” Finn poked his stick through one of the marshmallows and thrust it into the fire, all conversation about Flame Princess forgotten, for now. “People change all the time. You aren’t the same person you were ten years ago. I’m probs not the same person I was two months ago. People grow and change just like everything else, I think.”Bubblegum stared into the fire. She wasn’t sure how to feel about all that.“But also,” Finn continued, checking the status of his marshmallow before returning it to the fire. “People stay the same, like on the inside. Their important bits, you know? Jake will always be my brother, that’s something that will never change. I’ll always want to go on adventures with my friends, probably even after I’m an old fart and can’t move anymore. You’ll always be… nurturing. You’ll always want more than you have, because you want to be surrounded by life.” Bubblegum’s brows rose. Finn, it seemed, was becoming wise beyond his years. “And Marceline is the same, probably, even though she’s changed.”“You don’t think experiences have a bigger impact on who you turn out to be?”Finn shrugged. He removed the charred marshmallow from the stick and popped it in his mouth, nodding in gooey bliss. “Of course they do. But they probably just build on who you already are.” He thrust another mallow into the fire, then made a righteous fist with his other hand. “Your core.”“Finn, there is no scientific evidence that anything like souls exist in—”“I don’t know Peebs.” He waved her off. “That’s just my two cents.”Bubblegum bit her lip. Maybe Finn was right…“Why do you care so much anyway?”The question took her off guard. “Why do I—?”“About Marceline? All the two of you ever did was fight, and if you weren’t fighting you were avoiding each other. What gives?”“Well…” Bubblegum stared at her hands, as if the answers to all of her problems lay within her own pink skin. “She and I have a complicated past, but…” She looked at Marceline fully now; the vampire had her face cast toward the night sky. “She was always there, you know? A constant in a world of shifting variables. And losing her, the way it happened—” Bubblegum took a deep breath—“I think sometimes loss is a kind of measuring tool, one we use to gauge how much someone really means to us.” It was cliché, she knew. You don’t know what you have till it’s gone. But it hit the mark. It made her mad, really, how true the sentiment was.Finn was frowning at her. “I think I know what you mean, aside from the science metaphors.”“I just wish I had been a better friend.” That was the second time she’d uttered that phrase, and it sounded flat to her own ears. Wishes and regrets were useless.“If you wanted any ice cream, you’re out of luck.” Finn and Bubblegum both jumped in surprise at Marceline’s voice. “Jake ate it all.” Finn scooted back to his own seat but the vampire didn’t sit down, just floated above and slightly away from the fire.“Hey. You helped,” Jake huffed.Bubblegum covered her mouth while she giggled. She didn’t want Jake to think she was laughing at him, even though she was. That dog’s temper was something else.Something small and cold alighted on Bubblegum’s forehead and she reached up in shock. Nothing was there, just a cool, wet spot where the thing had been. She looked up at the sky first in confusion, then in mounting annoyance. Where minutes before the sky had been clear, clouds were now roiling their way across the stars, gaining speed by the second and spitting out fat snowflakes.Of all the times…“Um, I might be wrong,” Marceline said, holding out an uncertain hand to catch a falling snowflake. “But isn’t it summer?”All at once a cold shock splintered through Bubblegum’s limbs, and she was hardly surprised to see that everyone else’s feet and arms were being frozen to the ground by large blocks of ice just like hers were.A figure clad in blue crashed to the ground, and the icy impact that came in his wake put out the campfire with a sizzle.“I see I’m late to the party,” said the Ice King.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
“Ice King!” Finn screeched from the patch of icy ground that held him prisoner.The old man didn’t answer. He just held up a corner of his mumu and delicately stepped over the frozen fire before putting his fists on his hips and staring down his nose at the group of friends. “I can’t believe this. My best friend, my future wife, my musical idol, and Jake.” The Ice King shook his head in disappointment. Snowflakes fell from his beard like dandruff. “I can’t believe you all went behind my back to have a party.” To nobody’s apparent surprise, tears began to fall from the old man’s eyes and hit the ground in the form of small ice cubes. “And you didn’t invite me!” The Ice King wiped at his eyes, but the tears kept coming and he was sobbing now. “Friends are supposed to be good to each other!”“You’re right, Ice King,” Finn yelled. “Friends are supposed to be nice. So if you’re our friend then let us go.”The Ice King scowled, suddenly angry, and sent a blast of ice careening in Finn’s direction. It landed on his mouth, rendering him unable to speak. “You had your chance to be nice, and you blew it.” With a dull thud, the man sat on one of the logs and picked up the stick that Finn had struck through a marshmallow only minutes before. Finn tried to protest, but his cries were muffled by the ice over his mouth. “Well, you should have thought about that before you decided not to invite me.” Ice King poked the frozen fire with the marshmallow.“Uhh.” Marceline cleared her throat, and all eyes darted to her. “Not to be like, out of the loop or anything, but what the heck just happened?”Marceline had gotten flashes of a few scattered memories as soon as the Ice King showed up, but they had only served to confuse her further. All she could seem to remember was a skinny man with brown hair and small round glasses, which didn’t match up with the image of this guy in front of her at all. She also had a sudden massive and chilling hatred toward the crown atop his head, and she couldn’t figure that out either.“Marceline doesn’t even have her bass?” Ice King scoffed. “What kind of camping trip is this anyway?“Sorry, Marcy,” Bonnie piped up with a roll of her eyes. “This is the Ice King. He likes to imprison princesses and he thinks Finn is his best friend. You might know him as Simon?” Bonnie, Jake, and Finn all leaned forward in anticipation of Marceline’s answer, but she just shrugged. Everyone sighed, and Marceline couldn’t help but feel like she had let everyone down, though she wasn’t sure why.Ice King jumped from the log and into the air with a hurt expression on his bearded face. “Marceline knows who I am. We jam together all the time, right Marcy?”“She doesn’t remember you, Ice King,” Bonnie said before Marceline had a chance to answer. “Her memories have been erased.”An odd look passed over the Ice King’s face, and the clouds over his eyes cleared along with the clouds in the sky. “Her… memories?” He frowned, like something important was tugging at his mind, something he couldn’t quite grasp, but then he noticed an extra-large snowflake drifting by and jumped at it, distracted.Finn tried to say something around the ice covering his mouth, but he couldn’t form coherent words. Marceline guessed it was something about how cold it was. He started rocking back and forth in frustration, and Marceline turned her head to face Bonnie.“How does this usually end?” she asked the princess, who was staring at the ground in concentration.“We always get out of it eventually,” she said, glancing at Jake.Marceline shot a look at the dog as well, then looked back at Bonnie with raised brows as realization dawned on her. Jake was stretching his back flab into an extra arm behind the ice, obstructed from the Ice King’s view. Smart dog.Finn started making noises again, more insistently this time, and everyone looked in his direction. The Ice King swooped closer to Finn with a glare that could freeze the sun. What was this kid doing? If the Ice King got any closer to Jake, he would see his arm and it would all be over.Finn made something close to a screeching sound, and stared at Marceline. She opened her mouth to distract the Ice King: to tell a joke or a story or something, when Bonnie swore colorfully beside her. “Ice King, let us go. Now.” Marceline shivered at the commanding tone. The princess was done playing prisoner, it seemed.The Ice King crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. “You need to be punished for being mean to me,” he whined. “How else will you learn your lesson?”Bonnie groaned, exasperated. “We don’t have time for this.” She struggled against the ice that bound her to the earth. “If you don’t let us go, Marceline is going to die.”Marceline raised her brows. Wasn’t Bonnie taking it just a bit too far?But then she saw it, what Finn had been trying to tell them all this time: the darkness of the forest was receding, what had looked like murky shapes in the trees were becoming clearer; leaves were revealed; shadows ebbed.The sun was rising.Marceline hissed almost involuntarily. She was protected from direct sunlight by the trees, but only for so long. Despite how strong she was, this magic ice was much stronger. Surely this Ice King guy wouldn’t let her die like this.Would he?All at once, Jake’s newly made arm shot toward the Ice King in a stream of blurred orange. With a cry of surprise, the old man managed to deflect Jake’s attack with a blast of his own, but Jake came back at him from the other direction. The Ice King staved off that attack too, as well as the next few attempts Jake made.Jake was making a valiant effort, Marceline had to hand it to him. But she didn’t have enough time to wait for Jake to win. The sun was already cresting the horizon; she could tell by the way the sky was turning from deep purple to pale pink.
Think, Marceline. Think.
“Marcy, you can shape-shift,” Bonnie said. Her voice was even, but there was a slight waver at the last syllable.“I can?” Marceline pursed her lips, and tried to picture herself transforming. Panic gripped her again. “Into what?” she yelled.“Anything, I think.” Bonnie was struggling against the ice too, but she wasn’t making any progress either. “Just picture what you want to become—something large to break through the ice.” Bonnie continued to struggle futilely. “Do it now, Marcy!”Marceline closed her eyes in concentration, breath ragged. She could do that. She could picture something. She could do that.But panic held her in its grasp, and she couldn’t think. She began to feel warm, but she didn’t know if it was the presence of sunlight or her own terror washing over her skin.Nearby, Jake continued to attack while the Ice King dodged. Marceline tried not to watch, but it was hard when she knew that the outcome of this fight might be literal life or death for her. “Jake, wait, stop!” the Ice King yelped, “the sun is ri—yeargh!” Ice King jumped away as Jake continued his relentless bashing and Finn made screeching noises to the side.“Ignore them, Marcy. Look at me.”Marceline forced herself to focus on Bonnie, on her fierce eyes and her steady gaze. Marceline felt herself calming down, but she still didn’t know how to shape-shift. It was like that part of herself was locked away, impossible to reach.“Bonnie, I can’t. I don’t remember how to transform.” Marceline felt angry tears prick her eyes. “I’m weak. I can’t—”She must have looked as lost as she felt, because Bonnie closed her eyes and sighed softly. Then she began to speak, slowly. “When we were young, I thought it would be brave if I tried to climb the rock candy mountains alone, do you remember that?” The princess didn’t open her eyes, but Marceline shook her head anyway, confused. “I didn’t want you with me, because I wanted to prove something—whether it was for you or for myself I still don’t really know."Marceline's brows knitted. Was this really the time for stories?"I thought being a princess was about being fearless, being stronger than everything else," Bonnie continued, "so I went out early enough in the morning that you couldn’t follow me. But there was an earthquake, and I was trapped under rubble and debris for hours.”Something pulled at the back of Marceline’s mind, but the memory wouldn’t come forward.“I didn’t tell anyone where I was going.” Bonnie dipped her head, eyes still closed. “I thought I was going to die.”Marceline wanted to speak, but she stopped herself; she trusted Bonnie to be going somewhere with this.“As soon as the sun set, you found me anyway.” A corner of Bonnie’s mouth quirked and she opened her eyes. She stared at the ground. “You came bursting through and you punched the rocks off of me and you were so mad. You kept saying ‘how could you be so stupid?’ ‘What were you thinking?’ And I cried the whole time you carried me home, thinking I was weak for needing your help. But when you finally set me down, you were crying too. I hadn’t noticed before.“I apologized for being so weak, and you looked at me like I was speaking a different language.” Bonnie chuckled, even as the sunlight met the edge of the forest clearing. “You told me there was nothing weak about me, and I couldn’t believe it. I didn’t believe it for a long time. But when you said that, when you told me I was strong—” Bonnie shook her head. “—I never forgot it."When Bonnie’s eyes finally opened and met Marceline’s, it felt like she had been set on fire."I was only able to handle myself and my kingdom because of those words you said to me when we were children." Bubblegum smiled. "I know it's silly. But sometimes, even now, I’m still unsure. Then I think of you. Whenever I feel like I’m losing myself, I think of you,” Bonnie said. “Because you thought I was brave, I was finally able to be. You did that, Marcy.”Marceline’s eyes widened, and the memory became real in her head just like it had always been there—a spread of large membranous wings across her back, strong claws curled like talons, Bonnie’s tears glistening in the dark.“There is nothing weak about you, Marcy,” Bonnie said. “Nothing.”Marceline could picture it now, the creature she could shift into at will, and she took a deep breath.Bonnie was right. No matter what life she was living, Marceline was strong. She could feel that strength in her bones as they grew larger and the ice cracked beneath her. She could feel that strength in her core, in her heart, in the fire that had been ignited within her by Bonnie, by her friends who cared enough for her that they would go to such lengths to protect her.Bonnie let out an excited, somewhat relieved whoop! as Marceline grew to her full height and punched the Ice King right in the face. He fell to the ground with a thump, instantly unconscious. Marceline allowed herself to feel bad for only a brief moment before turning to knock the ice out from under the rest of her friends.Free at last, Bonnie rushed to knock the crown off the Ice King’s head, and the rest of the ice began to melt.“Dang Marcy!” Finn pumped his fist and jumped up and down. “You were like whoosh, then you were like pwchoo, then you were like yaaaa!”She smiled and slowly returned to her own form, wincing slightly.“We have to get out of here,” Bonnie said, staring at the sky. Marceline followed her line of vision."Can't she just shapeshift again, now that she's done it once?" Finn suggested.Marceline shook her head, eyes wide. "Unless Bonnie's got any stories of me turning into something smaller, I think I'm out of luck on that one.""The trees could give you a little shade," Jake said, glancing around the clearing. "But the sun's so low, it might not be enough."Bonnie and Marceline looked at each other, then they both looked to the grimy tent they had set up.“Glob dang it,” Bonnie said. “I knew we should have washed that thing.In the end, Finn and Jake had offered up their tent to Marceline while they returned to the Candy Kingdom to deliver the Ice King to the dungeon for the time being. They promised to come back with a shroud or an umbrella or something that might cover Marceline up completely, and Bonnie suggested she stay behind with the vampire.The tent was small—smaller than Marceline’s by quite a bit—but the two girls fit into it well enough, and Marceline felt better after they had both lay down. Much less jittery.She yawned, stretching as much as she could in the small space.“Watch yourself, Marcy,” the princess shoved Marceline’s outstretched limbs away from her, but there was no malice in her voice.Marceline laughed. “You’re cute when you’re grumpy.”“Shut it,” Bonnie said crossly, but Marceline noticed the blush that crept up the girl’s neck.“In all seriousness, though,” Marceline said, letting her smile drop, “thank you for what you said. It—It helped.” She ran a hand through her mop of hair, wishing she knew how to say more.Bonnie smiled and closed her eyes. “You’re welcome.”Marceline stared at the top of the tent and watched a tiny ant walk around in circles.“I feel you,” she said to the ant.Bubblegum turned her head. “You what?”Marceline chuckled. “Nothing.”Marceline could feel Bonnie’s eyes on her, but she forced herself not to look at the princess. Even though she was tired, she was still buzzing with the excited energy of her transformation, and she thought if she looked into Bonnie’s eyes again she might explode.“I meant it, you know,” The princess said softly. “I meant every word.”Marceline smiled. “I know.”She could hear the frown in Bonnie’s voice. “I didn’t tell you how I felt enough, you know, before. I don’t think you knew how much—how highly I regarded your opinion of me.”Marceline surprised both of them by laughing. Bonnie—Princess Bubblegum—sometimes she tried too hard to be formal. “I think I probably knew,” Marceline said, although she really had no idea.Bonnie put her hand on Marceline’s cheek and forced her to look into her eyes. For a reeling, wild moment Marceline thought she might kiss her. But Bonnie only patted her skin like she was a child and rolled back over. “Try to get some sleep, Marcy.”There was no way in heck she would get any sleep now.Marceline watched the ant crawl in circles on the top of the tent, tracing the same path again and again until she wondered how the ant could keep going like that without getting dizzy.She tried to sleep—she really did. But she only managed several short spurts of shuteye before jerking back awake, jolted prematurely from dreams of wings and talons and pink.She rubbed her eyes.“Can’t sleep?”Marceline groaned. “I’m sorry if I woke you, Bonnie.” She flipped to her side to see the princess’s pink eyes opened slightly. “It’s this whole transformation thing—I’m trying to calm down but my body won’t let me.”Bonnie let out a tired chuckle. “It’s fine, Marcy.” The princess lifted the edge of her sleeping bag: an invitation. Marceline took it, warily, and closed the gap between the two of them.Almost instantly, Marceline’s eyelids began to droop. She thought being this close to Bonnie would trigger other emotions, ones that would keep her from sleep rather than encourage it. But the girl’s body was warm, and Marceline was so tired. She snuggled in close. Sleep found her, and this time she stayed under.Too soon, the door of the tent was being unzipped, and she could hear Finn and Jake arguing on the other side. She let out an involuntary hiss at being woken up so soon, and pulled the sleeping bag over her head. She felt Bonnie chuckle beside her.“This will work,” Jake was saying. Both boys stepped into the tent, and Marceline threw the sleeping bag off of her face, irritated.“Whatever you say, man,” Finn rolled his eyes and looked at Marceline. “Ready to go home Marcy?”Relief rushed through the vampire so thoroughly that she forgot to be irritable for a moment, and instead jumped up to hug Finn in one arm and Jake in the other. “Thank you thank you thank you,” she said. “I’m so ready. I’m never leaving my cave again.”Finn laughed and playfully shoved her away. “All right, all right. Let’s do this biz.”Ultimately, the solution Finn and Jake had come up with was completely ridiculous—they had gathered as many umbrellas as they could find and taped them together to form a kind of umbrella ball that Marceline could float in the center of while someone else rolled it to the cave. She thought she and Bonnie could have figured out a much easier solution, but she didn’t really care.After last night, she was just glad to be home.She thanked Finn and Jake as they left, and then she threw herself down onto the floor, utterly exhausted.“Here.” Bonnie handed Marceline a crisp red apple—supplied by Finn and Jake—and sat on the floor beside her.Marceline took it gratefully, but she didn’t eat it. Just rolled it back and forth in her hands, thinking. Maybe—maybe it wouldn’t be the worst thing if she remembered her old life. She sunk her fangs into the apple.“Part of me wants to remember,” she said to Bonnie after a while.“It’s up to you,” replied Bonnie.Marceline shook her head. “I wish it was an easier decision.” She cast a sideways glance at Bonnie, wondering exactly what the girl was thinking, but the princess's face gave nothing away.Marceline stared back down at her apple, which was now completely drained of color. “Maybe we should just do it.”Bonnie raised an amused brow. “We?”Marceline gave her a look. “You know what I mean. Maybe we should just—” Bonnie bit her bottom lip and Marceline’s eyes shot toward it. “—do it.""It?” Bonnie said, clearly stifling a grin. “As in the thing that's had the most success at drawing memories out of your head?”“Ugh, I know. It’s a terrible idea.” Fed up with herself, Marceline threw the red-drained apple across the room and then buried her head in her hands. “Why am I like this?”Bonnie put her hand on Marceline’s upper back. She started moving it in comforting circles. “It isn't the best idea,” she agreed. “Considering you're not sure what you want. Not to mention the fact that I have to return to my kingdom eventually. But you’re fine. You’ll figure it out.”With a huff, Marceline let herself fall backwards onto the floor. She spread her arms out and stared at the ceiling. “I want to kiss you so bad it’s driving me crazy.”Bonnie pursed her lips, hand falling to her side. Then she sighed, and lay down next to Marceline, mirroring her posture and staring at the ceiling as well. “Listen, Marcy. I know you don’t have that many recent memories of us but—” Bonnie’s eyes traced the spots on the ceiling. “—but I’ve had to live with wanting to kiss you for like a hundred years. It gets easier.” She tapped her fingers on the carpet.Marceline said nothing, but she turned her head so she was facing the princess and narrowed her eyes. Bonnie met her scrutinous gaze only to look away almost immediately. “Okay, fine,” she said, raising her arms toward the ceiling. “Half the time I wanted to kiss you and half the time I wanted to punch you in the face. That’s not the point.”Marceline couldn’t help it—she burst out laughing. That was so much more like Bonnie.“What?” the princess looked genuinely surprised at Marceline’s mirth, but the vampire just waved her away and wiped a stray tear from her face. In her fit of laughter she had floated several feet off the ground without noticing.Bonnie sat up, and some of her hair fell into her face. Marceline wanted to brush it to the side, but she ignored the impulse and instead floated several inches higher, just in case.Bonnie looked up at her with a thoughtful expression. The princess bit her lip, and Marceline’s eyes locked on the motion. She wanted to be the one to bite that lip.Mortified at the direction of her thoughts, Marceline tore her eyes from Bonnie’s and did a quick summersault in the air so she didn’t have to face her. Upside down now, Marceline almost wished she could have her memories erased all over again.“We could always, you know, do it anyway,” Bonnie said, way too casually.Marceline was so surprised she suddenly forgot how to float and she crashed to the floor in a heap, still blinking away the shock. “I thought you said it was a bad idea,” she said, voice muffled by the carpet.She looked up in time to see Bonnie shrug. “I still think it is.”Marceline stared at her. Bonnie stood up and dusted off her pink pants. “It’s up to you. It’s not a big deal unless we make it a big deal, right?” Bonnie pushed her hair out of her eyes and gave Marceline a questioning look.Marceline scrambled to get off the floor. “I. Um.”Bonnie crossed her arms and leaned against the wall. “Right,” she said. “Your memories.”“Look, Bonnie, I want to. I mean I really want to.” Marceline shoved a hand through her hair. Glob dang, she wanted to. “But I just—”“It’s totally fine, Marcy.” Bonnie flashed Marceline a smug smile. “I understand. Forget I said anything.”Suddenly Marceline was angry. Why did she have to be such a flustered, bumbling mess while Bonnie could just stand there and talk about this stuff so casually? Why did Marceline have to care so much and be so obvious about it, so unable to hide her feelings while Bonnie simply looked on with that expression-She pounced before she even really knew it was happening.Marceline slammed her hands flat on the wall on either side of Bonnie’s head, and smiled wide enough to show her pointed teeth. “Totally fine, huh?” she said.Bonnie’s eyes widened slightly, and she swallowed. Marceline wasn’t sure if the princess had acted the way she had on purpose in order to get a reaction from her, and right now she didn’t particularly care. She let her right pointer finger elongate into a vicious claw to trace along Bonnie’s cheek, and delighted in the princess’s slight shiver.A few memories tapped at Marceline's mind, but she ignored them, finding it much easier to do so when she was distracted like this. When her eyes were fixed on the pink skin of Bonnie's neck and shoulders, flushed a deeper pink than Marceline had ever seen it. When her eyes dipped lower, taking in the rise and fall of Bonnie's chest as her breath quickened, the beat of her heart visible under her fairly low-cut shirt.Regaining her composure a little, Bonnie smiled again. That same smug, self-satisfied smile that had Marceline’s skin burning with anger and irritation and another feeling that was rising, fast, from the pit of her stomach. “So you’re going to kiss me then?” Bonnie said.Marceline grinned, moving closer, and was rewarded by a hitch in Bonnie's breath, a dilation of her pupils. The princess's superiority was gone in an instant, replaced by something else entirely.Marceline traced her claw down Bonnie’s cheek and under her chin, tipping the girl’s face up to meet hers. She leaned down toward her mouth, watching the princess’s lids go heavy, then she kissed her jawline instead.Glob, that pink tasted good.Bonnie stiffened, then relaxed all at once while Marceline trailed slow kisses down her neck, across her shoulder. Bonnie moved her arms to grip Marceline’s waist and pull her closer, and Marceline growled against her skin, eliciting a sharp intake of breath from the princess when her fangs scraped across her throat.Marceline pulled away, worried she might have hurt her, but Bonnie’s eyes were fogged over and she was breathing heavily and Marceline licked her lips, savoring the taste of that pink. She grabbed underneath Bonnie's hips and lifted, allowing the princess to wrap her legs around Marceline’s waist. Marceline pushed her a bit harder against the wall, shivering at the heat of Bonnie's breath against her ear as she continued kissing her neck, wishing she had done this sooner, pushing away the thought that she probably should not have done this at all. She grazed her teeth over that lovely, lovely pink skin, savoring every little noise that escaped Bonnie's mouth.Memories were flooding Marceline’s head now, but somehow they were much easier to push away. They came and went with the rise and fall of her chest, with every frantic beat of her deathless heart.Bracing herself, she finally brought her lips to meet Bonnie’s, and the resulting burst of emotion was so raw it was almost a physical blow. Marceline groaned against Bonnie’s mouth, but she fought through the memories and held the princess tighter, anchoring herself in the present.But her head was beginning to pound with the force of the memories, and she could no longer hold out.When she pulled back, both girls were breathing hard. They stared at each other, wide-eyed, then they both grinned; at the sheer rush of what had just happened, at the whirlwind of emotion they'd shared, at the shock and the ridiculousness of the whole situation. Marceline touched her forehead to Bonnie’s forehead, closing her eyes, and the princess laughed.Marceline was more confused than ever, though. All these memories she was getting—they were all of the same nature. She and Bonnie kissing or clutching each other in a heated embrace or tangled up in blankets. Somehow it was much easier to handle when all of her memories were like this, all relatively similar. But it was much harder to push them aside as she had done with the other memories, much harder to ignore them now that the distraction was over.And it was much harder to ignore how much more she wanted when it came to Bonnie.Marceline questioned, not for the first time, why she didn’t just consent to let Bonnie try to recover all of her memories. It made so much sense to her when her mind was clear, and when Bonnie wasn’t so close to her. Marceline remembered that crippling loneliness she had felt the moment she first woke up and her new life had started, and she was terrified of what it meant. Bonnie had said more than once that the two of them hadn’t been very close for a long time, and Marceline didn’t want to go back to that. Even though she had no way of knowing how it felt, she couldn’t imagine a life without Bonnie in it.A few long moments later, Bonnie let her legs straighten out and her feet drop to the floor. “Well,” she said. “That was fun.”“Shut up,” Marceline mumbled, turning to lean her back on the wall and then sliding down to sit on the floor. But she was grinning, and so was Bonnie.It was okay, Marceline decided. This—being close to Bonnie like this, laughing with friends, discovering herself within her new life—it was okay. Plus, she reasoned, still grinning at Bonnie like a buffoon, she could always make new memories.“Oh, I almost forgot.” Bonnie hurried to her backpack and pulled a package from within, something wrapped in plastic, and handed it to Marceline, sitting on the floor beside her. Raising a brow, Marceline unwrapped the parcel to reveal three crimson roses. “It’s a thank you,” Bonnie explained. “I had Finn and Jake pick them up from the Garden Kingdom.”Marceline sniffed the roses, unable to keep the grin from her face. “For what?” If anything, she owed Bonnie a bundle of thank-you roses.“For being there for me,” Bonnie said, nudging Marceline with her elbow. “Even if you don’t remember it.”Marceline raised her eyebrows, but she still couldn’t stop smiling. “Well, you’re welcome then.”“I’ve thought about this for a while,” Bonnie said, twirling a piece of her hair between her fingers absently. “And I’ve finally decided something.”“What’s that, Bons?” Marceline picked a single petal from one of the roses and raised it to her teeth.“I’ve decided—I’ve decided that this is enough.”Marceline paused, red rose inches from her lips. She lowered it slowly, and frowned. “What’s enough?”Bonnie gestured to her, to the roses, to the two of them seated on the thin carpet of Marceline’s living room. “This. You. Us.”The sweet smell of the roses suddenly seemed too sweet; sickly.“I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, trying to figure out how to get the old you back,” Bubblegum continued, oblivious to the growing feeling of nausea in Marceline’s stomach. “But I’ve decided that it’s enough. Even though you aren’t really the same person, Finn pointed out that everyone changes anyway, and I’ve been thinking that maybe your change really is all for the better, especially when it comes to—Marcy, are you okay?”Marceline stared at the red of the flowers in her hand. “It’s enough?”“Yeah, Finn helped me realize—”“That I’m enough?” Marceline finally met Bubblegum’s eyes. “I’m enough?”Bonnie’s eyebrows knitted together, and she opened her mouth to speak. But Marceline was faster. She dropped the roses to the floor and stood up, taking a step backward. “Me, the way I am? It’s enough for you?”Too late, Bonnie realized her mistake, and her eyes widened. “No, Marcy, that isn’t—I didn’t mean—”But Marceline knew better. She knew exactly what Bonnie meant. A dull roar began to sound in her ears, like water rushing inside her brain, rushing toward whatever was keeping her old memories from coming to the surface. Rushing, and then colliding; and then the images came in waves and Marceline was flooded with years of heartbreak in a single moment.She doubled over on the floor, clutching her stomach and squeezing her eyes shut as if that would keep the tears in. This. This was what she had been so afraid of.She let out an agonized cry, and Bonnie reached out a hand. Marceline snarled at her, though the movement had her seeing stars. “Get out,” she growled, but she didn’t know if she was talking to the princess or to the pain lancing through head.Bonnie hesitated, then straightened. But she didn’t leave.“Get out!” Marceline cried, and this time it was directed at Bonnie. Not just the princess sitting in front of her, but at every echo of the princess in each of Marceline’s memories; years and years of Bonnibels: saying goodbye, explaining that this was all for the best; fighting, ignoring, forgetting. Marceline hugged herself tighter as pain blossomed through her chest, phantom pain torn from a hundred different memories of Bonnie leaving, just like this.She wanted the princess gone, all of her.Slowly, almost as if she had expected this all along, the princess stood up and began gathering her things.Marceline barely heard Bonnie close the door behind her, and it was a long while before she could breathe without sobs punctuating each breath, and longer still before she could even begin to lift herself up off the floor.
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The house felt empty without Bonnie.The pain in Marceline’s chest had subsided—though not all the way—and she was left feeling hollow and void. She had run out of tears hours ago, and now she just sat on the stiff couch, too mentally exhausted even to hover in the air or to decide what she was going to do next.What was she going to do next?She tried to look anywhere but at the crushed roses on the floor.Bonnie had warned her. She had said, more than once, that they had not been on good terms for a long time. That before Marceline lost her memories the two of them barely even spoke anymore. She had even implied that she was only hanging around so much now because she was trying to make up for lost time, to apologize for not being there for the old Marceline.The vampire stared at her hands, flexing her fingers open and closed. Who was she, then? If she wasn’t the old Marceline, what did that make her? The new Marceline? She had so many memories of her past now, although she knew she was nowhere close to remembering everything. If she kept regaining memories, when did she stop being new Marceline and start being old Marceline again?Could she ever really go back?Did Bonnie feel like new Marceline was some sort of chance at redemption? A chance for her to feel like she was making up for the things she’d done without actually having to face them? Perhaps the princess felt that if she pretended Marceline was an entirely different person for long enough, she would feel less guilty about whatever they had been through.A knock at the front door startled Marceline from the deluge of questions and she leapt from the couch. Part of her hoped it was Bonnie, but her other parts pushed the hope down and she opened the door, just to have three small blue figures whoosh past her into the house.The vampire turned, startled, to find three very loud ghosts zooming through her living room. “Ayyyyyy Marceliiine!” one of them stopped in front of her and held up a large bottle of a sickly green liquid that was glowing slightly. “I brought the good stuff!”She raised her eyebrows and shut her door.She must know these people, if they were barging into her house like this.“Hey, guys.” Marceline scratched the back of her neck, wondering exactly what she should do in this situation. One—complete with a transparent blue mohawk—laid back in a relaxed manor, floating slightly above her couch. A second one—a small female—was examining her VHS rack, and the third was still floating in front of her, holding up the bottle. All three of them seemed to be waiting for her to speak.“Um,” she said. “You all know me,” she began. “But—uh. I don’t remember any of you.”They stared at her blankly; the second one looked up from the scanning of her videos.Nervous laughter escaped Marceline’s lips. “What I mean is. Uh. My memories have been erased,” she explained, haltingly. “Well, I remember some things now but nothing about you three—I don’t know how it happened, or why, but, yeah, I can’t remember anything. About you.”The one in front of her lowered the bottle. “Bummer,” he said.Nobody seemed to really know how to react.“Well,” the one in front of her scratched his transparent head with the hand that held the bottle; the liquid inside seemed to glow a bit brighter as is sloshed around with the motion. “I’m Les.” He pointed to the one with the mohawk near the couch. “He’s Spike, and that’s Annie.”“Hey,” Annie said, floating up to Marceline. “Are you sure this isn’t one of your classic pranks?”“Positive,” Marceline said firmly, then she registered the rest of the question and asked, “my classic pranks?”“Girl, you are the queen of pranks,” Spike said from the couch. His mohawk bobbed up and down as he nodded. “No, not queen. Empress. You are the empress of pranks.”Marceline furrowed her brow. Something dark and cold swirled in the back of her mind, but the ghosts kept talking and it was lost again.“What’s with the roses, M?” the female, Annie, hovered backward slightly to examine the crushed rose petals on the floor.“Oh. Those.” Marceline’s voice sounded dead, even to her own ears. “Those were from Bonnie.”“Woah,” Annie said, backing away from the petals.“Yikes,” Spike said seriously from the couch. “Not cool, Marceline.”“You’re hanging with Princess Bubble Brain again?” Les looked genuinely worried, and Marceline felt the ache in her chest begin to widen, to deepen.“No,” she said firmly. “I’m not.” Angry—at herself, Bonnie, even the ghosts she didn’t remember who hung there and judged—she sped to her kitchen and located a broom before violently wrenching the door open and sweeping the petals onto her front steps.The three ghosts cheered, and Les popped open the cork on that strange glowing bottle, but Marceline did not share their mirth. She only wanted to sleep, possibly for a thousand years.“You used to love this stuff,” Annie said before taking the bottle from Les and taking a huge swig. She handed the liquid to Marceline, who took it warily. “Just about the only thing that can get a vampire drunk.”That finally captured Marceline’s attention. She could use a couple hours of reduced nervous system function.Yeesh, she was starting to sound like Bonnie. That wasn’t good.Marceline took a deep breath, and downed half the bottle in one pull while the ghosts cheered her on. Bubblegum took a deep breath and adjusted her backpack more firmly on her shoulders before stepping through the front gate of the Candy Kingdom.She hadn’t ridden her bird—she thought that taking the long way home might clear her head a bit, might make her feel slightly better. Instead, it had just made her sweaty and hungry.Candy people milled about as the princess made her way toward the castle, stumbling through their daily lives like confused, eternal babies. In a way, Bubblegum supposed, that’s what they were. Just innocent lives she had brought into this world so that she didn’t feel so alone. A few stopped to wave at her and she waved back, though she didn’t stop walking. She probably should have taken the time to actually talk to them, considering how she had been neglecting her duties lately, but she couldn’t bring herself to do so.Truthfully, Princess Bubblegum couldn’t care less right then. She was exhausted, and she just wanted to take a weeklong nap, or maybe soak in a bubble bath for a hundred years and let the kingdom sort itself out.That stuff with Marceline—it had been ugly. With every step on the candy stone street, Bubblegum’s heart felt heavier and heavier.But it hadn’t been unexpected.She had known it wasn’t going to last, and she never expected it to. She had even told Marceline as much, for whatever good that had done in the end. The two of them were like distant stars orbiting the center of the Milky Way; always within view, within reach of each other but rarely straying from their respective, repeating paths apart. But when they did…Bubblegum bit her lip.When stars grow weak and fall from their intended paths… When they collide…Lost in her own thoughts, Bubblegum narrowly missed running straight into a small candy person who was walking in circles in the middle of the road, mumbling quietly to himself.Great, Bubblegum thought, dreading the impending conversation. I guess I can’t avoid the candy people forever.“Starchy, how are you?” Bubblegum said, smile fake, voice too cheerful. Yikes. She needed to tone it down a notch.“Huh wha—?” Starchy looked up at her with a mildly dazed expression, and continued walking around in circles.Bubblegum’s false smile faltered a bit. She didn’t have the patience for this right now. “I just asked how you were doing.”“Yes, indeed.” Starchy nodded and changed course, walking a zigzag in the other direction. “See you later, gum lady.”Bubblegum raised her eyebrows in confusion, but she began walking once again. That was weird, but honestly not unusual. Most of her people weren’t that smart, and Starchy was getting old. Honestly, it was a relief that he had ended the conversation before it had really started; Princess Bubblegum just wanted to go home.Her feet sped up as the castle came into view—she was so close! A hundred bubble baths and her soft feather bed awaited her if she could just. Reach. The castle.As she neared the front doors, she noticed Peppermint Butler standing in one of the many front windows looking pensive, as he often did. She raised an arm to catch his attention—those bubble baths weren’t going to fill themselves—but as soon as he saw her his expression turned to one of immense relief, and he disappeared from the window only to burst through the front door moments later.“Princess, where have you been?”“You know exactly where I’ve been, Peps,” she sighed. Dear Glob, she just wanted to rest. But from the look on her butler’s round face, something had happened while she was gone.If Bubblegum had to guess, it was probably something involving her robot double. She hadn’t spent very long building it, and as perfect as she was, Bubblegum was mature enough to admit that the thing was probably not completely up to par.Whatever the problem, it was fixable. Everything was, if you had science on your side.Without warning an image of Marceline popped into Bubblegum’s head, and the princess winced. Well, maybe not everything.“I’ve been trying to call you for hours,” Peppermint Butler continued, oblivious to Bubblegum’s thoughts.“Oh. Right.” Bubblegum swung her backpack off her shoulders and reached in to grab her emergency phone. “I turned it off. You guys were distracting me from my experiments.”“It’s an emergency phone for a reason, Princess,”“Just tell me what’s wrong Peps.”Peppermint Butler sighed, and pushed the door open.Bubblegum’s eyes widened as she took in the sight before her. A large amount of candy people had taken residence in the Great Hall; small candy tents were pitched along the walls, and sleeping bags were scattered across the floor at random. A makeshift kitchen had been set up in one corner and soup was being ladled into bowls by a candy woman in a hairnet.No bubble baths for a while, it seemed.Princess Bubblegum took a step forward into her castle. “What in Glob’s name—"“Princess!” Bubblegum turned to the voice. It was Finn, waving at her from the other side of the Hall. He began running toward her.“Finn, what the heck is going on? How long have these candy citizens been here?” She lowered her voice to a whisper. “Is this another zombie situation?”“It’s only been a few hours,” Finn replied, finally reaching her. “And no, it isn’t zombies.”“Then what? What happened?”Finn took a deep breath. “Well, we didn’t notice anything was wrong at first. The candy people are kind of”—Finn waved his fingers—”you know.”“They’re idiots, Finn. I know.”“Yeah.” Finn cleared his throat, looking worried. “Princess, these candy people—they’ve lost their memories.”Bubblegum’s entire body went cold. “They what?”Finn nodded. “Just like Marceline.”Bubblegum surveyed the Hall once again with a mounting feeling of sickness deep in her gut. Recovering Marceline’s memories had been a matter of making her feel strong emotion, and she doubted the candy peoples’ situation would be much different. But she didn’t have the time or personal ties to every single one of her candy citizens to cure all of them, at least not the same way, not any time soon.“We don’t know when this started,” Peppermint Butler stated coolly. “Or how long it’s been going on, but it seems to have mainly affected those who live on the edge of the kingdom, or people who had recently been traveling outside its walls.”“Why are they here?” she asked, turning to look at Peppermint Butler. “In the castle?”“We tried to send them home,” Finn said. “But…” He and Peppermint Butler exchanged glances.“But that only made them scared,” the butler finished. “And you know what happens when candy people get scared.”“Cripes,” Bubblegum said.“Not only that,” Jake said suddenly, popping out of Finn’s pocket the size of a jelly bean, “but the castle phone has been off the hook, princess. Yours isn’t the only kingdom this is happening to.” Jake stretched just his arms to return them to normal size, and counted with his fingers “Breakfast Kingdom, Slime Kingdom, even Worm Kingdom.”Bubblegum closed her eyes and rubbed her temples with her fingers. This was her fault, at least partially. If she hadn’t been tucked safely away in Marceline’s cave for the past few days, maybe she could have stopped this before it got so bad.“Okay,” she said, opening her eyes and straightening her posture. “We need a plan.” She could fix this. She would figure it out. Everything was going to be fine. “I don’t think the candy people would react well to being experimented on, but I have all my research notes from the tests I did on Marceline’s brain, so that’s a start.”The problem was, she had left most of that stuff behind when she walked out. It was neatly organized, in Marceline’s music room. She hadn’t exactly had time to collect it all.“Jake and I could go explore outside the kingdom now that you’re back,” Finn said. “Try to see if we can figure out if something is causing this?”“That sounds perfect,” Bubblegum said. She was still trying to figure out the best way to get her machines and notes back from Marceline’s house, but nothing good came to mind besides actually going back, confronting Marceline…“Peps,” she said, pushing the thoughts to the side and turning to her butler. She could figure it out later. “I’m putting you in charge of the candy people here. Make sure they’re cared for and accommodated well, and keep an eye on them. If anything changes, come get me immediately.”The small man nodded, but didn’t look thrilled.“I’ll be in my lab.” Bubblegum turned and hurried in the direction of her lab.She was dreading having to see Marceline again, but it couldn’t be helped; her people were in trouble, and they came before anyone else. Even Bubblegum’s pride. It could, however, be put off until further notice while she decided the best course of action moving forward. She had been nowhere close to a cure after she had gathered data on Marceline; she hadn’t even come close to identifying the problem. She knew that the memories were not gone, that they were still inside, hidden somewhere in their tiny candy brains. But she did not know exactly where the memories had gone, or why they had been erased.If Bubblegum was being honest with herself, which she did not love to do, she would have admitted that, at the time, she had been too wrapped up in finally being close to Marceline again to be at her scientific best. She had been too wrapped up in the intimacy, and not even just the kissing part—though she had, indeed, missed that. But it was more than that. It was the friendship that she missed. Being able to just exist in the same space as someone else and not have to worry about them or be responsible for their happiness or their wellbeing or their entire dang life.Sure, Finn and Jake were her friends. But they didn’t understand what she had been through—not like Marceline did. Or, at least, like she had, before her memories were taken.Like she was starting to, maybe, before Bubblegum had had to leave her behind again.Reaching her lab, she pushed the door open and tried to change her train of thought to the task at hand. The room was still messed up. She had barely tried to clean it the day she and Marceline had fought. She had been too annoyed, too angry.Now, she pushed chairs and tables back where they were supposed to go, and assessed the damage. There was a hole in the floor the size of a pizza, but luckily she had cleaned up the mixture and disposed of it before it had had a chance to ruin things further. The rest of the damage was minimal, thank Glob. But now, Bubblegum wasn’t sure what to do.It looked like she would have to see Marceline again after all.Bubblegum stepped over the hole and walked to the window. It was still closed from when the Vampire Queen had been there just days before. Only days…it felt like a lifetime since things had changed.She pushed open the window, letting the cooling pre-twilight air fill the room, and her thoughts.Marcy had just wanted to hang out, that was all. And if Bubblegum had gone with her, maybe none of this would have happened. Maybe her people wouldn’t be suffering, and maybe Marceline would be here, right now, floating in this window and hounding Bubblegum to hang out with her.Maybes were useless, Bubblegum told herself. Regrets and wishes were useless.Still, Bubblegum laid a hand on the windowsill and leaned forward. She closed her eyes to let the wind and the purple sky wash over her, and she allowed herself to wish, just for a moment. She wished she had gone with Marceline. Right now she would trade her own soul if she could go back and tell Marceline that yes, we can go play videogames at your place. Sure, let’s go throw rocks into the abyss, even though that place is a horrible mass of danger and nightmares.Bubblegum’s eyes snapped open, and she inhaled a large, suddenly painful burst of air into her lungs.The Abyss.Bubblegum swung her backpack from her shoulders and dug out her phone, turned it on impatiently, then dialed the number for the emergency phone she had given Finn.No answer.Gathering various weapons throughout the room and stuffing them into her pack—she hoped all of them still worked—she let out a stream of curse words as she tried Finn’s phone again. Still no answer.The Abyss. That stupid, Glob danged place. Surely Marceline hadn’t been so foolish… Bubblegum hurried out of the room and down the stairs and out the door of the castle, ignoring Peppermint Butler’s questions as she passed him and sprinted through town, toward the edge of the Kingdom.She called to her bird, and hopped on its back, leading it straight up into the sky. Finn and Jake had only just left, so there was no way they had gotten very far. She had plenty of time to catch them. The thought made her relax, but only a little.As she surveyed the skies, she cursed that awful place and she cursed her past self for even discovering it, that roiling chasm that seemed like it might someday swallow the world and the solar system and all the nearest stars. She should have figured out a way to destroy it a long time ago.She kicked the falcon to urge it slightly faster, eliciting a screeee from the poor creature.She couldn’t help but think, even at an urgent time like this while the wind rushed around her and threatened to rip her from the Morrow if she did not hold on tight enough, about Marceline, and the stars that were beginning to wink slowly into visibility in the sky above. About how they were all on a strict path designed by the universe to go in one direction, the same direction, for the entirety of each of their lives.About how, if two stars were to fall and to cross each other’s path, the resulting explosion would be enough to rock the fabric of the universe, distorting spacetime and shattering both stars into massive amounts of dying fire and gold.
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Marceline wiped her mouth as she lowered the bottle from her lips.Glob dang it tasted bad—so bad she began to wonder if these ghosts were playing some sort of prank on her. Because Marceline had drank almost half the bottle and she didn’t feel any different.“It takes a second to kick in,” Annie offered, as if reading Marceline’s mind.Marceline handed the bottle back to Annie and rolled her shoulders, rolled her neck. Cracked her knuckles and stretched her arms to the ceiling. She suddenly felt restless, like something wasn’t quite right and she needed to do something about it. It was probably the drink, she reasoned, but it felt bigger. More pressing. Like something outside the cave was calling her name. Like the wind wanted to pull her into the sky so she could feel the night air on her face and starlight on her skin and watch her shadow, born from the full moon and the shape of her body, following far below on the ground.She blinked, and returned to the present, to her house, to the ghosts surrounding her and watching her for any sort of reaction.“Woah,” she said.“Right?” Les laughed and snagged the bottle from Annie.Annie scoffed, annoyed, but softened and laughed when Les winked at her over the bottle. The female ghost turned to Marceline. “So, what’s the plan for tonight?”“The plan?” Marceline raised her brows, looking at the ghosts in turn. She pointed to the bottle. “This wasn’t it?”“Drinking at your house?” Spike called from the couch. He floated up and grabbed the bottle from Les, who relinquished it with a lighthearted snort. Spike finished and tossed the bottle back to Marceline. “Like we’ve only been dead for a hundred years? Come on M, we’ve grown past that.”“Unless,” Annie nudged Spike with her elbow, “you aren’t feeling up to going out. We’ve had our share of fun in your house.” The ghost brightened. “Hey, we could break out the instruments and jam like we used to.”“Yeah!” Les held out his hands and a ghostly guitar manifested itself into them. He laid out a sick guitar riff. “We haven’t jammed in so long.”Marceline bit her lip. She had been avoiding going into her music room, because Bonnie’s stuff was still in there. Then there was the fact that she hadn’t really bothered to listen to her own music or even pick up her bass, and she wasn’t totally sure she could even play anything decent if she tried.Plus, that feeling was still there, deep in her gut. The feeling that she needed to leave her cave.“I think I’d actually like to go out,” she said, and the ghosts whooped. They really seemed to enjoy cheering, but Marceline didn’t mind so much anymore. Her stomach was knotted with the anticipation of flying, but not in a bad way.“We could go to the drive in,” Spike suggested. “Catch a movie?”“Ooh, what about Worm Kingdom?” Annie added. “That place is weiiird.”“Maybe we could visit the Abyss!” Les howled.A flash of white light lit up behind Marceline’s eyes, and a dull roaring started in her ears.“Dude, that place is way too dangerous,” Annie chided. “Do you have any idea what goes on in there?”“No, do you?”Annie scoffed. “Of course not. That’s the point. Rational people stay away from that place at all costs.”Something in Marceline’s brain felt like it was cracking. She clutched her head with both hands. What was happening?“Nah,” Spike shook his head. “That’s not what I heard.”“Really?” Annie crossed her ghost arms. “What have you heard?”“I heard it’s fine to go down there if you aren’t alone.” Spike said, mohawk bobbing in his earnestness. “As long as you’re with friends, nothing bad will happen.”Everyone looked at him; even Marceline looked up through the pain in her head.“Yeah, that sounds fake,” Annie said. Then, she finally seemed to notice Marceline’s distress. “Woah, M. Is this stuff hitting you that hard?” Annie gently took the bottle from Marceline’s and handed it to Spike. “We don’t have to go out if you don’t want to.”Marceline shook her head, straightening out slowly. “I’m fine.”And she was, somehow. The headache disappeared as suddenly has it had come on. She was a little off balance, which she blamed on the drink a hundred percent. But she was left with a sense of emptiness that she couldn’t explain, a feeling of urgency that she couldn’t bring herself to pretend was the drink.Suddenly, she wanted her bass. She wasn’t sure why; she still didn’t think she would remember how to play it. But the feeling was there, so she told the ghosts to “wait up a sec” and darted off to her music room as quickly as she could, then returned with the instrument strapped to her back.“In case we want to jam somewhere else,” she said defensively at the curious looks of her ghost friends. They cheered again, and Marceline rolled her eyes, laughing.The ragtag group of four shot out of the house together, albeit slightly wobbly from the beginning effects of the weird liquid, making their way to the mouth of the cave.The weight of the guitar pressed against her back was comforting in a way that felt entirely natural, as if it were meant to be there. As the cave entrance grew closer, Marceline wondered if that was a remnant of her old self—if the feeling of safety was something like muscle memory. And, if she felt this way about the instrument just being close to her, would she be able to play it?The thoughts were swept away as soon as the group of the dead and undead were out of the cave and shooting toward a deep black sky sprinkled with millions of glittering stars.Marceline put her arms out as if she could catch the wind in midair, and her chest felt lighter than it had in days. She let out a throat-rawing wooooooooooooooooooo, and the ghosts followed suit, punching fists and twirling in the air with the joy of life—or, at least, something like it.Rushing toward the boundless sky, shredding her lungs with cries of joy, Marceline wondered if, maybe, life wasn’t something that just happened to you. Maybe, it was something you were supposed to find yourself. Maybe existing was supposed to be an adventure; it was supposed to be messy and scary and confusing and crazy, because that’s what adventures were—overcoming the bad stuff to get to the good stuff, the stuff that made all that jank biz worth it. It didn’t matter whether your actual body was alive or not—in the end, that was all more or less irrelevant. What mattered, she decided with sudden, complete clarity, was recognizing how small you are, and choosing to live like you aren’t.“Hey!” she yelled, hoping all three of her friends could hear her. It seemed they could, because they all looked at her, their expressions mirroring the way she felt. “Thanks for barging into my house!”Everyone laughed, and the lightness in Marceline’s chest seemed to spread to her whole body and into the sky beyond. She felt…infinite. Like she was part of the sky itself.“It’s the drink!” Annie yelled, seeming to reading her mind yet again. “It’s made of Mushroom War Goo. Makes you crazy, right?”“Right!” Marceline laughed again, and her laugh trickled out of her throat like stardust. She didn’t even care to bother to ask what 'Mushroom War' meant. It didn’t really seem to matter.The group stopped when the atmosphere began to get thin, and they turned to survey the ground below.Ooo spread below them like it was made of clay, still and silent and small. A miniaturist’s version of the world. From up here the lines between the kingdoms were clearer than ever, dividing the land into a patchwork of green and blue and pink and orange—not that Marceline knew exactly what she was looking at.“Tell me which kingdoms are which,” she said to whoever was listening.“Well, there’s the Ice Kingdom,” Spike drawled in the slow cadence of his voice. “Then there’s Slime Kingdom, Fire Kingdom and, of course, Candy Kingdom.”Spike kept talking and listing kingdoms, but Marceline forgot to listen.Candy Kingdom.Her euphoria dimmed at the thought of the Candy Kingdom and Bonnie and what she might be doing right now. It must have shown on her face because Les elbowed her and said “Let’s dive.”“Dive?” She said. “Isn’t that, like, dangerous?”“Probably,” Spike nodded. “You’ve definitely passed out before. But you’ve always been fine.”“Wow,” she said. “Okay. I guess we can do that.”“You learn a lot about yourself in freefall,” Spike said, nodding.Annie smacked his arm. “Stop being weird, Spike. We all know you majored in philosophy.” She looked at Marceline with a roll of her eyes. “He majored in philosophy.”Spike smiled his slow smile and said “I’m not wrong though” right before spreading his arms and dropping toward the earth with sudden, breakneck speed.Marceline let out a surprised laugh, watching the ghost plummet toward the ground, then turned toward Annie and Les. “You guys all seem really chill about this whole memory loss business,” she said.It wasn’t really a question, more like an offhanded observation, but Annie shrugged and answered anyway. “Girl, we’ve been through a lot.”“Yeah,” Les agreed. “We’ve been dead for hundreds of years, M. We’ve seen some weird things. This probably isn’t even highest on the list.” He paused, assessing. “It’s up there, though.”“The way I see it,” Annie continued seamlessly, “it doesn’t really matter. People change anyway. Even the undead.”“Really?” For some reason, that took Marceline by surprise.“Of course. Why wouldn’t we?” Annie looked at Les, and her expression changed to one of mild amusement. “Well, most of us do, anyway.” She shot a pointed look at Les, who was hanging upside down with his arms spread out, tongue spilling out of his mouth like a dog.“I’m not ashamed,” he said. Then he, too, shot toward the ground like a missile.Marceline made a decision. She turned to Annie. “On the count of three?” she said.Annie nodded. “One.”Marceline grinned. “Two.”“Three!” The two of them shouted the word together as they let themselves fall, and then began to actively accelerate toward the ground.Falling was a weird feeling. It was like the sky had taken hold of her stomach at the top of her descent and kept it there. Wondering if she would ever get it back, her grin widened, and tears streamed out of her eyes as the ground rushed up to meet her—smooth and blurred at first, and then sharper and more focused as the details of the landscape came into view.Finn and Jake, Annie and Les and Spike; how many more amazing friends did Marceline have that she couldn’t remember? The thought made her feel giddy with excitement—she had so much more life to live.As the ground came closer, two figures came into view: one a blob of blue, the other a blurred orange shape. Slowing down, she realized that it was Finn and Jake. Weird. What were they doing outside in the middle of nowhere after dark?Hoping it wouldn’t upset her ghost friends, Marceline veered in Finn and Jake’s direction.Remembering what Spike had said about herself and pranks, Marceline turned herself invisible right before she reached them.This was going to be good.She flew up behind them, trying to be as silent as possible, resisting the urge to burst into a fit of giggles.Then all at once, a shadow fell over them, obscuring the moon and causing Finn and Jake—and Marceline—to turn in alarm.Marceline’s mood soured considerably at the pink figure that sat astride the giant bird that had just flown down toward the ground.The falcon landed on the grass with a thud. “Finn, Jake, thank Glob I found you,” Bonnie said, jumping down from the creature. Marceline swallowed hard, prepared to fly away, but something stopped her. She wasn’t sure if it was the invisibility that made snooping feel like a good idea, or if it was Bonnie’s expression of concern as she scanned Finn and Jake.“What’s up princess?” Finn said, swinging his sword around. “Did you find a cure already?”A cure? Marceline floated closer.Bonnie shook her head. “No,” she said. “But I think I know where to start. For real this time.” The princess clutched her head, looking pained, as if she had a headache. A bitter part of Marceline hoped it really hurt, then she felt guilty for thinking that way. “We should wait to act until tomorrow, but I think I know where Marceline’s memories were taken, even if I’m not totally sure why or how.”“And the candy people? The other kingdoms?” Finn pressed at the same time Jake said “Where?”“I don’t know about the candy people,” she said to Finn. “But I bet it’s all connected somehow. As for Marceline,” The princess paused as if to collect herself. She looked strained, Marceline noticed. Strained and tired and totally stressed out. “I think we need to go back to the very beginning, where this whole ridiculous mess started.” She took a deep breath. “The Abyss.”There was that word again. Marceline’s pulse began to pound, so hard she was surprised nobody else heard it. She floated slightly farther away from the rest of them, paranoid that someone actually might.Both boys looked confused. “The what?” Jake asked.Bonnie’s shoulders slumped. She looked completely exhausted. Marceline rubbed her arms, suddenly cold. “It’s a place Marcy and I discovered when we were really young. A dangerous place that should have been destroyed a long time ago.”Finn didn’t look convinced. “I’ve been exploring Ooo since I was a baby, Peebs. I’ve never heard of this place.”Bonnie sighed. “Look, just meet me at the castle in the morning, I’ll explain everything then. I need to assemble a good sized group of fighters to—”“Fighters?” Jake interrupted. “You don’t think we can handle it ourselves?”“I don’t know,” Bonnie said. “I studied the Abyss for a couple years from a great distance. But it’s impossible to tell what’s in there without actually going inside, and even I was never that curious.” Finn and Jake looked at each other worriedly. “I have no idea what we’ll be up against, so it’s best to be as prepared as possible.Marceline’s head was pounding with all this talk of the Abyss, but no memories emerged. Strange. So strange.There was a pause, and then Finn said. “What about Marceline?”Bonnie stiffened, and so did Marceline. “What about her?” the princess said.“Shouldn’t we tell her?”Bonnie said nothing. The night wind picked up, causing the grasslands around them to bend like waves in the ocean, lifting Bonnie’s hair and dress like she was living in slow motion, blowing the scent of sugar and strawberries in Marceline’s direction.“I don’t know,” she said.Marceline stopped floating, and her feet touched the ground. She put a hand on her chest to calm her heartbeat, but honestly? She was relieved. She thought whatever Bonnie was going to say about her would feel much worse than it actually had. She wondered if it was the drink, or if, possibly, it was because tonight, for the first time since returning home, it didn’t feel like Bonnie was the center of her world.It wasn’t a good feeling, but it wasn’t terrible.It was a start, at least.“She doesn’t want to remember,” Bonnie continued. She sounded sad, and she seemed years and years older than she had the whole time she had stayed with Marceline. “It might be cruel to bring her back into it.”“But what about the candy people?” Finn said, taking a step forward. “If we let Marceline know what’s happening, maybe she can help us save them!”“She can’t help without her memories.” Bonnie turned and climbed back atop her bird. “It isn’t her problem,” she said simply, looking down on the boys from her perch. “Anyway I came here to tell you to go home and get plenty of sleep tonight. Tomorrow, we brave the Abyss.”Marceline jumped back into the sky and headed in the direction the ghosts had gone, any notion of pranking Finn and Jake forgotten. Save them? Those weird little candy creatures were in trouble?She forced herself to become visible again while she searched for Annie and Les and Spike, but her mind was preoccupied with worry. Did Bonnie not want her help because she truly wanted to honor Marceline’s wishes? Or did the princess just think she would be useless? A liability? If her kingdom was so important, wouldn’t she try to do everything she could to save it? And didn’t that extend to asking Marceline for help?Lost in her thoughts, she almost flew right over the three ghosts.“Yo, M!” Spike waved her over. “We thought we lost you.”“I just took a small detour,” she said dismissively.“Well, I’m glad you’re back,” Annie said excitedly. “We’re totally about to prank Breakfast Kingdom. Are you in?”“Sure,” Marceline said, but the strange meeting between Bonnie and Finn and Jake had her rattled, and it seemed her good mood was permanently dampened.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Princess Bubblegum spent most of her night getting ready for the next day; assembling weapons, mapping out what she remembered of the layout of the Abyss, picking up the phone to call Marceline, putting the phone back down.When she finally did allow herself to go to bed, it was nearly 3am and it was a fitful sleep full of tossing and turning. She woke up periodically throughout the night and stared at her ceiling, more frustrated than she had been in a long time.It felt weird being in her own room again, she decided, fluffing up her pillow in an attempt to add comfort. She had been sleeping elsewhere for a while and it was only natural that she would feel slightly out of place now. Not to mention the looming threat of this whole memory loss fiasco, and the worry that a solution would not be found, or worse: someone would get seriously hurt in the process.Thunder boomed outside her window and Bubblegum jumped at the sound before pulling her blankets up over her eyes, embarrassed by her fear.How long had it even been raining? She hoped to Glob that the rain would end sometime before morning. She was going into this whole thing blind, and she did not need anything else standing in her way, least of all the weather.Another sound came from her window, but it wasn’t thunder. It was an insistent tap tap tap, almost like the sound of someone trying to get in…Bubblegum nearly tripped over herself as she flung the blankets off the bed and rushed to her window. Marceline must need something, if she was here in the middle of the night. Maybe she was in trouble, or she was lonely, or the thunder had scared her, or—A heavy gust of wind shoved its way into Princess Bubblegum’s room as the window slammed open, and she was knocked over by the force.Rattled, she sat up only to be weighted with dissappointment as she found that it wasn't Marceline at her window, but Lumpy Space Princess. The purple blob of a person was dripping wet, and she shook herself out like a dog after she passed through Bubblegum's window without asking, showering her room in rain water."LSP?" Bubblegum didn't even try to hide the annoyance in her voice. "What the dump are you doing?""It's raining like crazy out there," LSP said, as if Bubblegum didn't already know. "I was getting lumping wet. What do you expect me to do, let my beautiful lumps get all covered in rain? I can't believe you're that heartless.""You didn't have anywhere else to go?" Bubblegum snapped as LSP settled herself down on the princess's bed, folding her arms beneath her head and sighing in obvious bliss."Nah," LSP said.Bubblegum let out a sharp huff of air. "Fine," she said, standing. "You can sleep in one of the guest rooms.""Like some sort of common rat?" LSP scoffed, turning onto her side to face away from Bubblegum. "I'm a princess, Bonnie. I deserve the height of luxury.""LSP, you can't sleep in my room.""Why not?" LSP asked, sitting up suddenly and glaring at Bubblegum. "Is it because of Marceline? Were you guys planning on canoodling?" LSP slammed her fists down on the bed. "Why can't you guys get a lumping guest room?""LSP." Bubblegum rubbed her temples. She was far too tired to deal with this, especially with so much riding on the results of tomorrow. "What are you talking about?""I'm talking about Marceline, obviously," LSP said with a roll of her eyes. "She's right outside the window.""What?" Bubblegum rushed to the window she hadn't yet bothered to close, leaning out as far as she could, scanning the skies for the vampire. She found nothing but clouds and rain.LSP snorted from the bed, where she had pulled Bubblegum's covers over herself and was nestling deep within her pillows. "Looks like she was intimidated by these lumps," she said."For Glob's sake-" Bubblegum muttered as she stalked out of her own room, having decided it was probably easier to let LSP have her way, at least for tonight.She chose one of the guest rooms far down the hall, wanting to be as far from Lumpy Space Princess as possible. Too late, she realized that it was the same guest room Marceline had stayed in that very first night, the night when this whole stupid mess began.Bubblegum sighed, turned on the light, and screamed."I was wondering if you'd ever show up," Marceline said from where she stood, dripping wet and leaning against the wall on the opposite side of the room. Her arms were crossed, her expression wary, body angled toward the open window as if she might leap out at any second."Marcy!" Bubblegum removed her hand from where she had clutched her chest in fear moment before. "Why were you at my window? How did you know I would choose this room?""I guessed," the vampire replied, eyes darting toward the open window, as if she couldn't decide whether to stay or go."Please, stay," Bubblegum said, holding up both hands in a show of docility and taking a tentative step forward. "Just for a minute. I want to apologize."Marceline's stiff posture relaxed, but only slightly. "That's not why I'm here," the vampire said coldly. "But okay. I'm listening."Princess Bubblegum took a deep breath. She hadn't actually prepared an apology, and there wasn't anything she hated more than not being prepared."I-what I said-" Bubbleugm fumbled with her words, worried that Marceline would leave before she was able to scramble out a decent apology. "I didn't mean for it to sound like-like you weren't-aren't-enough. Because you are." Bubblegum huffed out a breath of air. "Oh my Glob, what I mean is, you're more than enough. And I had no right-no reason-to say anything I said. And it wasn't really what I meant anyway-"Bubblegum cut herself off at the look in Marceline's eyes-confusion and sadness and something else, something akin to acceptance or maybe understanding. Dear Glob, she was just making this worse, wasn't she?Then Marceline sighed, and her whole posture seemed to deflate, like the anger was all that had been holding her up. "I guess I understand," she said. "Sort of." She looked Bubblegum in the eyes, steady for the first time, and the princess almost cried out in relief. "I mean, I guess it must be hard for you to come to terms with all of this, too, but-" the vampire looked down at her hands. The droplets of water in her hair caught the light from a flash of thunder, which made them look like stars spread across the night sky."I deserve better," Marceline said, so softly Bubblegum might have missed it if she hadn't been holding her breath."You do!" The princess was quick to agree, even though it pained her to admit it. "You deserve to be happy, Marcy. I shouldn't have messed with that.""It's okay," Marceline said, rubbing her arms even though Bubblegum knew she didn't get cold. "I mean it's not. But it's fine. It's not like you did it on purpose."Bubblegum went still.The way she had so readily resolved to keep experimenting on Marcy without her consent; the things she had said, the way Bubblegum had teased and tested and provoked Marceline with the full intent of releasing more memories; it all hit the princess like a blow, and she took a step back.Marceline's eyes met hers in the silence, and a small crease formed between her brows. "You didn't," she said, "did you?"Princess Bubblegum opened her mouth to reply, closed it again. Swallowed and braced herself. "I didn't mean for any of this to happen," she said, knowing the words sounded hollow, knowing they weren't enough. "Not the way it did.""You did that on purpose?" Marceline reeled back, shock written all over her face. "You did all of that to me on purpose?" Her hand clutched the fabric of her shirt over her chest, and her mouth was open.Bubblegum shrunk back, letting the full force of Marceline's expression hit her. She might have deserved this, but it wasn't fun."You're not even going to say you're sorry," Marceline said, lowering her arm slowly. The look on Marceline's face-that flash of incredulity and betrayal and heartache-burned deep into Bubblegum's mind and into her heart. "Because you aren't, are you?"Bubblegum swallowed. "Look, Marcy, I wasn't trying to- I just thought-""That I would thank you afterward?" Marceline guessed, voice steely. Bubblgum nodded, averting her eyes, and the vampire made a sound somewhere between a cry of grief and a snarl. She leaped into the air, floating fractionally closer to Bubblegum. "You think you're so smart," she said softly. "You think you know so much more than everyone else with your superiority and your stupid lab equipment and your science." Her voice rose to a shout. "But you're not. You're a mess. You sit up here and you judge people for what they aren't instead of appreciating that anyone would actually want to be with you. And when that doesn't work you just turn around and make more candy people to judge, to control. You can't get anybody to love you, so you force them to."Bubblegum's breath hitched. "I don't-"Marceline thrust her pointer finger in the direction of the window. "You created an entire Glob damned kingdom of people to love you because it has to be on your terms, doesn't it?"Bubblegum shook her head, tears threatening to spill from her eyes, but Marceline kept going. "You have to be in control, all the time. And you can't function when you're not, and that's why you'll never have anyone."Marceline's crimson stare was piercing, and she was breathing hard. With a jolt, Bubblegum realized that they had had this fight before-or at least, something close to it. Marceline was repeating things from arguments they'd had years and years ago, uttered time and time again, and Bubblegum suddenly felt like she couldn't get enough air into her lungs, like she was drowning. All of this must have seemed so raw, so fresh in Marceline's head, and Bubblegum was already over it.The princess had spent so much time learning to live with herself after their breakup that these old fights, these old battles-she had worked through them a long time ago. Marceline was having to experience it all again, and it broke Bubblegum's heart.It was a few moments before Princess Bubblegum was able to reply. She swallowed the lump of guilt and grief that was threatening to tear her apart from the inside, unsure what to say. She supposed it hardly mattered at this point. "Why are you here, Marceline? Did you come here to fight?"Hurt flashed on Marceline's face before she steeled her expression, floated backward a step and crossed her arms."No," Marceline said. "I came to help."Bubblegum's shock had her straightening. "You what?""I heard about the candy people, and I'm here to help.""You-how did you-?"The vampire queen raised her chin unapolagetically. "I was trying to prank Finn and Jake earlier, but then you showed up. I overheard everything."Bubblegum closed her eyes, rubbed her temples. "You were invisible."Marceline nodded. "Do you want my help or not?""Yes," Bubblegum answered without hesitation, opening her eyes. "Of course I do. But it doesn't matter. You can't help me, not without your memories."Marceline's gaze did not waver. "I know."The princess's eyes widened. "But that means-""I know." Marceline sat down on the guest bed, hunched over and looking utterly drained. "I understand what I'm consenting to." She stared at the wall. "But this time it's my choice. And I have a condition.""Of course," Bubblegum said, taking the few steps it took to reach Marceline, to stand in front of her. "Anything."The vampire met her eyes again, and they weren't angry like she thought they would be. They were sad, and they might have been sadder than Bubblegum had ever seen them."When this is all over, I want you to erase my memories again, and then I want you to leave me alone."Ice shot through Princess Bubblegum's heart."I know you know how," Marceline continued. "And even if you don't, I know you can figure it out."Bubblegum maintained her composure, but inside she felt like she might shatter. It was crazy, too. She had barely had Marceline in her life at all before this happened-they had fought and ignored each other and they certainly hadn't spent much time together. But what Marceline was asking for..."Those are my conditions," Marceline said. "And then I'll let you do whatever you need to me."What Marceline was asking for was permanent. It wasn't like losing a few memories or seeing each other sparingly for a couple of years. If Bubblegum agreed to this, she would never see Marceline again.Bubblegum crossed her arms. "Why?" she said."What do you mean why?""Why help the candy people when you aren't responsible for them? When it's not your problem?"Marceline's eyes flashed. "Because I'm not a flippin' monster. And because if I do this for you, you'll do what I've asked."A small part of Bubblegum's mind reasoned that she could always visit Marceline anyway, after her memories were wiped again and she wouldn't be able to remember who she was. But Bubblegum wouldn't do that, would she? No, she couldn't do that. Not after all this, not after everything she had done.Right?Princess Bubblegum pursed her lips.She could agonize about it later. Right now, her candy people needed her.And if this was truly what Marceline wanted..."Deal," Bubblegum said, and held her hand out for Marceline to shake.Relief was evident on the vampire's face as she took Bubblegum's hand. It didn't sit too well with the princess, knowing it was relief from her. From having to see her again.Ten minutes later, the two of them were in Bubblegum's lab.It was just as she had left it; furniture upright but skewed; scattered, ruined papers from the explosion; large, bubbly hole in the floor looking down on the stairs below. Bubblegum took several large gulps of the coffee she had asked Peppermint Butler to brew, then pulled a chair to the center of the room and gestured for Marceline to sit."You have your bass," Princess Bubblegum said, surprised, as Marceline propped the instrument against the wall before sitting down on the chair. The princess hadn't even noticed, being too wrapped up in herself and her own emotions.Marceline said nothing, just fixed Bubblegum with a stare that could have curdled blood."This would be easier with the rest of my equipment," Bubblegum muttered as she taped several wires to Marceline's head and chest. Marceline didn't answer, but Bubblegum still felt compelled to talk, to fill a silence that would have been too loud. "It'll be okay. This is going to work."Bubblegum reached into her pocket and pulled out the same small metal box she had used previously to moniter Marceline's heart rate and brain waves. She stared at the device, feeling heavy, then put it aside for a moment. After poking an IV needle into the crook of Marceline's elbow, she attached the other end of the IV tube to a giant machine in the corner of the lab."What is that?" Marceline asked, sounding apprehensive."It's my chemical library," Bubblegum explained. "I've got just about every chemical compound you can think of isolated in there." Bubblegum typed a sequence into her computer, and the machine whirred. "The idea is that if I pump you with the right ratio of concentrated neurochemicals, I should be able to induce specific emotions in your brain, which should cause specific memories to resurface." She glanced at Marceline. "In other words, it'll make you feel things. It will get your memories back, but it won't be pleasant." Bubblegum turned to Marceline fully. "Are you sure you still want to go through with this?"Marceline nodded, face determined, and Bubblegum let out a shallow breath. She connected the wires taped to Marceline's head and chest to the small box. "This is to moniter your heart rate and your brain waves, to make sure I don't go... overboard, with the stimulation."Marceline nodded again, and for the first time in her long, long life, Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum found herself wishing she wasn't so good at science."Alright," Bubblegum said, adjusting her science goggles on her face and bracing herself. "Let's begin." Somewhere in the grasslands several miles away, something large and dark was moving underneath the pouring rain.It slithered between the waterslicked blades of grass, massive body rippling with every movement, sniffing at the ground and the air in a calculated attempt to find her. It's prey.The one it had been looking for.The one that had escaped.But the rain was too angry, the grass too wet and muddy for the creature's senses to capture her trail, and it let out a deep roar of frustration, an outcry that rumbled the ground beneath it's body and the air above.But then it smelled something else, faintly, on the wind that came from the west perfumed with sugar and syrup. The scent of a change.The smell of intention.The creature smiled with all of its hundreds of mouths on all of its hundreds of faces and it turned around, heading south. A shrieking wail escaped from the thing, a crude imitation of a laugh, as it crawled off in the direction of the Abyss.It was time to go home.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Marceline’s screams bounced off the walls of Bonnie’s lab, traveled through the hole in the floor and echoed throughout the stairwell below.The two of them had been at it for nearly half an hour, and Marceline hadn’t been able to remember anything useful. Not even one stupid thing. Bonnie had flooded her brain with memories ranging from sad to devastating to even slightly happy, but nothing was working. It didn’t help that Marceline was taking breaks about every five minutes, but there was nothing to be done about that. If she didn’t let her brain take a rest she thought she might pass out.“Do you want to take another break?” Bonnie asked, looking up from her notes.Marceline waved her off, clenching her teeth. “I’m fine. I want to keep going.”“I’m going to try anger again,” Bonnie said, and Marceline made an annoyed sound. They had tried anger twice already, and it had only yielded minimal results, none of which had anything to do with this ‘abyss’ everyone was talking about. But Marceline just braced herself, assuming Bonnie would know what she was doing by now.A few smoky tendrils of memory brushed across Marceline’s consciousness, but nothing emerged. A relief, to be honest. She was so tired of the pain in her head and in her chest and the weariness deep in her bones. She just wanted to go home.She just wanted to be left alone.Marceline drew in a sharp breath of air, but Bonnie didn’t seem to notice. The princess was fiddling with the knobs on the side of her chemical machine, setting it to a different mix of brain-junk to pump into Marceline’s head. Another round of painful memories and, well, pain.“Bonnie,” she said softly, standing. “I have an idea.”The princess looked up from her machine.“Tell me what we were fighting about that day,” she said. “Start at the beginning, and be detailed.”Bonnie straightened, frowning, but she told Marceline about the experiment interrupted. About her harsh words and her unwillingness to hang out because she was too busy. She told her about the destruction of her lab, and the way she had yelled.Marceline just nodded throughout it all, listening. When Bonnie was done, she looked up at the princess.“Now kiss me,” she said.Bonnie’s eyebrows shot up. “What? I don’t—”“Please,” Marceline begged, voice tinged with anger. “Just one more time.”Bonnie swallowed, but moved closer. Put one hand on Marceline’s shoulder and the other on her cheek. Looked at her with those bright pink eyes clouded with some emotion Marceline did not quite understand, and leaned forward to place her lips on Marceline’s.Tears rolled down Marceline’s cheeks right before she doubled over in pain, the memory coming forward at last. Inspired not by anger or sadness, but something in between. A loneliness that was too deep for any of Bonnie’s fake chemical emotions to convey.Loneliness—and fear. Fear, from the last dredges of confusion and anger and sadness and adrenaline with which Bonnie had been clogging Marceline’s brain for the last thirty minutes.Letting loose a silent scream, Marceline closed her eyes, and remembered.…………
“This isn’t funny!” Marceline yelled into the void. There was no answer. The strange, roiling mass of black clouds and darkness below gaped at her in complete, eerie silence.
A sudden shadow loomed behind her.
The moon, obscured for a moment by a drifting cloud?
Marceline turned.
It took a lot to frighten the Vampire Queen. She had seen countless deaths: bloody, violent; planned, spontaneous. She had seen and known more monsters than she cared to remember, and had learned long ago that most of the monsters this world had to offer turned out to reside within the people you thought you knew. She had laughed in death’s face, and death had laughed back. Her father was the actual ruler of the Night-O-Sphere, for Glob’s sake.
But when Marceline turned and saw the creature belonging to the shadow that had fallen over her, she screamed.
Terror shot through her skin, through her bones as she took in the mass of flesh that blocked the stars with it’s colossal, contorted body. It was dark in color, but Marceline hardly noticed such a small detail when she was so busy gaping in horror at the thing’s faces.It had hundreds of them, human faces, all made of the wrinkly, saggy skin of people long dead. They hung off its body like the melted clocks of a painting Marceline had admired when she was a child. Some eyes were half open, others hung open all the way—fixing Marceline with a thousand glassy-eyed stares that seemed to look right at her, even as they saw nothing.
Though it had no legs or feet that she could see, it seemed to be standing—swaying slightly in the wind as if it hadn’t quite gotten it’s bearings. As if it had just woken up.
Marceline took a step back, forgetting, amidst her fear, that she could fly. The thing stilled, then lifted what she could only assume was its head, almost like it was… smelling for something—like it was sniffing the air.
Then all at once it darted toward her, quicker than even her demon-vampire senses could perceive. Her scream was cut off before it could really begin as something like an arm shot out from the thing’s body, stretched itself long enough to wrap around her arms and her legs and her throat. Marceline’s eyes widened as every single one of the thing’s mouths cracked into coarse smiles.
“Almost human,” those dead faces said together. “Not human.”
Marceline tried to squirm out of the thing’s grasp, but it only shot more arms out of it’s body to wrap itself tighter and tighter around her. She tried to transform, but it was no use—the thing had her.
“So many memories,” the voices crooned. They sounded eager, and Marceline tried again to scream, redoubled her efforts to free herself. “So many years of memories.”
The dark, rippling arms that held Marceline began to fuse together, stretching and merging like the pull of fresh taffy, and Marceline knew she was about to be swallowed up.
Pressure built up in her head until it was impossible to think. She thrashed one last time, but the creature’s darkness covered her eyes at last, and she was submerged in an inky blackness as heavy as a blanket of night.
The pressure released her, then, along with the feeling of being restrained, and suddenly Marceline felt like she was floating, blind, in strangely thickened air. She couldn’t remember—she couldn’t remember where she was, or what she had been doing or—or who she was. Her body felt numb and hypersensitive; hot and cold all at once, and she was losing herself. She was drowning.
Then, a light.
Faint, like a lantern lit quickly with a very dim match—like the birth of a star.
Marceline forced herself to move toward it, even though she wasn’t entirely sure what it was.
It grew larger as she neared and she realized that it wasn’t a light at all, but a hole in the darkness—an opening. She reached her fingers toward it, grabbed the edge, pulled—
—and emerged, exhausted and gasping for breath, from the massive pile of dark flesh twitching on the ground.
The creature was screaming, shrieking, but Marceline did not stick around long enough to make sense of the situation.
She ran.
She ran, blindly, as fast as her legs could go, wondering faintly if there was an easier way to escape—something other than running. But the notion was gone in a moment, and Marceline slowed.
What was she running from?
She stopped, turned around.
Where was she going?
A color flashed through her mind—sudden and vivid and bright. The blush of a sunrise, a sunset. The cool taste of strawberries on a summer night. The flush of a lover’s face in the midst of passion—warm and sweet and lovely.
The color pink.
………Marceline gasped as she was slammed back into the present.“Marcy?” Bonnie was kneeling on the floor where Marceline had fallen. She lay a comforting hand on her back, and her face was set in an expression of concern, but she just asked “Did you remember?”Marceline nodded, too nauseous and rattled to care about whatever the princess was thinking. She pressed her head to the cool floor and took several shaky breaths.Bonnie didn’t speak, for which Marceline was incredibly grateful. There was too much going through her head right then—so much pain, both emotional and physical, that it was hard to think at all.Marceline felt Bonnie’s hand leave her back only to return minutes later. Something clinked in front of Marceline, and she raised her head slightly to find that the princess had placed a glass of red liquid in front of her. Marceline sat up and downed it greedily, starving.The glass was half empty by the time Marceline’s eyes widened in surprise, and she lowered the glass to her lap, licked her lips. “This is real blood.”She looked at Bonnie, who simply shrugged. “Not technically,” she said. “It’s synthetic. I’ve been developing it for a while, but I figured this would be the best time to test it. Blood gives you more energy than the color red, anyway.”Another experiment. Marceline stared at the glass for a moment before raising it back to her lips and drinking the rest. A welcome one, at least this time. She could feel the pain subsiding, her energy returning.As she drank, Marceline could almost taste Bonnie’s impatience—the princess wanted her to talk about what she had remembered, and badly. But Marceline made a show of drinking every last drop of fake blood, licking her lips slowly, as if savoring the taste. Examining the inside of the glass to make sure she hadn’t missed anything.Marceline knew she was being petty, but damn if it didn’t feel good.“It’s a creature that steals memories,” Marceline said at last.Bonnie frowned. “A creature?”Marceline nodded and placed the glass on the floor beside her, then explained the rest of the memory to Bonnie in as much detail as she could stomach.“It’s this giant thing with a thousand faces.” She shuddered, remembering the sound of all those voices speaking at once. “It—it swallowed me up, but…” Marceline remembered the light—the hole in the darkness. “I don’t think it got me. Not all the way.”Bonnie sat back on her heels, and her frown deepened. “What does that mean?”“I don’t know,” Marceline said, rubbing her temple; her head had started to throb again. “I don’t think it managed to get my memories. It was trying to, but it didn’t.” Marceline closed her eyes. “I think it just… hid them. I’m pretty sure it didn’t even do it on purpose.”“I guess that explains why they can be recovered,” Bonnie said, biting her lip. “But what about my candy people? If you were swallowed up, why weren’t they?”“I don’t think it wants to eat people,” Marceline said slowly. “I think it just wants the memories.”“So maybe it spit them back out,” Bonnie mused. “But why? Do the memories provide some sort of nutrition?”“I don’t know.”“How were you able to take your memories back when it had already consumed you?”“I don’t know,” Marceline repeated. “But maybe…maybe I had too many memories for it to handle. It was on the ground when I ran, I think I knocked it out.”Bonnie pursed her lips, and Marceline could practically see the thoughts warring behind her eyes. She stood. “If that’s the case, my banana army should be enough to overpower it.”Marceline stood too, slowly, wincing at the pain that hadn’t quite left her head. “What if it’s gotten stronger?” she said. “When it attacked me, it was like it had just woken up. What if feeding on the candy peoples’ memories gave it strength somehow? We should be prepared for that.”Bonnie looked at her, and something in her eyes hardened. “You should go home, Marcy.”“What?” Marceline cried, leaping into the air. “I offer to help and now you’re just blowing me off?”“You’ve helped all you can,” Bonnie said, heading for the door. She paused before she reached it. “There’s nothing you can do when the sun is out. And about what you asked for—I’ll have it as soon as this is all over.”Bonnie left Marceline alone in her lab, seething and confused.Who did Bonnie think she was, telling Marceline what to do?You’ve helped all you can.Marceline gritted her teeth. Like hell she had. Marceline had so much left to offer—she could fly and she could fight and she could even transform, for Glob’s sake. She was a useful asset, whether Bonnie wanted to admit it or not. And she was the only one who had seen the creature, and could remember it.It was raining, anyway. If the rain continued through the next day there would be no reason for Marceline to stay at home. And even if the rain stopped, there were a few ways Marceline could go out in the sun—most were dangerous, but she didn’t really care. Not when there were so many lives at stake. To her, it was worth the risk. She remembered enough of her long life now that she was sure—living forever was a wasted gift, if you didn’t live for something.Maybe Bonnie was just trying to look out for her, but that was nuts. Marceline was easily the stronger of the two, at least physically.Or maybe, Bonnie really did think this was all Marceline was good for…One thing was for sure, Marceline thought as she kicked the lab window open and flew back out into the rain. There was no way in hell Bonnie was going to keep her from helping. Princess Bubblegum listened to Marceline leave from where she had stopped on the stairwell directly outside the lab door.Exhausted, she slid down the wall to land in a seated position at the top of the stairs.She hadn’t wanted to ask for Marceline’s help because she didn’t want Marceline to think she was being used—not anymore. Bubblegum was tired of the games and the lies and the pressures of ruling her kingdom, but it was something she was stuck with, might be stuck with forever. She hadn’t wanted to make it Marceline’s problem, because it shouldn’t have been. It wasn’t her problem.Besides, if Marceline went home, she would be safe. And if nothing else, Bubblegum wanted Marceline to be safe.Fatigue fell over Princess Bubblegum like a blanket, and she closed her eyes—just for a moment, she told herself. Just until she found the strength to stand.But sleep caressed a silken hand over Bubblegum’s brain, and it pulled her under.
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Princess Bubblegum dreamt of midnight—of half moons and a scattering of steadily glowing stars winking into existence one by one.Midnight—the strangest time. A time when the world is blurred at the edges whether you’re sleeping or not. Dreaming, or not.The stars moved, and the deep black of the sky melted into the deep black of Marceline’s hair, speckled with droplets of water, turning away from Bubblegum so that the princess was staring at an image of Marceline’s face spanning the entire sky.Marceline’s mouth opened, but it wasn’t words words that came out. Instead, hundreds and hundreds of pieces of candy tumbled down from space and onto the ground, piling up around Princess Bubblegum, on top of her. Burying her in sugar and the sticky sweetness of her own flesh.Then all at once the candy melted, and Princess Bubblegum’s body and consciousness merged with it. She grew taller than the sky, taller than the world, until she was face to face with Marceline, who sat cross-legged on the moon.Marceline shook her head, and stars fell from her hair to drop back into the sky. “Too much sugar,” she said, scooping a chunk out of the moon with talons of steel and shoving it into her mouth.And then Bubblegum was shrinking, falling back to earth as she grew smaller and smaller and smaller, falling straight down—down toward the Abyss—Princess Bublegum awoke with a start, sure she was about to be splattered on the ground like a blob of chewed gum.Of course, she hadn’t been falling, and she was still in her Tower. There was a sharp pain in her neck from sleeping as she had; resting on the top step and slumped against the wall. A quick check of her watch told her it was 9 am.She should have jumped up and sprinted down the stairs to assemble her waiting army. She should have woken up hours ago—honestly, she shouldn’t have let herself fall asleep up here in the first place. But Bubblegum just stood slowly, stretching out the kink in her neck, stifling a yawn. She shouldn’t have done a lot of things, yet here she was.She took her time walking down the stairs and making her way to her bedroom, changing her clothes and pulling her hair out of her face like she always did when conducting hands-on research. Only this time it wasn’t research—it was battle.Bubblegum stared at herself in her vanity mirror, hardly able to recognize her own face. Her eyes were bloodshot and puffy from sleeping so poorly, and her skin had lost some of its rosy glow. Her hair hung limp and her shoulders sagged, turning her into the perfect picture of misery and fatigue.At least Marcy was safe at home. That thought was what finally compelled Bubblegum to stand up and head to the courtyard where her forces awaited. Marcy was safe, protected, but Bubblegum’s people weren’t. Candy citizens had already been harmed, and it was Bubblegum’s fault—at least partially.She took a quick detour to the Great Hall to check on the afflicted. Peppermint Butler was there, leaning against the wall. One eyebrow raised when he saw Bubblegum surveying the makeshift camp. “Shouldn’t you be outside?” he drawled in his high voice. “There’s quite a crowd out there.”Bubblegum nodded. “I’m heading there now. Thanks for keeping an eye on all this.” She gestured broadly to the crowd in the hall.Peppermint Butler just cocked his head to the side and crossed his arms. Figuring that was the most she was going to get out of him, Bubblegum headed for the courtyard at last.“Good luck, Princess.” Peppermint Butler called after her.………The courtyard was filled with more people than the princess had expected.Banana guards marched back and forth in a sort of loose formation, chanting something that sounded vaguely like a military cadence, but Bubbleum couldn’t be sure. LSP was there, floating around in an endless pursuit of attention. Bubblegum spotted Breakfast Princess, Slime Princess, and more, plus soldiers from all the closest kingdoms come to join the battle.Bubblegum frowned. She hadn’t invited them.“Their kingdoms were affected, too.” Finn said, appearing at Bubblegum’s side. “They heard about your hunt and wanted to join.”“We don’t need their help,” Princess Bubblegum said automatically—a bad habit of hers, pretending like she didn’t need anyone. In truth, she was grateful and impressed that they would do such a thing at all. “I’m going to talk with the banana guards,” she announced, walking away from Finn without so much as a backward glance.Last night’s rain had stopped, thankfully. But dark clouds still hung low enough in the sky to be cause for worry, and Bubblegum quickened her pace. It wouldn’t do them any good if the weather decided to turn bad, especially since they had gotten such a late start.“What’s the plan Peebs?” Jake said, having spotted her from within the crowd and stretched himself to her side in a second.“I’ll announce it for everybody at once, so I don’t have to repeat it,” she said. Then a thought hit her, and she slowed her pace once again.The day before, she had told Finn and Jake that she would call them when the soldiers were ready, but she had never called. She had fallen asleep in her tower and woken up late, and she had never actually made the call.“How did you and Finn know to come this morning?” she asked, turning to face Jake fully.“Marceline called us,” Jake said.“She what?”“I think she called just about everybody here.” The dog shrugged. “We assumed you had patched things up and were working together again.”Princess Bubblegum excused herself, pushing her way through the crowd. That stupid vampire—why couldn’t she have just stayed home and waited?The princess reached the edge of the crowd and took a step back. She saw no sign of Marceline, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t there. She needed to get higher above the crowd…Inspiration hit her. She took several more steps back, and whistled sharply.The screeee of the Morrow ripped through the dense morning air, bringing a hush to the crowd of people and soldiers as everyone turned their heads to face Princess Bubblegum, who climbed atop the bird as gracefully as she could with all those eyes on her.She took a deep breath. “Greetings candy citizens, loyal banana guards, and everyone who has come today in the name of justice!” Bubblegum’s voice echoed loud and clear through the silent courtyard. “Thank you for your service, and your bravery.” A flash of red and black caught Bubblegum’s eye, and her gaze flicked to the dark-haired figure who was covered in a giant sun hat and elbow length gloves. Marceline smirked at her, and even from where she stood Bubblegum could see her fangs.The princess tried not to grind her teeth as she continued, tearing her eyes from the vampire and looking anywhere else. Bubblegum had had an entire speech planned about courage and facing adversary, but it had flown out of her mind with the shock and anger of seeing Marceline here, where she was specifically asked not to be. “The Abyss lies in the middle of a valley of sharp rock,” she said instead, getting right to the plan. “The only way to access it is through the air.” She did not mention the web of underground tunnels that were most likely another way in—she hadn’t explored them nearly enough for them to be an option.“I can take several at a time on the Morrow.” She pointed to LSP. “Lumpy Space Princess will help lift people over as well.” That’s what you get for taking over my room, Bubblegum thought as LSP’s face scrunched up in indignation. “Jake’s stretchy powers will do most of the work, though. We should be over the rocks and into the Abyss in no time. Understood?”There were cheers and affirmations from the crowd, but Bubblegum’s eyes were back on Marceline. What in Glob’s name was she thinking?“One last thing,” the princess said, looking out at the crowd again. “The Abyss is filled with toxic clouds left over from the Great Mushroom War. Do not go near these clouds under any circumstances. They’re scattered enough that we should be able to avoid them easily.” Bubblegum took a deep breath as the crowd let out a few more scattered cheers, realizing suddenly how hungry she was. Waking up late had caused her to miss breakfast.“Let’s march!” she cried, ignoring the pangs in her stomach. “Follow the Morrow!”The bird launched into the sky with heart-stopping speed, and Bubblegum grasped tightly onto its harness for fear of falling. She eased the Morrow into a slower ascent—the people below were on foot, after all—and relaxed slightly once the bird’s glide became smoother.“You didn’t include me in your plan.” Startled, Bonnie’s head whipped toward Marceline’s voice. The vampire floated next to the Morrow, looking serious. Her bass was strapped to her back.Bubblegum tried to calm her frayed, exhausted nerves. “You weren’t a part of it,” she said.Marceline scoffed. “I came here to help and you tossed me as soon as you decided I wasn’t useful. I’m already here, and I am useful, so let me do what I can.”Bubblegum bit her lip. Marceline’s presence would allow them to cross the Abyss faster, but…“You’re not in charge of me,” Marceline said. “You know that, right?”“Yes,” Bubblegum said, tightening her hold on the Morrow. “Obviously, I know that.”“Then it’s settled,” Marceline said, reaching for something in her pocket. “Better energize, princess.” Marceline tossed something in Bubblegum’s direction and the princess caught it, surprised. “This is going to be one hell of a fight,” the vampire said before falling back to fly alongside LSP.Princess Bubblegum examined the crisp, red apple Marceline had thrown at her for a moment, then took a bite.………The Abyss was much farther away than Bubblegum remembered it being, and it took an excruciatingly long time for them to reach it. But around noon the princess could see the tips of the craggy rocks surrounding the roiling mass of clouds, and she called for a lunch break. A short break, meant for a moment of relaxation and rest and re-energization before the last leg of their journey, and then they were on their way again.Flying and stretching over the giant, sharp rocks wasn’t difficult, but it was time consuming. Eventually, though, they made it to the edge.Princess Bubblegum stared down into the pit with a feeling of apprehension. Her stomach felt like it was churning and rolling just like the clouds below.Marceline landed next to her, so close their shoulders almost touched.“Yikes,” Finn said, coming up from behind to peer down the cliff, Jake following not a moment after.Princess Bubblegum and Marceline looked at each other, and a grim sort of understanding passed between them—an acknowledgment of partnership. A look that said ‘no matter what we’ve been through, we’re in this together.’ Her hand found Marceline’s, and the Vampire didn’t pull away.They began to descend.
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The descent was slow going, but that wasn’t a surprise considering how many people were marching down at once.Thick puffs of toxic fumes clouded the air as the princess led her people down the part of the cliff that was the least steep—although it was still hard to move without sliding. Bonnie’s hand had slipped out of Marceline’s the first time she had almost fell and needed it to correct her balance, and she had not reached for Marceline again. Marceline wasn’t quite sure how she felt about it.At Bonnie’s insistence, Marceline leaped into the air every so often to make sure everyone was still following the Morrow, who flew slowly and dutifully above the group in front. It was a sight to behold—all those banana guards and armored-up Breakfast and Slime and Worm citizens marching in rows of two between the clouds. There had to be at least a hundred makeshift soldiers there, ready to defend their homes.Marceline’s boots crunched heavily as she landed on the rocks and dirt on the ground beside Bonnie and Finn and Jake.“How’s it looking up there?” Bonnie said, falling back to walk next to Marceline and letting Finn and Jake lead the way for a moment.“Everyone seems to be doing fine,” Marceline replied. “Nobody’s fallen yet, I don’t think. Not that I could tell.”“And the toxic clouds?”“Getting thicker, but only overhead. We should be fine if we stay away from the ones closer to the ground.”Bonnie nodded, sighing in relief as the incline of the cliff began to straighten out. They were nearing the bottom.“How’d you know about the toxic clouds anyway?” Marceline asked, lifting herself back into the air.“Research, remember?” Bonnie said. “And we used to come here when we were young.”“Here?” Marceline raised her brows. “How stupid were we?”“We never went in,” Bonnie clarified. “We weren’t that stupid.”“But we were dumb enough to discover it in the first place, and then keep coming back?”Bonnie made a noise of affirmation, but she didn’t say anything.They walked in silence for a bit. Marceline surveyed their surroundings, but she was unable to see much past the clouds and that strange haze in the air—the kind that came with a hundred years of dust and emptiness and silence.“Are you afraid?” Bonnie asked after a while, and Marceline hesitated before replying.Was she afraid? She was certainly apprehensive, definitely uneasy, but afraid? Every piece of her felt like it was tugging her in different directions—her heart one way and her mind another; her skin was pulling her toward the sky and her bones tugged her down toward the ground. She felt lost, and confused. Angry and resentful. It didn’t help that most of her memories were either of Bonnie or of something negative, or both. Mostly both.But as for this creature, this thing that had taken her memories, she had no real reason to be afraid of it. Even if everything went wrong and she lost her memories permanently, even if everyone did, at least they would be alive.“No,” Marceline said at last. “I’m not.” She glanced at Bonnie. “Are you?”Bonnie opened her mouth to answer, but her foot caught on a rock and she tumbled forward with a cry. Marceline’s reflexes kicked in and she dove, catching the princess inches from the ground and scooping her up into the air, into her arms. Bonnie looked up at her, mouth still slightly open in surprise.“Yes,” she breathed. “I’m terrified.”Marceline swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, then she scowled and dropped Bonnie back to her feet. “It’ll be okay,” Marceline said, flying to catch up to Finn and Jake. “We’ve got this.”Okay, so maybe she was still peeved at Bonnie for everything that had gone down—but she felt like she had a right to be. Marceline knew she should set aside those feelings for now, focus on the task at hand. Finding this creature and figuring out how to get everyone’s memories back. But it was hard, to have to experience so much all at once and then not have the time to process it all. After all of this was over—after all of this was over…“So hold up,” Finn said, bringing Marceline back into the present. “If we’re all marching through the Abyss, hoping this thing will be drawn to everyone’s memories, doesn’t that mean we’re just bait?”“We’re not bait, dude. We’re warriors!” Jake said, puffing out his chest into the image of sculpted pecs.“You’re definitely bait,” Bonnie said from behind them, her voice so deadpan that Marceline had to cover her mouth to stifle a laugh.She was going to miss that, when all of this was over. That playful banter between friends.No, she reminded herself. She wouldn’t miss it, because she wouldn’t remember.Finn stopped walking. “Uh, guys?” He pointed at something emerging from a cloud of toxic fumes and dust in front of them. A shadow that grew larger and darker as it came forward until it towered above them completely.Bonnie whistled, two sharp notes. The Morrow responded seconds later with it’s own screeching cry—a signal to the troops behind them to get ready. The fight was about to begin.Marceline moved her bass from her back to her front, gripping the neck with one hand and resting her other on the strings. She had been carrying it around for the last couple days, but she still hadn’t tried to play it. She wasn’t sure exactly what the instrument did—if the music was some kind of weapon in and of itself or if it was just a plain old guitar. Either way, if muscle memory didn’t kick in and she couldn’t find the music, she figured she could still swing the thing around in a fight. It was made from a giant ax, after all.She looked at Bonnie one last time. The princess looked strangely calm as she pulled two stun guns from holsters at her hips and raised them forward, as she watched the shadow become sharper and then blur all at once into the creature from Marceline’s memories.Marceline could understand Bonnie’s calm, even as the creature lurched forward. It was huge, there was no denying that. But it was wildly outnumbered; one hundred to one.“Remember, try not to kill it!” Bonnie yelled to anyone who was in earshot. She had explained earlier that it was best to keep the thing alive, if possible. If it died, there was the possibility of the candy peoples’ memories dying along with it.Bonnie raised both guns, and fired. The creature spasmed for a moment but it kept coming, the individual guns not quite strong enough to stop it. It raised it’s head and let out an ungodly screech that sliced through the air like a knife.“Finn, Jake, go!” Bonnie looked over her shoulder, looked at Marceline. “Everyone, give it all you’ve got!”The banana guards and all the other makeshift soldiers let out varying cries of enthusiasm as they raced toward the monster. Marceline rose into the sky and took a deep breath before pointing her instrument in the creature’s direction and strumming a string at random. The vibrations from the blast—even as small as it was—sent Marceline reeling back several feet in the air. She missed the monster by a long shot, but the feeling of playing music reverberated through her bones, and it felt good.Several memories beat against her brain, but she ignored them and strummed the strings again. Her aim was slightly better this time, and she hit the edge of one of the creature’s faces. “Take that, ya stupid slug!” she whooped as the creature cried out in pain.“Don’t kill it!” Bonnie yelled from below. “I gave you a stun gun for a reason.”Marceline spun in the air and landed another hit. “Don’t worry Bons, I think I know what I’m doing.”The creature cried out in pain as two more of its faces got blown off by Marceline’s music. Then it stilled.Everyone on the ground paused, lowered their weapons, looked around in confusion. Marceline took both hands off her bass, frowning. She was sure she hadn’t killed it. But there it was, frozen on the ground. Maybe someone had managed to stun it after all?But then the thing shuddered. It’s skin rippled and bubbled as it convulsed on the ground, keening and wailing in a way that sounded more frustrated than anything else.And then the creature exploded into hundreds of lumps of black sludge.Marceline shielded her face from the blast with an arm, but when she moved to look at the place the creature had just been, she didn’t find the remains of the thing like she had expected.No, the creature hadn’t exploded at all; it had ripped apart, but it was still moving. With horror, Marceline realized what it had done. Each sagging, dead face had ripped itself from the main body and formed itself a new, smaller body—one that was shaped almost exactly like a human. One creature with hundreds of faces had now become hundreds of human-shaped creatures, outnumbering Bonnie’s army by a crazy amount.Bonnie let out a strangled cry as the creatures swarmed toward her, toward her people. “Fall back!” she yelled at her scrambling comrades, tossing the stun guns to the side and pulling a smaller, deadlier weapon from her side. “Shoot to kill if you have to!”Marceline swung the bass off her shoulder and gripped her guitar at the neck. She wouldn’t be using her shock waves anymore. If she missed the creature she could end up hurting someone else.Marceline swung the axe at the creatures, but they just kept coming. For every one she knocked down, five more followed.One of them grabbed onto her bass and she flew higher into the air in an attempt to shake it off. It stared at her with those cold, dead eyes until she kicked it in what might have been it’s stomach and it tumbled to the ground.Her relief was short-lived. All around her, Bonnie’s army was losing. Falling back, running away. Getting swallowed and spit out by the black globs.And Bonnie—she was fighting two of the creatures off at once at the edge of a steep cliff. She kicked one in the head and shot the other one with her tiny gun and it fell from the top of the cliff with a screech. It was strange, though, the way the creatures were fighting her. They would rush up to her only to fall back, make screeching sounds as if to draw some of the other creatures away from whatever they were doing and toward Bonnie. As if she had something they wanted more than anyone else.“Watch out!” Marceline cried, watching Bonnie even as she sliced several more creatures up with her axe. One of the monsters was coming up behind Bonnie, but the princess turned at Marceline’s warning and managed to kick him away.But her foot caught on a rock, and she slipped.Marceline’s mind turned to blind panic as she watched Bonnie fall.There was nothing that could have prepared her for the terror, the white-hot fear she experienced in those short, eternal seconds where Bonnie was standing on the edge of the cliff, and then she wasn’t anymore.A memory surfaced suddenly, as Marceline turned.This one didn’t hurt like the others. It didn’t come from fear or from panic or from the adrenaline coursing through Marceline’s veins. It didn’t come from the feelings in her brain, but somewhere deep in her chest. This one was soft, kind. A sunny day. A worn red couch. Her mother, stroking her hair in the warmth of the sunbeams streaming through the window.“I don’t want to grow up,” young Marceline was saying. “I want to stay small and live with you, forever.”Her mother chuckled, but it was a strange sound. An unhappy sound. Marceline scrambled off of her mother’s lap, turned to face her. “You don’t want me to stay with you forever?”The expression on her mother’s face changed, pulled itself into a smile that might not have been wholly real. “Of course I do, Marshmallow,” the woman said kindly, reaching up to tuck a strand of hair behind Marceline’s ear. “If I could choose, I would freeze time and we would always be together.”“So, freeze time then,” young Marceline said, and her mother laughed. Marceline liked the sound of her mother’s laughter, even when she didn’t fully understand where it came from.“I’m afraid it doesn’t work quite like that.” Her mother pulled her back onto her lap, circled her arms around Marceline and rested her chin on her head. “Time is weird. Seasons change—things grow and then they die.” Her mother paused, and hugged Marceline tighter. “You’re going to live for a very, very long time, Marshmallow.”“I am?”Marceline felt her mother nod. “You are. But other people—they’re not going to be around forever.”“Why not?” Marceline said, growing afraid. “Where will they go?” Marceline tried to pull away, to face her mother again, but the woman only held her closer.“They’ll go where everything goes,” her mother said in a soothing voice. “But they’ll also stay.”Marceline pouted. “I don’t get it.”“You will,” her mother said, and there was a smile in her voice. A real one this time. “Just remember that letting go is important,” she continued. “But so is holding on.” The arms around Marceline tightened into a great big bear hug, and Marceline giggled. “You’ve got to hold on really tight to what’s important, Marshmallow. Never forget that.”Hold on tight.Never forget.A scream ripped through Marceline’s throat as she tore through the wind and the dust and the toxic fumes toward where Bonnie had fallen. Toward the clouds, then through them. Dropping at a speed she had never known before.Hold on.
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Marceline dove down deeper into the Abyss, hoping to Glob that she wasn’t too late.Squinting, she searched the clouds for Bonnie, but even with her vampire eyes she could hardly see anything. The air down here seemed thicker than the air above, somehow. Like the clouds were heavy with something other than gas and moisture.Too fast, the ground came into view, and Marceline pulled up mid-dive, mere inches from splattering herself all over the Abyss. She hung in the air and scanned the ground, grateful that the toxic fumes could not harm her but also intensely worried about Bonnie. She would have survived the fall—of course she would have survived, she was made of gum, after all—but these clouds were a different story entirely. If the princess was exposed to the fumes…Marceline caught a flash of pink on the ground ahead of her and she rocketed toward it.“Please be okay,” she said out loud, landing hard beside an unconscious Princess Bubblegum. “Please be alive, please be alive.”Marceline knelt down and slid her arms underneath the princess, picking her up to carry her for the second time that day. She didn’t check her pulse; she didn’t check to see if she was breathing—there wasn’t time. All of that could come later, when she was safe and out of these clouds.“Don’t you dare be dead, do you hear me?”Wildly, Marceline shot forward, searching for somewhere—anywhere she could take the princess. She thought about trying to leave the Abyss altogether, but only Glob knew how much time Bonnie had left. They needed to get somewhere close, and fast.There, just through that cloud. A cave yawned before them, and Marceline flew toward it.She crashed through the entrance, barely registering her surroundings aside from a lack of any sort of immediate danger, and laid Bonnie gently down on the floor, cradling her head in her lap. “Please don’t leave me, not like this” Marceline pleaded one last time before finally placing two fingers on Bonnie’s pulse point.Marceline’s relief escaped in a gasp of air that was almost a sob. Bonnie was alive. Her breathing was shallow and her pulse was weak, but she was alive.A fit of coughs jolted the princess from Marceline’s arms, and she curled into a ball. “Marcy,” she managed. “My pack.”“I’ll find it,” Marceline said, standing and flying from the cave. She hadn’t seen any sort of pack when she had found Bonnie on the ground, so she figured it must have come off in the fall. It took a minute to locate—an agonizing amount of time when she knew the princess was alone and quite probably dying—but she found it eventually and raced back to Bonnie.“Oxygen,” the princess choked out, and Marceline rifled through the pack until she found a tiny, portable oxygen tank and a connected mask. She fastened the mask over Bonnie’s mouth, thanking Glob that the princess was prepared for everything, and then finally let the tension in her shoulders relax. She laid down on the floor next to Bonnie, whose breathing had become much more even now, and curled up against her, placing a hand on the princess’s chest just to reassure herself that she was definitely still alive.Sighing, Marceline allowed herself to close her eyes, to calm her own frantic breathing and to slow her heartbeat.She felt like she had aged a hundred years in those last ten minutes. But now the blind panic was wearing off, leaving her shaky and drained. What were they supposed to do now? The monster—monsters—had been winning. There was no way to get back up to where they had been fighting unless she flew Bonnie back through the toxic air, which clearly wasn’t an option.Marceline felt one of Bonnie’s hands land on hers, and she opened her eyes to meet her gaze. The princess looked sad, but she squeezed Marceline’s hand in reassurance—at least we’re alive.The princess sat up, forcing Marceline’s sore, exhausted body to do the same. She pulled the oxygen mask off just long enough to ask “where are we?” before replacing it over her mouth.With Bonnie safe and (hopefully) recovering, Marceline finally took a second to look around. To her surprise, they weren’t actually in a cave at all, but some sort of building. What she had taken for an entrance through the haze of the clouds was actually a ragged hole in the side of the wall that looked like it had been blown through with some kind of explosive.“I have no idea,” Marceline said, standing up to take a better look. Scattered furniture was set up throughout the room—a couch, a couple chairs, a table. Even an old TV. Everything was in eerily pristine condition other than the coat of dust that settled over everything like a blanket. Photographs lined the walls, and Marceline floated over to examine them. A group of people—humans—ragged and dirty but smiling and posing outside what Marceline assumed was the exterior of the building she and Bonnie were in now. Another picture, the same group of people in a different room, now in lab coats and dust masks.“Holy snap, look at this!” Marceline tore a third photo off the wall and handed it to Bonnie. A small town, surrounded by craggy rocks and cliffs. “Do you think this was the Abyss? Before it was, you know, the Abyss?”Bonnie frowned, turning the picture over in her hands and removing it from the frame. She pulled the mask off again. “There’s a date on the back.” She showed Marceline, and the vampire’s eyes widened.“How could a photograph last almost a thousand years?”Bonnie made a fist and knocked on the picture, producing a metallic sort of clang. “It’s not a photograph,” she said. “It’s a laser etching on a metal slab.” She coughed sharply, but waved off Marceline’s worried attempts to help. “This was years after the Great Mushroom War. It looks like—maybe a settlement was founded in this valley, but—” She squinted at the picture, then broke into more coughs. Marceline gently took the picture from her and handed her the mask.“You need to rest for a while,” the vampire said. “Just stop talking, okay?”Bonnie had enough energy to look annoyed, and Marceline bit back a smile. At least the princess was feeling better.The vampire continued her search of the place. They seemed to be in a sort of community room. There was the lounge area she had seen before, but upon further exploration she also found a small kitchen area in the corner, and a dining room table. Marceline frowned, picking things up and putting them back down, opening doors at random. How was all of this stuff so well preserved if it was over a thousand years old?Marceline opened another door. Her eyes adjusted well enough to see that it was a bedroom. In fact, as she kept going, she realized most of these doors led to bedrooms, except one that opened to a long, dark hallway that ended up only Gob knew where. “Hey Bons, there’s a bed in here,” she said, opening a final door. The farther the princess was from those fumes outside, the better. Bonnie followed her in, looking around with a wary expression.The bed was covered in dust, which Marceline did her best to brush off before gesturing for Bonnie to sit.Static crackled from somewhere within Bonnie’s backpack—ccskch Princess cskcch can schsh hear me?—and Marceline fished out the walkie talkie that was producing the noise. “You really were prepared for anything,” Marceline said, turning toward Bonnie. The princess only crossed her arms.Marceline pushed the talk button. “Finn?”
“Marcy? Where’s the princess?”
“She’s okay,” Marceline said back. “Kind of. We’re alive. What’s happening up there?”More static buzzed, and Marcy flew toward the ceiling with the hope that the signal would be stronger.“—swallowing candy people,” Finn’s voice snapped to life on the other end. “Jake managed to carry some of them out of the Abyss, but the monster is everywhere. We don’t know how long we can hold it off.”Marceline pushed the talk button again, but Bonnie interrupted from below with a demand of her own. “Get my people to safety,” she said, stifling a coughing fit. “We’ll look for a way out of here and let you know when we’ve found one.”“Got it Princess.” Finn’s voice cut off as Bonnie’s composure broke and she began coughing once again.Marceline landed back on the floor next to the princess, who was pushing herself off the bed to stand. “No,” the vampire said, putting both hands on Bonnie’s shoulders and gently forcing her back down. “You have to rest.”“My people need me, Marcy—”“Ten minutes,” Marceline said. “Just give yourself ten minutes. You’re not going to be much use to anyone in this state.”Marceline took a small amount of satisfaction in the look on Bonnie’s face. After all, it had only been a matter of hours since the princess had basically said the same thing about her.“Ten minutes,” Bubblegum agreed at last, sagging against the old mattress. “But that’s it.”Relieved, Marceline sat cross-legged on the floor and rested her arms on the bed beside Bonnie, then let her head fall into her arms. Maybe she could use ten minutes as well.She felt Bonnie’s hand slip into her own—slow, hesitant, like the princess wasn’t quite sure how Marceline would react—and the vampire squeezed Bonnie’s fingers back. She would have plenty of time to be angry and resentful once they were free from this place, but for now she just found comfort in that small burst of warmth that came with Bonnie’s hand in hers.“Thanks for saving me,” Bonnie said after a while. “If you hadn’t found me—”“Anytime, Bon Bons,” Marceline replied quickly, not wanting to even have to think about what would have happened if she hadn’t found her.Absently, the princess wove her fingers through Marceline’s until they were interlocked. “I really owe you my life, huh?”Marceline looked down at the ground, avoiding Bonnie’s gaze. She really didn’t want to think about it.Something caught her eye—a cardboard box beneath the bed—and Marceline pulled her hand free so she could duck down closer. “Video Data Logs?” she read, raising a brow. She pulled the box forward, surprised to find it filled with tapes.“Bonnie, check this out.” She held up the box for the princess to see. “What do you think this means?”Bonnie reached out to take one of the tapes from the box, and examined it. “Judging by the pictures on the wall and the labels on the tapes, I would say they’re scientific logs of some kind.” She handed the tape to Marceline. “Look.”“’Week Three:Breakthrough?” Marceline frowned, then sorted through the rest of the tapes, laying them in order on the floor in front of her. “These span the course of like six years,” Marceline said. “It’s a bummer we don’t have a way to watch them.”“Don’t underestimate the pack, Marcy,” Bonnie said, pointing to her backpack.Marceline rolled her eyes as she handed the pack to Bonnie, who produced a portable holo-projector from somewhere within. “I think you mean ‘don’t underestimate Princess Bubblegum’s constant need to be prepared for literally anything,” Marceline mumbled.Bonnie handed the projector to Marceline, but her expression was pained. “I wasn’t prepared today,” she said softly. “And my people suffered for it.” She looked down at her own hands. “Overconfidence is my biggest weakness. Just look at how I handled you and your memories.” She clenched her hands into fists. “I should be better than that, shouldn’t I?”Marceline slotted the tape labeled ‘week one: foundation’ into the projector, then hopped in bed beside Bonnie and pointed the front of the small machine at the wall. She honestly wasn’t sure how to answer. Luckily she was spared from doing so when the projector produced a bunch of static, then a picture appeared on the far wall: A human woman, exhausted and disheveled. She sat outside, on what looked to be a wooden crate, and she was rubbing her temples with her fingers as if she had a headache.“We’ve finally found a place to settle down,” she said, opening her eyes to look at the camera. “An old valley hidden in the middle of some of the sharpest rocks I’ve ever seen. We had a hell of a time getting down here, but I think it’s worth it.”The camera cut to lush rolling hills and cliffs in the distance—the same landscape that had been featured in that picture from earlier. The land looked rich, fertile even, and Marceline leaned forward. Was this what the Abyss had looked like a thousand years ago?“We’re so tired,” the woman on the screen continued, camera cutting back to her face. “The war has been over for almost a year, but it feels like some of us are still fighting it every day. These memories are exhausting.”The image melted back to static, and the two women looked at each other.Wordlessly, Marceline removed the tape, then shoved the next one in: ‘week two: exploration’. This one seemed to begin somewhere in the middle—the woman now wearing a lab coat and glasses, frowning deeply and pacing across what looked to be a small campsite.“—found gas deposits around the entire valley. We may have to move again after all, find somewhere else to live—” more static “—more research to be done—”The tape jumped forward in time, suddenly. The woman now looked excited, and she stood behind a man seated in a wooden chair. “We thought Elliot had left the valley during the initial analysis of the gas, but—” she placed her hands on the man’s shoulders. “He was lost in the tunnel system the entire time. Tell the camera, Elliot.”The man’s eyes darted back and forth, and there was an expression of panic on his face. “Look, I already told you, I don’t know an Elliot. Who the hell is Elliot? Get me out of here!”There was a crash, then more static.Then the woman was back, pacing again in front of a now-empty chair. “This gas seems to work on the central nervous system,” she was saying. “It pretty much wiped Elliot’s memories clean from his brain. He can’t remember anything.” She stopped walking, faced the camera. “Bryan went out to the site and inhaled a bunch of the stuff—tried to make himself forget, too. He doesn’t want to remember the war any more than the rest of us do. I know he lost his daughter, but he doesn’t like to talk about it.” The woman furrowed her brow. “It didn’t work, though. I wonder if it’s worth it to figure out why…”The second tape cut off there, and didn’t continue.“So the Abyss was originally some kind of post-war refugee camp?” Bonnie mused. “But if the war didn’t cause this buildup of gas, what did?”“These scientists, obviously,” Marceline answered. “It has to be.”“Let’s watch the next one,” Bonnie suggested, so Marceline put it in.“—an old medical facility in the center of the valley. We’re not sure why it’s here or where it came from, but there are so many things we can use.”“That must be where we are now,” Marceline supplied, recognizing the community room they had just left. It was an eerie feeling, to be sure.“We’re going to need to build a generator, but how…”The tape cut forward again. “Breakthrough! I managed to isolate the compounds in the gas, and it’s like nothing I’ve ever seen before; not even in theory. One thing’s for sure, though—Bryan wasn’t out there long enough for it to work on him. He would have had to spend hours breathing these fumes, like Elliot did.” She slammed her fists on the table, making the camera jump. “If only I could get any of this equipment up and running again, I could—”Another jump in time, the woman now decked out in full science gear in the community room. “—travelers from the north, many of them trained scientists. With their help I might be able to re-purpose this equipment. We could create a real, livable town!”The image cut to the woman sitting outside once again. She looked run down; her hair coming loose from her low braid, her eyes troubled. She tapped her fingers on her chin. “We already knew how to isolate the chemicals in the gas, but…” Taking a deep breath, she looked back at the camera. “Some of the others want to build a machine.” She paused, tapped her chin again. “A machine that utilizes the properties of the gas that erase memories. But instead of erasing, they want to replace the memories with new ones. Happy ones. They want to build a ‘real safe haven’ as they put it. A place where the war can no longer reach them.”Marceline raised her brows. Replace bad memories with fake ones? She glanced at Bonnie, who looked just as confused as Marceline felt.“Bryan jumped right on board,” the woman continued, “volunteered to be the first subject. I guess that makes sense. I think his memories haunt him more than the rest of us.”The tape ended, and Marceline reached for the next one. “There are some missing,” she said, slotting another tape into the projector. “This next one is from like six months later.”“It seems word’s gotten out about the machine,” the woman said. “Those who survived the war—they’re flocking here like birds. Buildings have popped up—our small valley is becoming a real town.” She frowned deeply. “A whole town based on the desire to forget…” More static.Marceline picked up the last two tapes. “This is all that’s left,” she said. One of them was dated about four years later, and she shoved that one in.The woman sat in the bedroom—the very same one in which Marceline and Bonnie now sat. Her eyes were puffy, hair limp. She was so thin her skin seemed to hang right off her bones.“Are we doing the right thing?” she said softly. Her eyes darted back and forth, as if she were afraid someone might hear. “There are only a handful of us left who know the truth—the truth about what the machine even does—and that number is declining every day. Everyone else, well, they’ve forgotten.” A flash of static before the picture resumed. “Farah and Clyde think we should let ourselves forget, too, and live out our lives like the others.” Her eyes continued their quick movements. “But then who would work the machine? Who would be left to remember the world outside?” She raked her fingers through unkempt hair. “If I decide to forget, who will I become?”The tape stopped, and Marceline hesitated before replacing it with the one she held in her hand. She turned to Bonnie. “This is the last one. A year later.”The image came to life: some sort of science lab. Everything was in disarray, knocked over or upside down. The woman paced back and forth, but her movements were frantic. Her eyes searched the room and her head whipped from side to side.“This is it. They’re trying to get in my head too, I can feel it.” The words were hurried, spoken so quickly they were almost difficult to understand. “I’ve forgotten something, I know I have. The others look at me like I’m crazy but it’s only because they’ve forgotten too.”The tape cut forward to the woman kneeling behind a metal box, crouched down and hiding from something. “It’s the machine,” she gasped out. “The machine is doing this.”Another cut to the woman sobbing and pulling at her hair. “Agh, I need to remember!”A jump to the woman pacing once again. “I’ve already destroyed the other tapes. Nobody needs to know. Nobody needs to know about the machine because this can never happen again. This can never happen again I won’t let it. I won’t let it happen again.”Another cut. The woman screaming and hitting herself in the head with balled fists. “Remember!”A blank screen, then the woman was straightening the camera. She had apparently regained some composure, but her eyes still held a thousand demons. “It needs to be destroyed,” she said, strangely calm. “The whole thing needs to be destroyed. It’s the only way to save us.”The tape ended, and the two woman sat in stunned silence for a moment.“Destroying the machine must have released the gas into the valley,” Bonnie said at last, voice sad. “All those people…”“Became the monster,” Marceline said. Her skin felt like it was made of ice, and goosebumps had sprouted along her arms. She turned to Bonnie. “Don’t you get it? The gas and whatever Mushroom War goo was left over in the air—they must have combined to create that thing after the explosion.”Bonnie bit her lip. “You think the monster is some kind of fusion of everyone who used to live here? That they all died together and that—that creature was somehow preserved all this time by the Abyss?”“It makes sense, doesn’t it?” Marceline pressed, dread weighing heavily on her chest. “That would explain why it wants memories so badly.”“Dear Glob,” Bonnie said, then her eyes widened. “Marcy,” She lifted a hand to place it on the vampire’s shoulder, eyes flashing with realization. “If I can fix that machine, maybe I can make a weapon. Maybe instead of killing the creature, we can simply make it forget!" Bonnie scrambled to get off the bed, wobbling a bit as she did so. “Let’s go find that lab, it’s got to be somewhere in this building.”“Woah woah, slow down Bons.” Marceline grabbed Bonnie by the shoulders. “Are you sure you’re okay to do this?”“I’ll be fine,” the princess promised with a huff. “This is much more important.”Marceline narrowed her eyes, staring and Bonnie for a long moment before finally relenting. “Fine, but you’re in no state to walk,” she said, scooping Bonnie into her arms for the third time. “One of these doors leads to a hallway, but it’s nearly pitch black.”“That’s what you’re here for,” Bonnie quipped, tightening her arms around Marceline.“Well, I’m glad I’m good for something,” Marceline mumbled, taking off through the door, past the community room and then into the hall.She shot one last look at the open door behind them before the two of them were swallowed by darkness.
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
Marceline shot down the darkened hallway, relying on her super-demon sight and smell to prevent her from crashing the two of them straight into a wall.Princess Bubblegum clung to her so tight she worried she might be causing Marceline pain, nails digging into her neck and shoulder, but the vampire didn’t seem to mind. Not that Bubblegum could see much of anything anyway. There were no windows in the hall, and the lights had burned out ages ago.Bubblegum frowned, tightening her grip as Marceline turned a corner. She had no doubt that she would be able to fix the machine, but the only tools she had were those she had stashed in her pack. On top of that, the technology was over a thousand years old, and Glob only knew how she would power it.“You okay back there?” Marceline asked, interrupting Bubblegum’s thoughts.“I think so.”Marcy nodded, slowing. “There’s a set of double doors at the end of the hall,” she said.“Sounds like a fine place to start.”Marceline dropped to the ground gently and Bubblegum stepped down, grabbing onto the vampire’s shoulders when she couldn’t quite get her bearings.It turned out the set of double doors wasn’t the lab, but some sort of cafeteria. Curious, the two women checked for any sort of edible food, but the entire place was cleaned out. There wasn’t even a bit of mold or a single crumb. As Marcy scooped her back up into her arms, Bubblegum wondered if there were any mice or bugs here in the Abyss, or if they were all dead, too.It took another ten minutes or so of searching, during which they found a community bathroom and passed many, many old hospital rooms. But eventually Marceline spotted a door in the wall that was smaller than the others, and made of solid metal. She turned the knob, but it was locked, so she grew her arm into a giant, taloned thing and smashed her way through. A set of stairs led down into a darkness that seemed thicker, somehow, than that of the hallway.“It looks like a basement.” Marceline said, setting Bubblegum back down onto the floor and grabbing her hand. “But the door was hecka thick, so it could be something important.”“Let’s hope this is the lab,” Bubblegum said, squeezing Marceline’s hand. “The sooner we find it the sooner we can get out of this place.”Together they made their way down the stairs, Marceline relying on her super eyesight and Bubblegum relying heavily on Marcy to guide her.“I can’t believe there’s not a flashlight in your pack,” Marceline remarked, voice loud in the small space. “I mean you had three laser guns, a video projector, and not one, but seven cans of tomato soup.”“To be fair,” Bubblegum said, “there was a flashlight in there. I just forgot the extra batteries—oof!” she ran straight into Marcy, who had stopped suddenly in front of her. “What’s wrong?” she said. “Is it the lab?”“It’s the lab alright,” Marcy answered. “Hold on, I’ll be right back.”Bubblegum had a moment of blind panic as Marceline released her hand, unable to see in the pitch darkness. But then a set of emergency lights flickered on above, illuminating the lab in red-tinted light.Marceline flew back toward Bubblegum, grinning. “Can you believe the backup generator still works?”“Not at all,” Bubblegum said, looking around the lab. It was huge—bigger than hers by quite a bit. The ground and the walls were both concrete. Maybe this was a basement, once, before those scientists turned it into the headquarters for their machine.“I just realized something,” Marcy said, floating next to Bubblegum as she followed her walk about the room. “If destroying the machine caused the gas to be released, wouldn’t that mean that the machine isn’t down here? Wouldn’t it be somewhere closer to outside?”Bubblegum stopped walking. That thought hadn’t even occurred to her. This entire facility was free of the gas, so that meant…She swore, turning to face Marcy. “The hole in the wall,” she said. “The one in that community room. She must have moved the machine there to destroy it.”“But the machine wasn’t there,” Marceline said, biting her lip. “It must have been totally destroyed, or else it was moved again, somehow.”“It doesn’t matter,” Princess Bubblegum said, quickening her pace as much as she could handle. “There has to be a set of blueprints or a diagram or something.”“What if there isn’t?”Bubblegum stopped walking and began sorting through a pile of seemingly random tools. She pulled out a screwdriver and turned to grin at Marcy. “I’ll wing it,” she said. For the next hour Marceline helped Bonnie turn all three of the guns in her pack into approximate replicas of the machine. She moved in and out of the lab, grabbing various items from the community room and the room of the original scientist as Bonnie requested them.They hadn’t been able to find the blueprints, but Bonnie didn’t seem too bothered. In fact, she almost seemed excited about it. Marceline supposed that this was the kind of thrill the princess liked: the thrill of solving something, of figuring things out.Marceline did not quite understand that feeling. If she were being honest with herself, she would take the easy way out every time, if she could.“Hand me that wrench, will you?” Bonnie asked, pointing.Marceline did as she was asked, but there was something weighing on her mind. “Bons, can I ask you something?”“Of course.”“Do you think she was right?” Marceline said, twisting her hands together as she watched Bonnie work. “The woman from the videos?”Bonnie’s hands didn’t stop moving over the weapon she was constructing, but she glanced at Marceline. “What do you mean?”“You know, the way she said—that it’s important to remember stuff. Do you think she was right?”Bonnie looked down at her weapon, picking it up to get a closer look and frowning. “I’m honestly not sure, Marcy. I think the answer is probably different for everyone.”Marceline sighed. That was more or less what she had expected Bonnie to say, and yet…“What would you do?” Marceline asked. “If you had to choose between forgetting, and letting your memories drive you completely bonkers?”Bonnie put the weapon down and tilted her head up to meet Marceline’s eyes full on. “I would never choose to forget,” she said. “But my circumstances are different from hers. And they’re different from yours, too, Marcy. I can’t make this decision for you.”Marceline cast her eyes to the ceiling, avoiding the princess’s gaze. “I’ve already made my decision, Bonnie. That isn’t what this is about.”From the way the princess’s brow rose and the skeptical look on her pink face, Marceline knew Bonnie wasn’t buying it. But she just shrugged and picked up her creation from the bench in front of her. “What do you think?” she asked, handing one of the weapons to Marceline. “I only had enough materials to make three. One for you, one for me, and one for Finn, probably.”It was heavy, made of whatever weapons had been in Bonnie’s pack as well as whatever materials the princess was able to salvage around the lab. Marceline held it at arms length, feeling a heaviness settle over her chest. This was it. Once they found a way back to the creature their plan would either work or it wouldn’t, but either way it would be over. “How does it work?”Bonnie reached up to flip a switch—causing a small hose to suck up air like a vacuum—and then flip the switch off again. “It sucks the toxic gas in and shoots the modified gas out.” She went on to explain what that meant in detail, but Marceline held up a hand. They were already running out of time, and there was a very slim chance she could even understand the inner mechanisms of the weapon.“It’s fine,” she said. “We should get ahold of Finn and Jake and figure out a way to get you back to the surface.”“I’ve thought of that,” Bonnie replied. “I’ll wear my oxygen mask and you transform into something that can protect me from the fumes, and then you’ll just fly us out.”Marceline snorted. “What, like a giant kangaroo?”Bonnie grinned, grabbing her walkie talkie from her pack. “Whatever works, Marcy.”In the end, the trip back to the battle site was quicker than either of them had anticipated. The two of them filled the guns with fumes and called Finn and Jake to explain the plan before Marceline flew them both back to the top of the cliff. She landed safely, letting Bonnie step down onto the ground as carefully as she could. The candy people were all gone—all of them rescued in some way or another by Finn and Jake, or else retreated back to the entrance of the Abyss—and there was no trace of any part of the monster.Bonnie raised the walkie. “Finn, Jake, we’re here. What’s your status?”Jake’s voice scrambled out of the speaker. “Heading your way, princess. Rounding up these turds. Should be there soon.”“Is this really going to work?” Marceline said, weighing the gun in her hand. “I mean, three guns for hundreds of monsters? Your whole army couldn’t even hold them off.”Bonnie pursed her lips. “I’ve been thinking about that, actually. Remember when you told me that the monster spit you back out? Because you had too many memories for it to consume all at once?”“Yeah?”“Well, if I’ve been alive almost as long as you have, that means I have just as many memories.”Marceline’s eyes widened. “You want to use yourself as bait.”Bonnie nodded. “I think it might be the only way.”Marceline thought back to when the creatures were fighting Bonnie, how they seemed to plunge toward her in groups, almost as if— “You think they’ll come back together if they’re overwhelmed!” Marceline shot up into the air. “There’s no way they can get your memories individually, so they’ll need to come back together to do it. That’s what you’re thinking, isn’t it?”Bonnie nodded again. “If they’re all together, we could get them in one hit. No huge battle this time. Just one perfectly timed shot.”Two figures melted out of the shadows, and Bonnie and Marceline both raised their guns. But it was only Finn and Jake, running towards them. “They’re coming!” Finn screeched. Bonnie threw him the third gun and looked at Jake.“We only have the three guns. Finn, hop on Jake’s back. You guys can stretch over the clouds and tell us when they’re close.” She looked back to Marceline. “If they attack Marcy and I, shoot from above.”“This seems like a bad idea,” Jake mumbled, but he did as he was told. “They’re coming up fast!” he said from above.Without thinking, Marceline grabbed Bonnie’s hand, pushed their shoulders together. “It’s better if we both do this,” she said. “Double the amount of memories, right?”Bonnie smiled, turning to press her forehead to Marcy’s. “Good idea.”A horrific cacophony of shrieks and screams filled the air as the monsters converged toward them, but the two women didn’t break eye contact with each other. This was it—this was the end.Marceline took a deep breath, placing her free hand on Bonnie’s cheek. The princess smiled even despite the horde of creatures ambling toward them, and pressed a hand to the vampires’s cheek as well. “Thanks, Bon Bons,” Marceline said, closing her eyes. “It’s been real.”The noise around them lessened—though it didn’t die out completely, and Bonnie moved her head to take a look, swearing in relief. “Marcy, look.”Marceline opened her eyes just as the noise started up again, the creatures rushing toward each other faster than she would have thought possible. They piled on top of each other until they were once again one great disgusting blob, and the two women pointed their weapons. “Don’t fire until it’s close enough!” Bonnie yelled. “This isn’t a long range weapon!”Marceline’s heart beat rapidly and she itched to jump into the sky where she would be safe, but she remained still, held her ground as the thing came at them, shuddering across the ground in great lurches.“Now!” Bonnie screamed. Marceline pulled the trigger, but a black arm shot out of the side of the creature’s body, knocking both women down onto the ground and dodging the fumes at the same time. Bonnie slid across the rocky terrain, holding her hands over her head in protection, and Marceline launched herself into the sky, searching for her gun. There, she spotted it several yards away and flew toward it as quickly as she could.Bonnie screamed as the creature slunk toward her. Marceline raised her weapon and pulled the trigger, but nothing happened. Empty. She threw the thing on the ground and darted in Bonnie’s direction, scooping her up seconds before the creature reached her.“My gun was empty,” Marceline said, voice strained with panic.“Yeaargh!”Both women looked up to find Finn falling like a stone from the sky. He pointed his own gun at the monster and let out one last cry of triumph as he fired. The creature disappeared behind a thick cloud of gas, screeching and flailing and howling.But Finn was still falling. The princess screamed and Marceline let out a string of curse words as the vampire shot down after him, unsure what she would even do once she got there.Several yards from hitting the ground, a parachute made entirely of Jake popped out of Finn’s backpack, and after that he floated gently down.Marceline landed next to him with a thud, letting Bonnie go. “You saved us,” she cried, rushing up to squeeze Finn into a desperate hug. “Thank Glob you were here.”The clouds cleared from around the monster, revealing it’s blobulous body resting on the ground, completely still.“Is it dead?” Jake asked, snapping back into his original form.“No,” Bonnie huffed. “It’s probably just confused. Let’s get this thing back to my lab. We’ll figure everything out there.” She turned to Marceline, fishing something out of her pocket and placing it into the vampire’s hand. “Here,” she said. “As promised.”Marceline opened her hand to find a tiny glass bottle filled with blue liquid. In all the confusion, she had almost forgotten about it. She had almost forgotten what she had asked for.“Thank you for being my friend,” Bonnie said, closing Marceline’s hand over the bottle. “Whatever you choose, I honestly wish you the best.”Marceline looked up. Bonnie’s gaze was soft and her eyes were wet, but she was smiling without reserve, smiling in a way that made Marceline wonder for the thousandth time if she was making the right decision.Marceline looked back down at her hand, swallowing down the lump in her throat. “Thanks, Bons,” she said. “Good luck to you, too.”
----- CHAPTER BREAK -----
SEVERAL MONTHS LATER Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum drew in a deep, steadying breath, then let it out slowly. A bead of sweat rolled its way down her forehead, and she brushed it away irritably with the grimy sleeve of her once white lab coat.“Finn, will you hand me that dropper over there?”Finn jumped up from the stool on which he sat, situated in the corner of Bonnie’s lab. He grabbed the dropper and handed it to her with an enthusiastic “Yes princess!”Bonnie thanked him, wondering if she should ask him to be her assistant permanently. He had been invaluable in the process of extracting the memories from that monster, as well as keeping the peace in the kingdom while Bonnie figured it all out—rounding up the candy people and making sure none of them felt threatened, staying up through the wee hours of the morning simply to make sure Bonnie did not overwork herself. She could hardly believe he was the same kid that had broken a royal promise once, the same kid that used to rely so heavily on others for support. Someday, she knew, he would be unstoppable.She turned back to the task at hand, smiling slightly to herself. Enthusiastic or not, Finn would never agree to be her assistant. He was an adventurer, through and through, and he would never be satisfied with lab life.She glanced at the closed window before carefully pinching the dropper, letting a single drop of cola fall into the mixture in front of her. There was no interruption—no explosion. The mixture fizzled, turning a slightly darker shade of blue, and Bonnie sat back in relief. It had gone as smoothly as it should have on that first day.There was a knock at the door, and Bonnie nodded for Finn to answer it.“We’re going to be late,” Jake said as soon as he opened the door. “I thought we agreed on 4:00.”“Yikes,” Finn hissed, glancing at the clock on the wall. “I guess I lost track of time.”“Well, hurry up,” Jake demanded, crossing his arms. “Marceline doesn’t like it when we’re late—remember last time?”Finn flinched, slinging his backpack over his shoulders. “Yeah, I remember.” He raised a hand in Bonnie’s direction. “See ya, princess. Let me know if you need any more help.”Bonnie nodded, biting her lip to keep herself from asking how Marceline was doing.Jake hesitated in the doorway, wringing his hands together. “Princess, do you want to—ah—” He scratched his head, looking at Finn. “Come with us?”Bonnie felt her shoulders tense, but she forced herself to give them a small smile. “Not this time,” she said. “I’m far too busy right now.”Judging from both boys’ expressions, they could tell she was lying.“Really, I’ll come next time,” she said, waving her hand in a dismissive way. “Just go have fun.”“Alright, well. Good luck, Princess,” Finn said, pushing Jake out the door. Bonnie thought she caught the words that’s what she said last time mumbled in Jake’s voice, and she sighed, leaning back in her chair. Her eyes wandered back to the window, shuttered closed against the afternoon sun.
When this is all over, I want you to erase my memories again. And then I want you to leave me alone.
That’s what Marceline had said. The memory still cut through Bonnie’s gut every time she thought about it, which was pretty often these days. She had held up her part of the bargain, though, despite everything. She had held up better than she thought she would.Maybe she shouldn’t have.
Leave me alone leave me alone leave me alone-
Bonnie groaned and stood, shrugging off her lab coat and snatching her jacket from the hook in front of the door before locking it tight behind her and making her way down the stairs. She passed Peppermint Butler, who acknowledged her with a formal nod. She passed through her throne room—empty—and she passed through her kingdom, greeting her candy people as she went.What she had told Finn and Jake—it hadn’t been a total lie. There was another project she was working on.When Bonnie finally reached the Abyss, the sun was already below the horizon.She looked out over the canyon, pulling her jacket tighter around her in the sudden chill that came in the wake of the sunset. It looked weird, she decided, without all those billowing clouds of toxic fumes clogging it up. It looked smaller, somehow. The machine she had built to clean the air sat somewhere down there—Bonnie wasn’t close enough to see it, but she could hear it, whirring in the silence of the evening.The Abyss—she would have to come up with a new name for it, once the cleanup was finished. She wondered what Marceline would have called it. The Big Scary Hole in the Ground Where We Almost Died? Bonnie grimaced, allowing herself to wish Marceline were here to name it. Bonnie had never really been good at that kind of stuff.“I thought I might find you here.”Bonnie stiffened at the voice, turning slowly.Marceline looked the same as she always had, with the notable exception that her hair was shorter—brushing just past the top of her shoulders. She didn’t look at Bonnie, but stared into what used to be the Abyss with an expression the princess couldn’t quite place.Bonnie forced herself to keep her breathing steady, willed her heart rate to stay at an even 80 beats per minute.“I thought you were hanging out with Finn and Jake,” she said lightly, reaching for some sense of normalcy even in a situation like this.Marceline snorted, finally turning to meet her stare. Her expression was guarded, but something sparked in her eyes—something quick and bright. Bonnie suddenly felt dizzy.“They seemed worried about you, so I sent them home.”“Oh.”A breeze shot between them, lifting Marceline’s hair from her shoulders, causing Bonnie to shiver, but neither of them broke eye contact. The space between where Bonnie stood and Where Marceline’s feet were planted seemed strangely vast—an Abyss in and of itself.“I like your hair,” Bonnie said.“Thanks,” said Marceline.Below them, the machine hummed and rumbled, echoing throughout the canyon like the purr of some sort of giant jungle cat. Marceline shifted her body so she was facing the edge of the cliff.“We should probably rename it, dontcha think?” she said, flashing her fangs at Bonnie along with the ghost of a smile.And just like that Bonnie’s face twisted, eyes filling with tears. The tension shattered, and she sank to the ground with a stifled cry, digging the heels of her hands into her eyes as if she could stop the tears from coming—as if she could shove the emotions back down.She felt Marcy’s hand on her back—light, hesitant, but comforting all the same—and she leaned into the touch, ashamed that Marcy was the one comforting her when she was the one who had messed up.“I’m sorry,” she said when she was able. “I’m sorry.”“I know,” Marceline said. She removed her hand from the princess’s back. When Bonnie finally lifted her head, the vampire held something in her fist—something small.Bonnie wiped at her face with her sleeve. “Finn and Jake told me you didn’t drink it, but I still didn’t know—I wasn’t sure—” Bonnie swallowed, intimidated by Marceline’s stoic expression, but she kept going. “I wasn’t sure if you’d changed your mind about—about wanting to see me, too…”To Bonnie’s eternal shock, Marceline smiled. “I’m kinda surprised,” she said. “I didn’t think you could be so considerate.”The princess’s lips parted, mouth open slightly. “Ouch,” she said.Marceline flicked her hair back from her face, smile stretching into a full-fanged grin. “After the battle I really thought you’d come around anyway. When Finn and Jake told me you were ‘busy’—” Marceline rolled her eyes—”I was almost annoyed. But—” Marceline sat down on the ground next to Bonnie. “I’m kind of glad I made you worry.”Bonnie’s face burned. “Marcy, that’s cruel.”The vampire laughed, though the sound wasn’t as genuine as Bonnie would have preferred. She imagined Marcy was still hurt—it would probably take a while for Bonnie to completely return to her good graces, but she was willing to wait. She was willing to wait forever.“Sorry, Bon Bons,” Marcy said, leaning back to stare at the sky. “Sometimes it’s nice to see you sweat a little.”“You still have the formula,” Bonnie said, ignoring Marcy’s remark. It wasn’t a question.Marceline opened her fist to look at the small bottle of blue liquid in her palm, and her smile dimmed a bit.“Saving it for a rainy day?” Bonnie asked.“Something like that,” Marcy answered.Bonnie’s gaze lingered on Marcy’s face for a moment, then she stood, dusting herself off. She searched the ground as Marceline quirked an eyebrow, following the princess’s movements with her eyes. Finally, she located a small pebble, and she bent to pick it up.She stared at the rock in her palm, then she turned to Marcy, flashing the biggest, warmest smile she could muster. “I hope we can keep hanging out, Marcy.”The pebble soared over the Abyss in a graceful arc, and disappeared into the darkness of the night.“Your turn,” Bonnie said, searching the ground for another pebble for Marcy to throw.But Marceline was already stepping toward the edge of the cliff. She looked out over the canyon, at the bit of toxic fumes that were still swirling below, at the craggy, jagged rocks that protruded from the ground like teeth. Then she looked back at Bonnie. “I hope so too, Bon Bons.” she said, then threw the bottle off the cliff.Bonnie’s tears were back, but this time they were shed through a smile. “Not bad, but your throw could use some work,” she teased.Marceline smiled back, and it was like the clouds had scattered, revealing the stars in the vampire’s eyes.“I’ll remember that,” she said.