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Marshall Lee’s earliest memories were those of feelings.
He didn’t remember the whys and whens and hows, didn’t remember where he was or what he had been doing. But he remembered feelings – joy, fear, curiosity, remembered them one by one as they showed up and made him who he was, like pieces of a puzzle falling into place.
It took him a while to understand that not everyone felt as he did – feelings which were deep and intense and threatened to consume the whole of him.
And memories were precious things when one was immortal, because all but the most important ones would blur and then vanish, replaced by the next newest thing. Marshall only remembered the things which were important, and so all he had from his early childhood was a mess of the most important things to him – his feelings.
In a way, that was a blessing. All he remembered from the Mushroom War was the sound of music. Marshall remembered his father singing to him.
Marshall remembered singing alone.
The first time he met Bubba Gumball, he had been singing. This, Marshall remembered not because of the song, not because of how the evening was cloudy and the air tasted of melancholy and candy; this, Marshall remembered because of how striking his figure had been – on top of a hill, hands on his hips, staring at the horizon.
He looked like some sort of visionary. He looked like some sort of madman. Perhaps something in between.
He looked about as lonely as Marshall himself was. When their eyes met, Marshall fell silent.
“Why did you stop it?” Bubba had asked, without offering any sort of greeting, of introduction, of comfort. “It was a good song. I was enjoying it.”
There was something charming to his bluntness, if a bit miffing. “I’m not here for your enjoyment,” he snapped, because that’s how he was used to talking, to being treated – the Nightosphere wasn’t a place of pleasantries.
A difficult place, for a soft person like him.
“Oh – I’m. I’m sorry.” A blush on his cheeks, a red tint to his pink – Marshall wondered how what that color would taste like. “That was inappropriate of me. What I meant to say was, would you continue your tune, please?”
He hovered in the air for a full five seconds, silent, staggered by the candid yet unexpected answer, then burst out laughing. “You’re a freak,” he snorted between giggles, and then wiped the tears from the corners of his eyes with his sleeve. “But yeah. Sure. Give me the beats.”
“The beats?”
“You know, just,” he paused, noticed Bubba’s blank stare, “– you don’t know, do you? Just make a sound like this –” he let the air go through his teeth, making a shh sound. “No, no,” he waved his hands at Bubba’s attempt to replicate it, “Like this.”
Marshall repeated the sound, slowly, theatrically showing the placement of his lips and tongue. Bubba tried, and failed, and tried, and failed, and on the third try, he choked on his own spit and burst into a fit of coughing.
And then Marshall was laughing again.
There were many things in life Marshall was just too restless to do. Most things which left his hands idle and his brain wander, really, tended to evolve into musings that quickly turned into existential despair.
And so he would avoid those things, except for when he wanted to drive himself a little insane for maximum artistic inspiration. Sublimation, it was called – the process by which he turned his inner angst into art and into music.
Opposite to that, among the things that helped him be at peace, physical exercise was one of the top activities. More specifically, jogging. Marshall spent most his time floating, and so he enjoyed the challenge of a good run – how the impact made his joints ache and his muscles hurt, how it made his cold body sweat and his lungs burn.
He ran on many different places in the land of Aaa – roads between kingdoms, forests, hills, mountains, and on that day in particular, around Lake Butterscotch, where the air was clear and the skies were bright and blue.
He hid from the sunlight under an umbrella, but every once in a while a stray ray of light would touch his skin and leave a scorch mark. Marshall took those with eerie fascination, their pain as alien as the pain from the physical effort.
After hundreds of years, he no longer judged sensations by whether they were pleasant but rather by whether they were novel, and hurting was never quite the same every time. He took it, eager to feel, eager to experience, always just so eager for something new.
The first time he crossed Bubba on the lake margin, he yelled his hello as he zipped by, sneakers hitting the paved road, the furious sounds of the crimson-goat-rhinoceros he’d stolen the red from chasing him close. On his second lap, Bubba had turned back to wave at him, but as if sentient – which they just might have been – the fishes used the moment of distraction to snatch the bait right out of his hook.
On his third lap, the goatceros had long given up on catching him and without the extra reason to run, his jog was turning monotonous. Bubba had somehow developed a self-fishing device from sticks, stone and candy, and when Marshall ran by, he decided to stop to catch his breath and maybe have a chat. He was greeted with what he was learning to be Bubba’s signature radiant smile.
“Music man! Mister music man, from the other day!”
Marshall had been called many things, from “freak” to “your highness”, but that was a first. Granted, it wasn’t exactly the level of recognition he wanted from his music career, but it was novel, and Marshall craved that. “Shitty beatbox man,” he replied, and found himself smiling back.
It was an insult, but Bubba didn’t seem to mind it. “Come! Have a seat with me. I brought some extra creampuffs, in case I met friends or enemies or stray fire walruses. I made them myself.”
“I eat colors,” Marshall replied, but pushed himself off the ground and hovered toward him anyway.
“Do you like pink?” Gumball asked, and Marshall wondered, for a split second, if he meant anything else with that question.
But he just looked clueless and curious, so Marshall crossed his arms over his chest and shrugged. “It’s all right. Sort of fruity. I like red better.”
Bubba nodded, as if it made all the sense Marshall knew it didn’t. “I’ll make sure to bring a red one with me, next time. Mister music man –”
“Marshall,” he corrected. “Marshall Lee.”
“Marshall,” Bubba repeated, followed by one of those easy smiles of his. “Do you happen to know anything about fishing?”
He looked at the fishing-thingamajig which Bubba had made out of sugar-and-spite, then trailed his eyes to Lake Butterscotch, where his demon eyes let him actually see the fishes lurking under the water, chatting with one another and having tea. “I think those fishes are sentient,” he concluded.
“Do you think they would want to be citizens of the Candy Kingdom?” Bubba furrowed his brow, staring intensely at the water, as if he too had demon eyes. “We have rivers and lakes of soda near the castle and they’re awfully empty. I heard fishes are good for giant-tree-mosquito control.”
He’d never really tried to catch sentient fishes before. “I don’t know. You’d have to catch one to ask. Let’s sing for them.”
“Okay,” Bubba nodded. “I’ve been practicing! I’m at least average beatbox man by now, I’m certain.”
Marshall smiled. “Bring it on, gumwad.”
He did get better, which Marshall had to admit was impressive for an amateur practicing entirely by himself.
And by the time they were done, the fishes on the lake were clapping their fins.
Bubba’s favorite hobby, he learned, was cooking.
But Marshall ate colors more than he ate matter, and so at first, he could not fully appreciate the other’s kitchen skills. It was a two-sided thing, at least – he didn’t mind eating things when the taste was disastrous.
Bubba’s second favorite hobby was science, and the prince was more than willing to join hobbies number one and two in one big experimental mess every once in a while. And there were only so many colors to play with, but Bubba made him eat many things he had never really thought about.
One night, he had a meal which consisted solely of infrared hues. One morning, Bubba brought him the complete absence of light for breakfast. And at least once a month, during movie nights, Bubba would bake him a rainbow.
Bubba was often late for movie night, be it because of princely duties, be it because of an experiment taking extra time. But Marshall didn’t really mind making it the movie-morning-after. He pretended to be angry anyway.
“It’s been five hours,” he hissed, letting his tongue slide from his lips and his eyes turn into glowing red slits. “Do you think I can just sit here and wait – ”
“I know, I know, I’m so sorry,” he ran his fingers through his pink gum of hair, which wobbled under his touch. “I just… I really wanted to get this thing done before – you know. Before you had to go back to the Nightosphere.”
And it was a struggle for Marshall to keep up his angry façade – he was surprisingly forgiving – so he dropped the pretense entirely when curiosity got the best of him. “What is it?” he queried, floating closer, to see the silvery liquid floating inside the test tube.
“It’s a synesthetic inductor of eardrum-taste bud synchronism,” Bubba explained, if that was an explanation at all.
“What?”
“I was just always wondering, you know, since you eat colors,” he babbled on, excitement visible on his frame, and Marshall let his feet touch the ground and fought back a smile. “I was wondering what colors taste like, and then I tried to make a concoction to let me taste them, but then it went off track and – ”
Marshall snatched the test tube from his fingers. “Yeah, yeah, gumwad, but what does it do?”
“It lets you taste sounds. You can have it, I already had my share.”
Oh, Marshall thought, unexpectedly moved by the prospect. “Mathematical,” he said, then downed the liquid with a long gulp.
“I was hoping we could… you know. Maybe sing a song together. I’d like to hear you play, but, you know, with my tongue.”
Oh, he thought again, and the taste of Bubba’s voice sent the most delightful shiver over his spine. He expected it to be pink, but it was something else entirely – something warm and spicy and soft, a mixture of gentle and fierce, hotter than any peppers and smoother than any puddings.
Marshall caught himself wondering something else then – wondering what his lips would taste like. A dangerous thought, that one. “You better not screw up the beatbox this time,” he said, “Cause now it’s not just my ears that will suffer.”
“I’m at least good beatbox man now,” Bubba replied.
Marshall closed his eyes to enjoy the sounds of him all the better.
The problem, Marshall thought to himself as he hovered in the air, half-listening to Bubba ramble about one sciency thing or the other, the problem isn’t that I don’t understand him.
Marshall had been raised as a politician and lived hundreds of years, and he could safely say he understood people – their motivations, their desires, their hopes and fears. Understanding them came as naturally to him as music, a deep instinct that seemed to have his heartstrings in perfect synch with those of the people around him.
And Bubba wasn’t particularly hard to get. He was sweet – literally and metaphorically speaking. He had a childlike curiosity that made him prod and poke even when prodding and poking weren’t the most sensible or sensitive thing to do. He had values – very well-defined ideas of duty and goodness and what a prince should do. He was simple in his emotions and displayed his heart on his sleeve without even noticing it.
And he was dense. Demons, but he was dense. “– and that’s why as a Prince, I need to give my people the best of examples and work hard.”
Marshall wasn’t one hundred per cent sure what the topic of the conversation was, but he didn’t need to know it in order to steer it the way he wanted. “What if the people the prince rules over aren’t good people?”
That was the kind of question he would dread asking anyone else, but Bubba seemed cognitively unable of linking the hypothetical to the speaker. Marshall knew difficult questions were safe to ask him, because never in a thousand years would he figure out Marshall was talking about himself.
“Then it’s all the more important that their prince be a good man,” Bubba replied, tilting his head. “So that he may lead them the right way. That’s what princes are here for, right?”
He felt something squeeze at his heart, and he knew exactly the name and shape of each bit of his inner turmoil, even though sometimes he wished he was more like Bubba – simpler, if more confused.
“What about love?” Marshall asked, knowing that he was pushing it, “Is there a space for love in the middle of all that duty?”
There was a flash of understanding on Bubba’s face, a moment of recognition, and Marshall wondered if maybe that was the moment, because not even Bubba could be that dense –
“Well, from a strictly ethical point of view –”
Or maybe he could.
The problem is that I understand him, he thought, and let his eyes trace the shape of Bubba’s jaw, no longer caring whether he was going to be caught. The problem is that he is simple, and all my skills are rendered void for it.
As if he was Aaa’s greatest art critic, and found himself staggered by the drawing of a stick person – simple, and genuine, and pure. It was what it was, unashamedly, for everyone out there to see, more expressive than any painting with thousands of layers, and Marshall didn’t know what to do about it or how he felt about it –
Beyond love.
So this is it, he thought, watching as Bubba fell silent, furrowing his brow and tilting his head, confusion evident in his face. After hundreds of years, this is it.
His heart ached at the thought. It felt a bit like jogging – a good sort of pain.
“You’re staring,” Bubba pointed out, shifting on his feet, and Marshall knew he was growing uncomfortable, and Marshall also knew he would soon start fidgeting with his –
Bubba grabbed the gem on his collar, tugging on it, tracing his thumb over the soft surface.
Marshall closed the distance between them, grabbed him by that same collar and kissed him.
He tasted of sugar and cherry and the color pink.
The problem, Marshall thought to himself, is that he plays no games.
Bubba played no games, and that left Marshall with no games to play other than Bubba’s – the game where he’d rip his heart out and place it on the table, in the open, then hand Marshall a knife and dare him to do the same.
The problem was that Marshall wasn’t brave enough to do it – to love that openly, to expose the feelings that held him together and tore him apart. The problem was that Bubba made him want to be something else – something other than what he had been raised to be, something different from what was expected of him.
And he wanted it, he wanted it so bad. He wanted to have nothing to do with the Nightosphere, to let go of the exhausting pretense of acting like a villain so that he could just be – be a boy who loved and made songs and laughed and cared and loved and loved and loved –
The problem was that he loved too much, and that he understood too much, and the knowledge of how many people he would let down was utterly crushing. I used to be brave, he thought, thinking of how he became the vampire king without meaning to, out of a burning desire to do what was right and keep people safe.
But maybe bravery was a thing people could only really achieve in the past, by looking at actions which were stupid but lucky enough to have good consequences. And maybe it was easier to be brave when it was meant for others, and for all the courage he thought he had, he couldn’t stand up for the person who needed it the most – himself.
How could I tell him this, Marshall wondered, wiping his tears on his sleeve, making sure he wept where no one could see him, or hear him, or care. How could I tell such tangled feelings to someone so straightforward and expect him to understand?
Bubba wouldn’t understand, he was fairly certain. And then a more terrifying prospect:
Maybe he would understand, Marshall clenched his teeth, feeling the tears come again, and he would have a straightforward answer for it, and I wouldn’t be able to handle that.
And Marshall didn’t know what to or what to say, and so he said nothing at all, and he was gone.
His very first memories were those of feelings, and so it was naïve of him to ever believe he could forget. He tried to, despite knowing that. He tried ruling the Nightosphere for a while – wearing the Amulet made it easier, turned him into something brainless and evil that was a decent enough outlet for his frustrations, even if it left him hollow and empty at the end of the day.
What got to him, really got to him, was music – or rather, the lack of it. It was insidious, how it vanished. First he was too tired to play the guitar, and then he was too uninspired to write lyrics or make tunes. There was no music in the Nightosphere, no harmony possible in the middle of that chaos, and the longer he stayed, the more it crept into him, until he could no longer find it in himself to hum.
Marshall had a lot he needed to sublimate. More than any amulet, his inner silence drove him mad. Until he met Fionna, that was – a girl and her cat, traveling the Nightosphere all by themselves, searching for whatever crazy adventure they could find on that nightmarish place. But there was something fascinating about the way they hopped and giggled and saw the wonder in the world around him in a way that reminded Marshall of what he used to be.
And the music – finally, like a gust of cool wind between the fires, the music that shook him out of his stupor and took him by storm. It was just a stupid song about fries, but it got his undead heart racing as if it was the very first time he heard anyone sing.
He didn’t know what to do, so he chased her – out of the Nightosphere and into the land of Aaa once again.
Grow up and take your responsibilities, Marshall, he could hear the voice of his mother hissing as he left, but he wouldn’t, couldn’t, didn’t want to be the person she expected him to be anymore.
That night, he snatched Fionna from her house and took her to the woods to sing. That night, he saw Bubba, even if just for a short while.
That night, Marshall found his voice again.
Unlike certain boys made of candy, Fionna was unexpectedly sharp for a kid her age.
“Why is it so important to you?” she asked one day, as Marshall floated in the air, lying down, after pulling a particularly elaborate set of pranks. “To be a villain, I mean.”
“It’s not something I have to try at,” he replied, echoing the words he’d said to her, the words he told himself all the time. “I’m –”
“The son of a demon and the vampire king, I know,” Fionna cut him off. “But you’re not a bad guy. I can tell. You do have to try really hard to be mean, and then you feel bad for it after.”
Had it been anyone else, Marshall would have tried to prove them wrong. But the thing was, he had been trying to prove his villainy to Fionna for as long as they had known each other, and she could still see right through him. There was something disarming about that level of empathy – it reminded Marshall of himself.
“What else am I supposed to be?” He asked, more to himself than to anyone else.
“I can’t tell you that,” Fionna frowned. “I’m thirteen.”
A perfect answer, Marshall thought, staring at the night sky, drawing shapes between the stars with his mind. There were no stars in the Nightosphere, and they were one of the things he missed the most when he was down there.
“Make a song about it,” she suggested, snapping him out of his musing. “I bet it would help.”
“I’ve made a ton of songs about it,” Marshall admitted, spinning in the air so he would face her, blowing the hair off his eyes. “It does help, but I still don’t know.”
“Keep making songs about it,” Fionna bent down to look at a purple snail with a tiny fedora. “Hey, maybe that’s what you should be. A songmaker.”
“Musician,” he corrected, and he had thought about that, of course he had, and it would make him happy, but just like Bubba, it was a happiness he was too much of a coward to pursue.
Except being around Fionna made him feel like a kid again, and he realized then that maybe it didn’t have to be that way. Maybe he could be brave, just like that little girl who was smarter than she seemed and kinder than anyone he’d ever known.
“It’s rude to stare,” said the purple snail, shaking a tiny fist at them.
Fionna laughed and broke into a run, dragging Marshall in the air by his ankle as she did so.
He didn’t mean to pry, he really didn’t, but he was already at Bubba’s window when Fionna barged into the room to talk to him, and Marshall was nothing if not curious, so he sat in the air by the window frame and listened.
“You have to tell me what’s wrong with you,” Fionna demanded, and Marshall’s interest was suddenly renewed. “All you do is mope and bake sad pies all day, and I can’t be a hero if you don’t tell me who I have to punch.”
“I’m not sad!”
“You made me a cake and your cake was crying!”
“Ugh. There’s no one to punch,” Bubba relented, and Marshall could picture his fiddling with the buckle of his belt and the gems on his collar. “I just have – there’s this boy,” he fell silent. Marshall felt his heart squeeze.
“Do you like him? Like, like him?”
“I don’t know. Yes. Probably. But he’s so – so complicated. He says things he doesn’t mean and does things I don’t understand and gives me all sort of – of mixed signals. And I don’t know if he likes me back.”
“Did you try asking him?”
“I don’t – he wouldn’t answer,” Bubba replied, and Marshall tilted his head. “He’s really good with this people stuff. A bit like you, but better, I think. I don’t know. I’m bad at it.” He paused. “But he knows I’m bad and he knows I can’t let go when something puzzles me so he’ll never give me a straightforward answer. As if that would keep my attention forever, which is dumb, because he already has my attention anyway.”
Why, Marshall wanted to ask, and he almost did it, almost floated into the room right then and demanded an answer. But Fionna, bless her mortal soul, as if knowing he was there, asked it for him.
“Why?”
“I like his hair,” Bubba replied, and of course it was something blunt and silly. “And his voice. And his music. He does really good music. And he’s a little mean, but I like the toothy smile he gets when he pulls a prank. And I like baking him things.” Marshall felt heat on his cheeks and wondered if vampires could even blush. “I like baking everyone things.”
“You make great pastries,” Fionna agreed, voice muffled, and Marshall imagined her chewing on one of said pastries. “You should make a song about it. I bet it would help.”
Truly a thirteen-year-old’s wisdom, he couldn’t help but smile.
“I don’t know. Music is more his thing. I make cakes and science.”
“Music is everyone’s thing,” Fionna countered. “Come on. What do you want to ask him?”
Silence. Marshall held his breath, event though he didn’t particularly need oxygen.
“What am I to you?” Bubba asked.
“What am I to you?” Fionna repeated, adding rhythm to it. There was a long moment of silence. “Prince Gumball, I can’t sing your feelings for you.”
“Okay, okay,” he sighed. “Do that again.”
“What am I to you?” Fionna sang, and this time, Bubba picked up.
“Am I a joke, a knight or a brother?”
“What am I to you?”
“Why look down on me when I love you,” he continued, surprisingly on tune, and Marshall closed his eyes and bit back a sob, blindsided by a wave of emotion. “Do you think that I don’t understand? I just wanted us together but I lost a friend, when we hang out it’s the most fun I’ve ever had, even liked it when you scared me with stories about… your evil mother.”
He covered his mouth and laughed, as quietly as he could, the salty taste of blue and tears on his tongue.
“What am I to you?” the two sung in unison.
Marshall stared at the stars and thought of an answer.
“You were gone for so long,” Bubba said when Marshall finally got the guts to fly through his window for a much-needed talk.
That was it – no hellos, no how are yous. He had to teach Bubba proper manners someday. Right then, though, he appreciated the directness even if it felt like a punch to his face.
“I was tending to my prince duties,” Marshall replied, because he knew people and he knew Bubba and it was the right thing to say. The words slipped from his lips with the same ease his weight was lifted from the ground when he hovered, the correct answer to an unspoken question, the one explanation that would set Bubba’s mind at ease.
“Oh,” Bubba’s eyes widened for a split second, and Marshall could all but see the gears inside his head turn. He nodded, his expression turning from hurt to understanding fast enough to give Marshall whiplash. “That’s a good thing, then. But you should write me, next time.” Bubba paced around the room. “If you want, I mean, and if you have the time, though if you don’t have the time then maybe I can help you organize yourself so that you do. I can help with other things, too –”
“Bubba,” Marshall interrupted, because it was just so easy – the understanding and forgiveness he did not deserve, given freely because of words he didn’t mean. Too easy. It was too easy to be with Bubba, too easy to trick a smile out of his soft features, and Marshall wasn’t evil enough to be what he was supposed to be, but right then he realized he wasn’t exactly a good person either.
“I – I’m sorry. I don’t mean to intrude. I just missed you, that’s all.”
A red tint to his pink cheeks. All his anger gone, just like that. It really was that simple, and that broke Marshall’s fucking heart. “Bubba,” he repeated, but when Bubba looked at him with a questioning expression, he found no words.
He let his feet touch the ground, so that he felt something solid under them for once, even though his legs felt weak. And then he took a step forward, pressed his face to Bubba’s shoulder and cried.
He took his time, let it all out, cried for what felt like an hour, give or take a few hours. And when he was done, when the weight was lifted off his chest, his head on Bubba’s lap and pink fingers running through his hair, he took a deep breath.
He rolled belly up, stared at Bubba’s face of confusion and concern, felt his heart tighten and squeeze and Marshall thought he just might explode if he didn’t say anything right then, just like candy people exploded when they got scared.
“Your face is stupid,” he mumbled, and Bubba’s brow furrowed, and Marshall wanted to kiss him again. “I love you.”
“Those are two very contradicting sentiments,” Bubba replied, and it was the most Bubba thing he could have said.
Marshall sat up, held his stupid face and kissed him into silence.