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Marceline felt sick.
Sick with worry, sick with panic, sick with fear. Sick with dread, the looming shadow of death or something similar. Not her own death. That was impossible, distant, forgettable as her organs.
No, she feared the death of the one person who hadn't yet left her behind. Who was supposed to never leave her behind. They were bound by the same beautiful, horrible fate. Eternity. An eternity together.
An eternity together. An eternity together. Marceline repeated the words in her head as she clumsily flew, weighed down by something. She could hardly move her legs anymore. It was spreading. But what is it?
An eternity together…
Marceline's stomach churned. She was sick, alright. Physically sick. She felt like she'd downed too much candy—usually that would be a welcome change for a vampire bound to persisting off pure colour, but this felt…off. Her saliva cloyed with sweetness. Her skin poured with sweat. Her mind clouded. Her stomach. Her heart. It hurt. The pain was staggering.
The antidote shook in her hand. It was the only part of Marceline that still felt cold. For once in her life, she clung to the feeling, and her grip tightened until she feared breaking the bottle. But her grip seemed softer. Weaker.
Was she dying? She feared that was the fate of those beneath her—those poor candy creatures who had begged for her help, dragging themsleves across the floor as their bodies gave way to a strange, brightly-coloured mutation. Marceline had fled before she could watch the results, but she had a feeling they wouldn't last long in their altered bodies. It was just too sad.
She tore through the wall of clouds. She froze, mid-air. Her heart sank.
There, right beside the dark, frosty night sky, were the gates to a word transformed. It was unnatural, as if the two environments were battling one another; the darkness abruptly lead into a bright sea of colour. Mainly pink. A million shades of pink, some purple, some blue, some white. Pastels.
Was this new…? Or was it just that she hadn't looked back long enough to see this when she fled?
Against a growing agony boiling in her guts, Marceline pressed on. She passed over into the new, pinker end of the world. The air was scented, cloying with its own sweetness. It swamped her misty brain with memories: cake rolls, their pale tops adorned with red berries; macarons, pink and red, strawberry and red; kingdoms, entire kingdoms made of this smell; monstrously tall cakes, painstakingly baked and painted to perfection in labs for birthdays and birthdays and birthdays that never seemed to end. Ever. They were going to run out of ideas one day, she said. Especially because they could only pick red velvet, every. Single. Time.
A laugh, sweet and soothing as a bell. A pair of pretty, sugar-hazel eyes creasing fondly from across the lace tablecloth, framed by its pink marshmallow skin. I'm sorry, Marceline. A ribbon-wrapped knife. It sunk deeply, harmlessly, into the cake's flesh, and black-red jam trickled free, down, down, her hands…
Bell spoke. Sang. Sing along, Marceline.
"Happy birthday, dear Marceline! Happy birthday to you."
In the scent, there was something else now.
A base note of chemicals.
Marceline blinked. She realised she had been very close to careening out of the sky. Why?
It was that smell. The artificial sweetness of dreams, of boxed shortbread, toy bakeries. She was sure she had almost…lost herself? Something like that. Memories were dangerous that way, and with so many of them, they were best to be ignored. Marceline regained her balance, shook her head to help the remnant peel away, and continued her flight. Towards what? Something. Something or other. There was an objective here, of course. She just couldn't quite remember their name.
There were people now. Candy people, she supposed, mercifully alive and laughing in the light. Marceline didn't recognise many of them—maybe she should get a little better at socialising in the Candy Kingdom. Still, they looked unharmed. Happy, even. Forming little celebratory circles.
Maybe the weird wave of goop hadn't actually hurt? Maybe it just turned the ground and sky pink for some elemental aesthetic overhaul. Weird, yeah, but nothing…awful. She looked at the antidote in her hand. She almost felt bad for beating the snot out of that creep to get it.
No. Something was happening, even if it wasn't doing any obvious harm. Marceline felt vaguely like she was rotting from the inside, even as she battled back this something with all her strength. And Bonnie had been…screaming. Laughing. Screaming again. Back and forth and back and forth. Looking afraid of herself. She cried and gripped onto Marceline's hand and managed just about to beg for help before her body started to swell and…
Marceline looked at her free hand now. The one she had held Bubblegum with. It was swollen and soft and paled. Her brain was just as much of a mess.
This something was worse than she thought. It was trying to eat her brains and trick her into thinking this was normal. The people below were not normal. Their smiles were maniacal. And Bonnie had gotten the worst of it, and the first visible change–maybe it targeted her and the others got the fallout.
It didn't matter. Bonnie could excitedly spew the scientific explanation later. For now, all that mattered was this antidote.
It's probably a fake, thought Marceline.
But it's such a pretty colour! insisted the new voice, growing like a parasite inside her.
This was a nightmare. Maybe it actually was, and she'd wake up soon.
"Why would you want to wake up, silly?"
Marceline froze. She stayed afloat through sheer habit, but her mind had almost completely stopped working.
A tower burst out of the ground.
Right in front of her. Thick and serpentine, gloopy and pink. Perfumed and perfect. The colours were familiar. Marceline's chest ached.
The tower grew a face.
"Bubblegum…?" Marceline croaked.
"My sweet friend!" was the reply. Drained of its typical tired, sarcastic tint. "I've been waiting for your return! I'm so happy you're home. I was almost starting to worry."
Friend.
Sweet?
Home?
Only one thought emerged aloud. "Worry…?"
"You were outside of my reach! I couldn't hear your heart. But then, just now, woosh! You came back! I wish I could give you a hug, but right now, I'd just make you sticky. Maybe later, when you're all done."
"Bonnie…what did they do to you?"
The princess smiled serenely. "Oh, the powers? They fixed me. They fixed me right up!"
"Fixed you?" Marceline echoed, and frowned. She was getting dizzy. "You were already…"
She trailed off, feeling lost, but Bonnibel smiled wider.
"You are just so sweet. I think you're perfect too!"
"I didn't say that out loud. Did I? I can't…"
Bubblegum laughed like it was a joke. "Aw! You don't need to anymore. Isn't it wonderful?"
Horror. Sheer, cold horror like an icicle down her back. Ice cream is more fun, or popsicles, or if it's cold there's always hot chocolate and
Marceline felt herself fall as the dizziness set in harder. A song was playing in her head, somewhere deep inside her. She couldn't make out the lyrics, but they were so
"Sweet," said Bubblegum, lovingly catching her with a tendril-like body. "You're very sweet to come home to me on your own. I almost feared you were running away from me! Isn't that the silliest thing?"
"I'm sorry," Marceline choked out. "I wasn't…" Her eyes opened. She was on her knees. "I forgot. I brought it, like I promised. For you!"
Bubblegum's smile was like a great, hollow scar. "Aww! A gift? For me?"
As she patiently smiled, the vampire crawled forwards. Her knees weren't working right anymore. The vial slipped against her glittering sweat.
"For you," she agreed, almost breathlessly. Something was happening. The something. She had to be quick now.
At last, she had reached Bubblegum's enlarged maw. No breath came in or out of it. Marcline held up the vial weakly yet triumphantly, distorting her own face through the vial of sloshing lilac.
"It's to help you, Bonnie. To save you."
And Princess Bubblegum—or what remained of her—laughed. Hard this time. Tears of topaz liquid (honey?) gathered in the corners of those dark, enlarged eyes.
"No way!" she spat out through the laughter. "Save me? From what? You poor little cutie, you can't…you can't understand."
The ground—well, Bubblegum's monstrous torso—shook, or maybe Marceline's mind was the thing shaking, and the vial slipped easily from her grip. It sank into the pink mass until it disappeared.
"Don't worry, I'll keep it all safe!"
Marceline almost wished it had shattered instead.
Bubblegum laughed more and more. Then she stopped quite abruptly (maybe she had realised Marceline was crying), but carried on speaking still, all through that awful smile. Every word was its own ribboned knife.
"I don’t need to be helped."
Stab.
"I'm happier than I've ever been in my whole life!"
Stab.
"Thank you so much for doing such a super-sweet thing for me, though. It's adorable!"
Stab.
Another short laugh. "Ever my precious hero. How I love you!"
Stab through the heart.
Marceline's head fell. She shook it wordlessly. Long, ink-black hair fell across her face, ghosting her cheeks like a mourning veil.
Silence. More and more laughter in the distance. A million voices. Marceline was still as ice.
"You don't," she said darkly. "You don't love me. Don't you dare use her voice to lie to me."
This monster who had taken Bubblegum's place looked down on her then. She could feel it. The compassion. The pity. The cascading, never-ending, unconditional love. All for her.
Bubblegum would have never loved her that openly. That much.
Marceline knew then that she was too late. It was horrifying. It was perfect.
It felt like a crushing weight off her back. It swirled like the relief of hunger. Her body aching with thick fatigue ignored for so long, her mind pulsating with even more, Marceline looked in a rare prayer to the sky. It looked back at her with that intoxicating, patient affection. All carefully glazed through the eyes of the woman she loved.
Marceline closed her eyes and silently, gratefully wept.
—
More memories.
But they were so good. The kind you don't have to press down and hide from. She opened her eyes and they were there, bright and soft and happy like fairy lights, like fireworks, like candle flames, dancing their dance around her head.
The sweetness of chicken soup against a fever. The sweetness of an apple sucked grey. The sweetness of ketchup on potato fries. The sweetness of skin
of her skin, her sweet skin and her mean brain (what was happening to her? She was getting so untamably cruel she was becoming a monster she was), then the calming, nicer sweetness of the shirt in her closet, in her hands, dark and beautifully gruesome in design, yet so so so sweet against her nose.
She stopped.
That wasn't her memory. No, before it wasn't. Now it was starting to feel like it belonged to her. A new friend who she'd met before.
Marceline, right? She felt like more than Marceline. Marceline was the shadow in her brain, stalking the corridors of this new pretty pink palace. Other shadows walked too, smiling, holding hands, cuddling and talking, but she ignored them. She didn't want to talk. She only cared for the doors.
Large doors. Small doors. Wooden doors. Metal doors. Doors you had to climb the stairs to reach.
She'd woken up in the first room, the bedroom with the closet and the shirt, as if placed there directly. But the other doors she had to find and open on her own, for a long time.
She noticed it quickly: even if the other shadows tried to open them and couldn't, sometimes she herself could still get in. Her hand over a doorknob acted as a key, just for her. The memories she found through such doors were often more personal, private. Regret. Torture. Murder. Sex. She felt very special in that way.
We're all equal!
But I'm special. She wants me to be special. She likes me more than the rest of you. Suck on it, losers. Friends!
In one room she found a picture of Marceline and had the improbable idea that her heart was about to explode. Love burnt her soul like chemicals. Such deep self-yearning ripped confusingly through this wandering shadow now called Marceline—she simply wasn't used to such a feeling. She wanted herself. But she was herself. Once upon a time.
She didn't even become a little frustrated when met by doors she could not open. A quiet, subconscious knowledge (not unlike the knowledge of the sky being pink or a smile meaning happy) told her that if she of all people she could not open a door, then nor could any shadow here. These doors were just too private and had to be bound carefully, shut by heavy violet chains. Only the palace itself was allowed to glimpse inside, and that was totally okay. Maybe one day they would open to Marceline too. If not, that was fine. She was too full with love to have room to care or think.
Yes, love. That was what this was. A love that once burnt with its loneliness, but now had direction and purpose. She could die now and be happy. Only, dying was a dream. Dying wasn't real anymore, for anyone, and had never ever been real for her anyway. But wasn't this like dying? But, oh, in the best way.
"I'm glad you like it. So you want to stay?"
No other shadows here. She had been taken to the special room, the Welcome Chamber, and she was temporarily back to solid skin and cold blood, though her real body was changing fast. She looked up at nothing and laughed.
"I LOVE it! I feel so happy. I've never felt this happy in my entire life!"
"Wow, that's a long time!"
"Even longer than you!"
The other voice smiled calmly without a face or lips or teeth. "That's right. Even longer than me." Then the smile got sad. "Oh, you poor sweetheart. You've been suffering for so long. I can see it all now, in your heart. I'm sorry I couldn't protect you before. You needed someone to protect you, and no-one stayed. That must have been very difficult, more than even I can understand."
Oh . That felt weird-sweet. Like sour candy maybe, or dark chocolate. Bitter and sweet. Marceline had longed to hear those words for centuries. Marceline's smile cried and cried.
And for a second, strangely, she was back. Full Marceline. The side of her that was scared and had bad thoughts. The antidote, I failed you, I—
There was nothing there, but it suddenly felt like a hug and she melted into it and its words as it whispered,
"Shh. It's okay, my love. Let all those tears free. You are safe now. Forever."
Marceline looked up again. Her voice came out all wrong and crumbled, like a cookie, but she tried to speak regardless. "With you…?"
"With me," Bonnie agreed, so gently. "I'm all yours."
Marceline's eyes closed and disappeared.
For a moment as brief as a shooting star, which split the sky of her melting mind, there was a little song. Marceline remembered it. The last memory belonging to her alone.
A lover in captivity.
It was drowned out by the other song. The louder pretty happy nice song with no sad words. It was playing inside her again. Louder. In her ears. In her heart. In her skull, which grew cloudier by the second. Soft fluffy nonsense replacing all the mean icky bad stuff. Her body became soft. Her brain became softer. Both forgot at once how to hurt.
It was beautiful. Pink pretty hands emerged from the growing void, reaching over, cupping Marshmeline's cheeks. Meeting her lips. So sweet.
Let me call you sweetheart. I'm in love with you. Let me hear you whisper that you love me too…
Eternity's empty embrace. Of course she sang along.