Chapter Text
Finn looks around the castle grounds like he’s never seen them before. It’s been a while, Bonnie supposes, and the other royals have made a lot of changes. But it looks no different to her, and neither does he, if she squints.
“You still water all the plants here?”
“Some of them get hummingbird nectar.” She shakes the separating liquid in the spray bottle. “But yes, of course. They’re my plants, after all. Everyone’s to look at, mine to look after.”
“Makes sense.”
“Marceline won’t let me plant too many at home. She says it doesn’t make sense to bioengineer fancy cave-dwelling plants when there are perfectly good weeds there already. But she never has to walk through those weeds when they get tall and scratchy. Do you know how long it takes to get grass and burrs and stuff out of gum skin?”
“Uh. A long time?”
“Yes. A very long time.” Bonnie smiles in spite of herself. When they get home from somewhere together, Marceline usually just carries her. “So I get a pathway, an ornamental apple tree, and some berry bushes. Marcy acts like the fruit is for her, but she’s just being nice. We both know I like growing them more than she likes eating them.”
“I don’t know, she got really defensive that time Gibbon picked a raspberry. Kept going on about how they’re the perfect shade and she’s the only one who appreciates that.”
“Really?”
“Really!”
“Well, you know Marcy. She was probably hungry, or she was just trying to mess with Gibbon ‘cause he reminds her of Jake.”
“Right.”
“Hey, remember when you guys killed my princess plant and—” She stops herself. “Oh, Finn. I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. You can say his name.”
“But you miss him.”
“Yeah, but, like, all the time. Not just when someone mentions him.”
“I miss him too,” Bonnie says quietly.
Finn catches her eye, smirking. “We tried to feed your plant pizza.”
“Please, I don’t need the details.”
“I was thinking about when he and Marcy tried to eat each other in that sand cave. You know Marcy was only that hungry ‘cause Jake ate her snack? It was a bunch of erasers!”
Bonnie giggles. “Did you know that Jake was the winner of all but one of the eating contests I witnessed in his lifetime? One of them was grass. One was old tires.”
“Really? Which one did he lose?”
“You don’t remember? You were pretty little, I guess. It was a dog food eating contest. The contestants were Jake, Cinnamon Bun, Gunther, Dr. Princess, and Party God. Jake spent the whole time trying to punch Party God, who kept flying out of the way at the last second and saying, Too slow! Gunther started choking after his first bite, so Dr. Princess had to figure out how to do CPR on a penguin. And Cinnamon Bun just stuck the food in his filling, which we all agreed didn’t count as eating.”
“Oh, my Glob. Who won?”
“We were about to just pack up when a little human climbed up on the table and ate all the rest of the dog food, no hands. It was incredible.”
“Me?”
“Yeah, you! You threw up a bunch afterward, but you were so excited about your trophy you didn’t even seem to mind.” She can sort of picture it now— bigger than his head, with a big gold dog bone on top. “I bet it was in the treasure room until you guys went to Wildberry Kingdom.”
“Man, it probably was.” He shakes his head and blinks, like he’s waking up from a dream. “The treasure room. Man.”
“It’s been a while, huh?”
“Do you miss living in the palace?”
“Sometimes. Or, maybe all the time. But it’s weird. I don’t know. Why?”
“You asked first,” he laughs. “So, um. If I wanted to write up a document and make it official and legal and stuff, are you still the person who’d need to sign off on it?”
“Well, you’re not a citizen of the Candy Kingdom, and the grasslands doesn’t really have its own legal system. I guess it would depend on why you need it to be official— is it something that requires legal action from an outside party or just recognition?”
“No action that I’d want to be legally binding. More like suggestions that I don’t want anyone to forget about. That’s why I wanted to ask you. Even if you get upset about it, you’ll be… pragmatic. Businesslike. It’s okay if you don’t understand — I don’t really expect you to — but I think you’ll appreciate it, y’know, as policy.”
“Finn, why are you using vocabulary words?” Her chest hurts. “Why would I get upset? What is it?”
He swallows, scratches the back of his head, and shrugs. “I want you to sign off on my will.”
“Your… will.”
“Like, for when I die. What I want to happen with my stuff and what I want people to do. Y’know, if they wanna do it.”
“You were right to come to me, Finn. I will…” She swallows hard and grips the folder tight between thumb and fingers. She nods. “I vow to protect the words in this document, and to uphold them when their time comes, so help me, Glob.”
Finn seems to have given up trying to catch her eye. “Thanks,” he says, and stands. “I’ll see you at BMO’s rocket launch?”
Bonnie nods.
“You know you won’t have to uphold them for a long time, right? Like, probably a couple decades at least?”
She looks up at him, and the smile falters for just a moment. She knows that he knows that it’s not real, but she fixes it anyway. “Of course,” she says, not quite reaching her normal volume. “A— a long time. Yes. I know.”
“Long time for me anyway. Are you sure you’re okay holding onto that?”
“Of course. It’s the least I can do.”
“Well, thank you. Like I said, I know you’ll be responsible and stuff. Probably.”
She almost laughs. “Finn. You know what I mean if I say I love you, right?”
He smiles, a soft blush warming his cheeks— finally, Bonnie thinks. He always looks cold without his hat on.
“Yeah,” he says. “You’re one of my best friends in the world, Prubs. I love you too.”
/
“Hey,” Marceline whispers later, in the dead of mid-morning, while the continent rubs its eyes and cracks eggs into pans, and the two of them stare at the ceiling in the dark. Bonnie, with Finn’s permission of course, gave her the short version of their meeting earlier. “Are you awake?”
Bonnie answers by shifting onto her side, wide eyes finding hers.
“Did you say Finn wants to be buried with gum?”
“Yeah. He said he wanted to give some to Jake.”
“Hm. Didn’t one of the old globs had a thing about, like, his followers eating his body or whatever? Did you get promoted?”
“Ha. No. I think it’s more of a grounding thing.”
“Makes sense. Gum’s what got me sleeping in a real bed after all.”
Bonnie laughs a little, but she can’t help the tension in her voice. “Marceline?”
“Yes, Bonnibel?”
“Are you okay?”
Marceline smiles at her and shrugs. “It’s a lot. I’m trying not to think about it.”
“Me too.”
She looks back up at the ceiling. “I kind of don’t think it’s helping though.”
Bonnie gives a noncommittal hum and scoots in closer, arm around Marcy’s ribs and nose grazing her cheek. She can, she supposes, think about how Marcy’s thinking about it without actually thinking about it herself. Right? That’s just survival.
“You wanna tell me?” she says. “Or ask me?”
Marcy rubs her eyes with the heel of one hand and grips the back of Bonnie’s shirt with the other. “Ugh. How did he seem?”
“Normal, I guess.”
“Happy? Healthy?”
“Yeah. He was just… thoughtful. He said he was thinking about Billy and Jake and Jermaine and Simon. And Betty. His parents. Fern. And how they’re all…”
“Gone.”
“No. He said he was thinking about how they’re all still here.”
Marceline is quiet for a long time, shaking her head against the palm pressed over one eye. Bonnie’s quiet too. She thinks about how Marceline is thinking about it. She kisses Marceline’s cheek with all the softness and warmth she can muster.
“A couple decades,” Marcy mumbles.
“At least.”
“And then… still here.”
“Yes.” Bonnie does her best to hide the uncertainty from her voice. “Still here.”
///
None of the clothes in Bonnie’s closet are right. There’s plenty that would do, of course, for another funeral. Enough to redo every eulogy she’s ever made, and then some.
But this isn’t another funeral. It’s not for another person, and even if it were, it’s not one of her funerals. She’s not even speaking at it. No one is— at least, not behind a podium, armed with a prepared speech and a clearly outlined purpose. Outside of a brief ceremony by the old treehouse, it’s going to be less a funeral and more a festival, because that’s what Finn wanted. He told her so decades ago, and confirmed again and again. They’re going to have fun and find comfort in their memories of him. They’re going to be authentic, and they’re going to love him and each other.
That’s what he wanted, but none of Bonnie’s clothes are right for that. She knows that without having to look, and still, she looks.
Marceline is beautiful in her simple black dress, gloves and hat in hand. That should be right, because Marceline is always beautiful. What’s wrong is the way her eyes keep bouncing from Bonnie to the wall clock and back. What’s wrong is the way she keeps picking at the edge of her hat and breathing in like she’s about to speak without following through. What’s wrong is the way she’s been ready for an hour. She’s the one who’s ready, and Bonnie — despite all her to-do lists and alarms and all the times she’s beaten dents into her own forehead and told herself, you can’t be late, you can’t get lost in some project, you can’t get scared and act like a jerk, you can’t make it about you, you can’t can’t can’t mess this up — is going to make them both late.
And then she’ll probably stumble on the way to her seat and make a scene, and everyone will glare at her, and BMO will cry, and the globs will all tsk at her, and Marceline will realize that she never should’ve taken her back, and no one will be able to think of Ooo’s greatest hero ever again without the memory stained by a stupid, clumsy, tardy part-time princess. One who can’t even make her hands stop shaking while she ransacks her own closet.
“I think,” Marceline says softly, hovering behind her, “you’ll probably feel worse if we’re late.”
She’s so quiet today. It’s a different kind of quiet than the last time — the post-Simon quiet — but it’s quiet all the same. All calm and stillness and hesitancy in her touch. Wise. And she’s right, of course. She’s quiet and wise and right about the whole thing. But giving words to the problem doesn’t change anything. Not this time.
Bonnie’s loud — she's breathing loud, even, and stomping and tripping in her bare feet — shoving aside hangers bearing dresses and blouses and trousers and skirts, tearing shoes from shelves, belts and jewelry and scarves from hooks. Enough clothing for her kingdom and then some, even if they all wore clothes, but nothing at all that’s right.
She doesn’t say a word, but she’s so, so loud, and she’s thinking about telling Marcy to just go ahead without her. But Marcy’s too smart for that. Too wise. She knows Bonnie and her clenched jaw and her loud, fast puffs of breath too well. She kicks away the pile of clothes in front of her own chest of drawers and pulls the middle one out, speaking over her shoulder, like it’s not the most shockingly, intimately thoughtful offer anyone’s ever made.
“Do you want something of mine?”
Some of Bonnie’s clothes are a little less wrong, it turns out, with Marceline’s sleeveless concert t-shirt under them. The fading graphic advertises a show from some hundreds of years ago, and it looks like a pillowcase with arm holes on Marcy. But it hangs closer — a little snug even, though comfortably so — on Bonnie. It’s okay if it sticks to her. She’s warm under the layers, the borrowed fabric flush against her skin, and under the canopied sun. There’s a chain of purple rock candy with dark silver links on Marcy’s wrist— one of Bonnie’s, though the gothic style suits her better, if a little daintier than she usually goes for. Hand in hand, they’re not quite right, but they’re not quite wrong either.
There’s supposed to be some kind of catharsis waiting here, in honoring Finn’s memory, but she can’t seem to stop feeling haunted, strange in the midst of so many bright colors and street food vendors and carnival games. One of the pups burns their tongue on hot chocolate, and there’s Finn, chugging a whole thermos before he even notices it’s too hot. Rubbing Ice Kingdom snow on his tongue until Jake, giggling, whispers something in his ear. Spitting it all out and tackling his brother into the snow. Making Bonnie laugh, like he was so good at doing.
There was always something, even before she knew what it was, that made him feel like an old friend. She had to work harder not to trust him. She shouldn’t have tried as long as she did.
Marceline hasn’t stopped singing for more than twelve hours or so since she started again, way back when Simon’s body was fresh in the ground, still too new to feed it. She hasn’t stopped, but sometimes she falters. Today, she cries. In the middle of everything, everyone, she looks so far away, but it’s clear that she’s the one who’s close. If her shirt, tucked close to Bonnie’s abdomen, had a heart on one sleeve, it’s been torn off with the rest of it. Marceline wears hers right in her throat these days — always has, really — and Bonnie still can’t believe how lucky she is to hear it. But it hurts today. It heals, and that hurts too. She crosses her eyes and tries to be still if not useful. She envies the unfeeling hors d'oeuvres, sweet and single-purposed.
Bonnie has a hard time with time these days. Her face and hands are beginning to crack from centuries of clenching, but sometimes she looks in the mirror and sees soft, moldable sugar. Not a tired princess, but a plucky big sister with a world to learn and protect. Finn is dead, and he’s inconsolable at Jake’s graveside, and he’s a twelve year old hero with a sword and an easy grin.
She knows she’s not the only one who sees it, but she doesn’t know if anyone else finds it so wrong. The law of conservation of mass. Nothing created or destroyed, just rearranged. It’s science. It’s not enough.
Finn is dead, and he’s a hero, and he’s the first friend she ever made out of something other than sugar or shaking knees. A little boy, and a teenager, and then a man, each full of new and old grief. Caterpillar eats grass. He’s too much, all at once, and all right here in Bonnie’s head. It aches like a swollen balloon.
/
On the third day of Finnfest, as she begrudgingly agreed to decree it twenty-some years ago, knives fall from the sky. Bonnie’s force field stretches over the length of the sprawling party, and everyone is safe as little gingerbread houses. But the storm only lasts an hour. The ground, littered with knives, smiles up at a rainbow. A silver lining on every cloud. It’s even brighter when Bonnie takes down her shield. She looks around at the people she loves, at their sniffling and smiling and sobbing and singing faces, and she isn’t one of them anymore. She doesn’t belong there with them.
Pep is crouched, magically shrinking and regrowing wildflowers, while Cadebra gets her picture taken with her face in the big wooden Finn cutout. It’s a little morbid, even for Bonnie’s taste, but she thinks with a pang that Finn would get a kick out of it. Pep didn’t know him that well, especially this time around, but he looks a little rattled. It’s both a relief and a disappointment when Deb hops off the stool and drags him off by the hand, both of them laughing. Bonnie can’t make sense of how much she wishes she could comfort him and how grateful she is that he didn’t look her way.
They’re not as close as they used to be, but then again, maybe they’re closer. They’re nothing like Finn and his dog or human parents. They’re nothing like the pups and Jake, or like Marcy and Simon. But maybe none of those families are like each other either.
She remembers his first break from school, when she’d recently returned from an absence too. She sat with him, each of them facing the same wall, elbows sharing an inch or two of space, while he told her about his first semester. She wondered if catastrophically destructive self-doubt could be an inherited trait.
Now Bonnie remembers what he said about Bufo, and the horrific amphibious skin sack left behind when the tadpoles drained from his body. Is that what Pep would see if he looked at her now? Or is it even noticeable from outside?
“Can we go home for the night?”
Marceline blinks, brow furrowed, and wipes her eyes and nose. “Um,” she says hoarsely, “I’d like to stay a little longer, but…”
“Okay.” Bonnie thinks she might implode if Marcy offers to let her go ahead alone. “You’re right. We’ll stay.”
“Thanks.” Marceline gives her a wobbly smile and sets her guitar to the side. “Feels like everything’s different now, huh?”
She lets her head fall heavily on Marceline’s collar. “I love you, Marcy.”
“Love you too,” Marcy murmurs. She fiddles with her bracelet for a few moments, then pushes the words from her mouth. “I was wondering.”
“Yeah?”
“Do you think he’ll be back? Like, how he was Shoko and stuff?”
Bonnie’s muscles twitch. “He and Jake had a plan.”
“Do you think it worked?”
“I don’t know.” She shakes her head, and her voice shakes with it. “I don’t know. I’m sorry.”
“Oh, Bonnie, I’m sorry.”
“No. Don’t apologize. I just can’t not know things right now. I need to take care of everyone, okay?”
“Maybe you don’t have to take care of everyone, huh? What if it’s just you and me?”
Bonnie closes her eyes and imagines them all going home, scattered far from her reach. How can she know they’re safe without seeing them?
Finn smiles in his red pajamas, playing a game on BMO, leaning back against a big, stretched-out Jake. Not a memory, just a puzzle her mind put together out of old, mismatched pieces. Or is that all a memory really is? How can she know? She wills the image away.
Bonnie’s never been a fan of the undefinable, even if imagining would give her a chance at the things she wants. She’s not a fan of real reaching beyond the most concrete, observable experience. And right now, she’s not a fan of concrete, observable experiences either. All real seems to do right now is hurt.
What hurts the most, now and always, is this openness that Marceline keeps letting her into. Bonnie tries to close it halfway, but that only turns the party cloudy in her view. It makes Marcy look like she’s disappearing.
“I don’t like feeling this,” Bonnie whispers. “I don’t like thinking about this.”
“I know,” says Marceline.
“I want it to end. All of it. I want it to be—” She stops. There’s a memory here. A real one. “Princess plant,” she says urgently.
“What?”
“Do you know how Finn and Jake revived my princess plant? I mean, do you know how they were trying to, before Death figured out they were friends with Pepp But?” She balls her hand into a fist and hits her temple. Not exactly scientific, but it works. “I mean,” she continues, before Marcy can notice how crazy she looks, “do you know how people retrieve souls from the Deadworlds?”
Marceline nods, blank-faced. “Yeah.”
“You could do it! There’s no way you’d lose! And— and you already know how to get there, right? We could even bring them both—”
“No.”
“Marcy, please.”
“No. Look, I know you’re suffering right now — I know the whole fucking world is suffering — but no. That’s not how it works with humans.”
“But it could be, right? Just this once?”
“No, it can’t, okay? They would be the ones suffering if we did that. And fuck, it really hurts that you’re trying to use me for that. That’s not an okay thing to ask of me.”
“Marcy. I didn’t mean—”
“I can’t do this right now.”
Bonnie doesn’t blink. Can’t let it go, can’t let her or him go. “I don’t understand.”
“Yeah, I know.” Marceline’s voice is the one shaking now, and she picks up her bass and floats to her feet. She doesn’t look Bonnie in the eye. “I just don’t have the energy to help you with that, Bonnie. I’m sorry, but I’m sure you can read a book or something. Okay?”
Bonnie, with no awareness of her own tongue or throat or brain, whispers back, “Okay.”
///
Marceline—
I’m sorry for not just coming home. I’m afraid I won’t be able to say any of this right either way, but I think there’s a stronger chance if I write it down.
Thank you for giving me time. I was being selfish, and it took me a while to realize that. Thank you for letting me figure it out, and for letting me know that you couldn’t help me.
I’m really sad, and the thing is, I’m not very good at being sad. Like, I’m actually terrible at it, even though I’m beginning to think I do it quite a lot.
It sounds silly, but I wasn’t planning on that. Even after I knew the plan, I always pictured this going like a royal ceremony. I’d give a big speech, maybe shed a cool, dramatic single tear. You’d play a song, and then you’d start crying, and I would hold you. I’d comfort you and everyone else who needed it. I wouldn’t need it myself, because death is just science, and that’s supposed to be comfort enough. This is what I keep telling myself:
Finn was human. They’re made of glass. They break. I’ve always known I would outlive him, probably by a lot. He found his way to me after Shoko died, so the next time he’s here, he may find me again. And if he doesn’t, that would be okay. This is how it works. Everything goes, but everything stays, right? Will happen, happening, happened. In our memories if not somewhere we can touch. Grief isn’t logical. It’s okay and normal for other people to feel it, but I know better.
I don’t know better though, and knowing better doesn’t make a difference.
You know better, Marcy. You probably know best of anyone. I don’t deny this, even when you cry. I know that it’s okay and normal for you to grieve. I want to be a part of your grief, even, not just to mend it. I kind of want you to grieve me someday, if it helps.
So it’s not intelligence that makes me exempt. It’s just that I’m me. I’m Princess Bubblegum. I’m both flexible and indestructible. I’m not supposed to feel this way, but I do. And you want to let me. I don’t wanna take that for granted, even though it makes me feel weird and naked and small sometimes.
For some reason, when I think about Finn, I think about everyone I love. And everything. It’s so big. How do you hold it all? I wish I could help you without holding my own part too. My own part is stupid. I wish I could let it drop.
I wish I didn’t need to understand death, but I think that would mean I couldn’t understand you or Finn either. And as much as I wanna cut out the part of my brain that feels emotions and replace it with superior alarm systems — I could probably figure it out with a little more practice, you know — I’d really rather be with you and remember Finn.
If you wrote this letter, it’d be a quarter the length and make ten times the sense. So I’ll let you help me say this part, if you don’t mind. I’d rather brave the fall than feel nothing at all. It’s not easy, but it’s worth the fight.
I’m sending this via Morrow mail so I hope you get it fast, but it’s okay if you don’t read it right away. I’ll be in the dungeon for a bit, and then I’m gonna come home unless you say not to, okay?
I love you
B
///
“Marcy, look!”
A few feet from the door, over a cluster of tall grass and wildflowers, a blue butterfly flaps its wings.
“Pretty,” Bonnie sighs. “Maybe I’ll leave the yard alone this year.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah. It’s doing okay on its own, don’t you think? Now that it’s a little warmer?”
Marceline looks up at the first stars of the evening and can’t hear a single owl hoot. She smiles.
“Yep. Guess it’s spring again.”