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The chime of a phone cut through the silence of the night. That one subtle sound was enough to pull Penny out of her slumber. Frustrated that she had forgotten to mute her phone before going to bed, she groaned and flipped over, desperate to escape back into the dream that she was pulled out of. It was a familiar and comforting dream, one that she seemed to have almost every night nowadays. The one where her and Gumball laid on the hot sands of a tropical beach while watching the sunset. The sky was always gold and peach and the water was always sapphire and teal. She was familiar with the phantom touch of her dream Gumball holding her hand, a touch that held more warmth and fire than in reality. Maybe his touch only felt that vivid because she missed him. She couldn’t quite place it, but she felt like he was pulling away from her, from everyone lately. She yearned for more than a stiff conversation in the hallway and a tired smile. Her reoccurring dream probably had something to do with it. Gumball was always doting her and wanting to spend time with her, so why was he pulling away? Feeling a pang of melancholy in her chest, she turned over once more and tried to return to her dream Gumball.
The phone chimed once more. She turned over and glanced at the bedside clock, which claimed that it was ten minutes to 3am. Was it just a stupid app notification or was someone trying to get ahold of her? She couldn’t imagine who would need her this early on a Sunday morning. With eyes half closed, she reached over to the nightstand to detach her phone from the charger to silence it, but not before reading the offending notification:
Gumball: “Thank you for loving me, even though I don’t understand why you do.”
Oh shit.
Penny jolted upright in her bed and read through the message again, wondering if she was seeing things incorrectly. A thick coat of dread quickly replaced her irritation. Nobody sends a text like that in the middle of the night without heavy implications. Hands trembling profusely, she quickly typed:
Penny: “Are you ok?!”
She waited desperately for a response but could only wait a couple minutes before her anxiety spiked again. Every terrible thought raced through her mind.
Penny: “Gumball, you’re scaring me.”
She waited only a minute longer before she couldn’t stand the unknown any further. Heart pounding in her ears, she called him. She held her breath the entire time the repetitive ringing assaulted her eardrums. The robotic message telling her that the caller wasn’t available felt like a cruel joke. She froze into place with the dead phone line still to her ear. She wanted to scream, cry, and bolt out of her room, but the despair paralyzed her. The silence was so loud that the sound of her own breath felt too imposing. Being too aware of the pace of her breathing paired with the anxiety, she spiralled into hyperventilation.
Penny covered her mouth with her hands once the crying finally began so as not to wake her parents and sister. Thick, ugly sobs erupted out of her, feeling like each one was rattling her to her vulnerable core. She then shapeshifted rapidly, unable to predict or control her forms. She forced herself to steady her breathing and refocus her thoughts away from the immediate spiralling. It took her several minutes to calm down enough to be in her neutral form.
Even though Penny’s anxious mind jumped to Gumball being in danger to himself or worse, she still didn’t know exactly what was going on. Him sending a message like that at this hour and him not picking up the phone was damning enough evidence that something was wrong, but she simply didn’t know. Could this explain why he was being distant lately? Perhaps, but she was done assuming. She had to find him or else she wouldn’t be able to live with herself.
Without thinking about it much further, she turned into her rabbit form and crept through her house as quickly and quietly as she could. God knew what would happen if her dad found out that she was sneaking out of the house at this hour. If he did, then that would be a future problem. The only thing she needed was to find her boyfriend before it was too late. The squeaky hardwood stairs acted like they wanted to foil her plans. Once she was certain that no one was listening or following her, she reverted back to neutral, unlocked the door, and bolted outside, sprinting down the street and not looking back until she was sure that she was out of sight from her home. She stood on a street corner for a moment to catch her breath before shifting into a bird, flying directly into the warm, misty night.
Penny knew the route to the Watterson home like the back of her hand, so flying through the dark in a frantic state wasn’t a hindrance. The light pollution certainly helped her navigation. Soaring through the air and feeling the warm wind on her face helped ground her. She dismissed the burning pain in her wings from flying at a speed beyond her limits. If she wasn’t on such a dire adrenaline rush, she would’ve certainly fallen out of the sky in exhaustion already. She dodged other birds and almost slammed into a cell tower, but she made it to Gumball’s house in record time. Upon arrival, she noticed a figure on the roof. Penny recognized that silhouette immediately.
“GUMBALL!” she chirped in a small, squeaky voice. She immediately zeroed in on the roof and nosedived downwards like a fighter jet, crashlanding on the rough shingled surface, skidding across the gritty rooftop on her stomach. She barely registered how much that hurt because it didn’t matter. She arrived before it was too late, and that was all she was prioritizing right now.
Gumball, who was sitting on the edge of the roof in his pajamas with his feet dangling off the side, glanced over to the bird that randomly invaded his space. “What the what?”
Hearing him speak was the sweetest relief she could ask for. Penny shifted back to neutral, now sporting bruises and cuts on her face and body, gasping for air like a landbound fish. Before either of them could say anything further, she attacked Gumball into an all-encompassing hug, wrapping her entire body around his, ugly crying in relief that he was still here.
Gumball, exhausted and confused, didn’t have the mental capacity to do anything about it, so he simply let this happen until Penny was ready to let him go. He weakly rested his arms around her shoulders while she squeezed the life out of him. Guilt quickly settled in once he connected the dots of why she was here. He was the reason why she hurt herself on the roof and cried the most disgustingly loaded sobs he had ever heard, he thought to himself. It was his fault, like everything else.
“Gumball, what’s going on?!” Penny shook his shoulders perhaps too roughly.
Gumball stared at her blankly. “I should ask you the same thing,” he replied dryly.
Penny stared silently at Gumball for a few long moments. He was visibly exhausted with deep circles around his eyes and his fur out of sorts. The energy around him felt heavier than anything she had ever sensed from him. Tired wasn’t the proper adjective, it was resigned. It was written all over his unfocused eyes. That felt like the first time she really saw him in a long time. Why didn’t she do something sooner, she thought to herself. She felt Gumball retreating before, so why did she wait until she expected the worst to confront it? Frustrated with herself, she exhaled slowly to release her pent up tension so as not to have Gumball assume that she was mad at him. “I read your text,” was all she could say without crying again.
Gumball bowed his head. “I’m sorry for burdening you.”
“Oh, Gumball, don’t…”.
“I shouldn’t have sent that. All it did was make you worry and hurt yourself trying to find me.” Ever so gently as if he feared he’d break her, he grazed his paw against her bruised cheek. “I never wanted to hurt you…”.
Penny rested her hand on Gumball’s reaching arm. “You never burden me.”
Gumball grimaced and pulled away. “Don’t tell me what you know I want to hear just because you feel sorry for me. There’s no way that I don’t burden you, especially if I’m the reason that you’re up at 3am crashing onto roofs.”
“I do this because I care about you, not because I pity you. I couldn’t live with myself if I saw that message and went back to bed. Imagine if I didn’t find you when I did… oh my God.”
Gumball figured out what she meant by that and instantly felt worse. “Penny, I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean it like… that… really?”
“You say it like you’re not even sure yourself.”
Gumball exhaled a deep, old sigh. “Maybe I meant it as… goodbye… maybe? I’m just… so tired, Penny. So, so tired of everything. It’s like I need a sleep that will never come and I’ll be permanently unrested. I’ve thought about it… but, like… not… actually? I think I like the idea of it more than the reality of it. I just want to go away for a while and be absolved of my pain.”
Penny felt a blade in her chest. “Have you really thought of that?”
“Yeah. It’s comforting in a morbid way.”
“But, I don’t want you to go away.” The words felt weak coming out of her mouth. Too much to feel and not enough language to convey it.
Gumball couldn’t meet her eyes. “I know you don’t, which was why I sent that. It wasn’t really like I was gonna… I don’t know, actually.”
They gazed down at the ground below them in silence. Three stories high wasn’t insignificant, but not a certain fate, either. It felt like an inverse Russian Roulette where you’d be more likely with a broken neck than the final blow.
“Why do you love me?” Gumball mumbled.
“I’m sorry, what?”
“Why do you love me? Why does someone like you choose to keep coming back to someone like me? You read that text, so you know what I mean.”
How could she answer that? Love was such a feral, mysterious force that attempting to rationalize and explain what it does to someone felt like splitting atoms. She could only try to figure out why he felt that way. “Does that thought have to do with… all of this?” She circled her hand in front of his face.
“Related, but you’re not the reason I feel this way.”
“Who is?”
“Everyone else… except Darwin.”
“Oh boy. I’ve sensed something off about you recently, and I think I know why now. I’ve felt you… pull away. You’re not like yourself lately, and it hurts to see you like this.”
Gumball hastily wiped away a tear that jumped out of nowhere. “Ugh… this is so embarrassing. I’m sorry.”
Penny closed the space between them and put her arm around him, wiping away his quickly falling tears with her thumb. “It’s ok to cry. It’s ok to talk about the ways you feel, no matter how complicated and dark they are. I know how proud you tend to get, but it’s only me right now. Do you trust me?”
Gumball was physically struggling to keep it together. “I do. Why else would I have texted you that? I wanted you to know how I felt when I feared that I’d never get to tell you.”
“Well, it’s not over yet. Please, let me help you unload your burdens.” Penny pulled him in tighter and kissed the top of his head.
Gumball sniffed. “You’ve got to be one of the only people in Elmore that doesn’t think I’m a total failure.”
“Gumball Watterson, you are not a failure,” she said a bit too sternly.
Gumball scoffed. “Well, literally everyone else thinks that, so obviously it’s true. You must have some rose tinted glasses on or something. Anyone who has ever known me could vouch for my failure as a person… except for Darwin because he’s too nice to say something like that.”
“Says who?”
“Our teachers, our classmates, my family, your family, anyone that has ever known me. Every single day I’m reminded that I'm a piece of shit, whether it’s Miss Simian yelling at me in class or the look of disappointment on my mom’s face whenever she glances over at me and Darwin fooling around. I’m always a problem. Everything I do goes wrong and shit seems to happen to me just to spite me sometimes. I’m not smart, clever, attractive, or pleasant to be around, so what is there even left for me? The more I hear it, the truer it becomes to me. I feel like everyone is waiting for me to finally fail, to do the one thing that will firmly cement their beliefs and make them have their little ‘I told you so’ moment. They watch on in anticipation to see if the next horrible situation finally kills me or not. At this point, it feels like no one actually wants the best for me in a genuine sense, so am I just destined to fall down this pit that was dug for me? It’s just who I am, and I need to accept who I am before I get too delusional and think that I can escape my fate. If this is what it’ll be indefinitely, then why am I still doing this?” Gumball hiked up his knees to his chest and rested his chin on them, tearing up.
Penny had to have seen this coming. It was no secret that a lot of people perceived Gumball that way. She bore witness to it many times, whether it was in class or in passing. She remembered the times she tried to combat it, like when she stood up for him when he was convinced he was a karate master and failed a trick in front of everyone. She participated in countless arguments with her father over justifying her relationship with Gumball. She defended him to his peers and her parents so many times and she’d keep on doing it.
“Why does someone as perfect and wonderful as you want to be with a failure like me? You’re beautiful, smart, kind, and athletic, so you could have anyone you want. You have everything going for you, so why are you letting me hold you down? I’m not good enough for you, Penny. I don’t understand why you love me,” Gumball continued.
Penny took a deep, cleansing breath as she tried to articulate her thoughts to such a loaded question, trying not to cry again. “Why would I want anyone else but you? Sure, I could be with someone easier, someone my parents would accept and someone my friends would root for, but why would I choose to be with someone just because someone else says I should? You are my choice. Why wait for ‘the best’ when I can have you? Despite everyone else saying I shouldn’t, I will choose you over and over again, even if everyone thinks I’m crazy for it. I don’t give a fuck who tells you this, but you are not a failure, Gumball. Not to me. I wouldn’t be half the person I am today without you. I’d still be in that damn shell if it wasn’t for you. You were the first person to see and accept me as I truly was. You stared into the core of my madness and embraced me despite it . You defended me when no one else would, whether it was from my dad or Tobias. I feel safe with you knowing that you’ll fight for me. You also gave me the space to be weird and silly. I didn’t know that was part of me, but you showed me that I could be something more. You care about me and your family, you’re the funniest guy I know, you can be quite clever in getting yourself out of tough situations, and you’re smarter than you think. I know you have your moments and drive me crazy, but there’s no one else I’d rather have drive me crazy. Our lives are complicated, chaotic, and scary sometimes, but I say with every ounce of my honesty that no one can get in the way of what I feel for you.”
Gumball immediately broke down crying, collapsing into Penny’s lap.
“Awww,” Penny cooed tenderly. She gently smoothed down his ruffled fur while he cried into her lap. She was a little rattled since he rarely ever cried like that in front of her, but she sensed that this was a cathartic release. “It’s ok to cry. Just let it out,” she whispered, making Gumball cry louder.
“I love you so much, Penny,” Gumball wailed.
Penny gently patted his back. “I love you too, Gumball. I always have.”
When Gumball composed himself enough, he lifted himself off of her and wiped his eyes with his shirt. “Ugh, sorry, sorry.” He fanned his face with his hands.
“Don’t be. I bet you needed to let that out. Do you feel any better?”
He smiled weakly. “Yeah… I do. Thank you. I just wonder… what should I do now? It’s not something I can unlearn immediately. How am I supposed to escape my fate when it feels like everyone is against me?”
“By proving them wrong. Your life is not over when someone else says so. Nothing is fixed, nothing is certain, and nothing will bring you down if you refuse it to. Get your revenge on those who belittled you by living a more fulfilling life than they ever thought you’d have. Sometimes, you need a bit of rage and sadness to fuel you to pursue and persist. Do you know how much shit you’ve gone through and yet, you’re still here? You are such a strong person, Gumball, and I know you will pull yourself out of this darkness. Do anything but give up.”
“Revenge, eh?” A snarky grin blossomed on Gumball’s face, and Penny felt like he had been revived.
“Not like that! You know what I mean,” Penny laughed, “It’s like a self-fulfilling prophecy, y’know? What you think you are is what you’ll become. If you adjust your perspective and not listen to what others have to say, then you should feel more fulfilled. Also remember that you already have a lot of great qualities, so don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”
“Hmm, I get it. Getting too caught up in my own head screwed me over, right?”
“Well, not entirely. I don’t blame you for being affected by the hurtful words of others. It’s ok to feel what you feel, but what you do with those feelings is something else. Don’t let anyone get in your head like that. Most importantly, those terrible things people say about you are more of a reflection of themselves than of you.”
“That’s easier said than done.”
Penny stroked his cheek. “Of course it is. Nothing happens overnight. As long as you keep moving forward, everything will be alright. Nothing is forever, especially the tough times. I just don’t want you to give up before your life begins.”
“I won’t. I promise. It’s daunting to keep going when everything feels like it’s against me, but if you’re in my corner, then I guess it’s not as bad.”
“I’ll always be here for you. Wherever life takes you, I want to be there for you every step of the way.”
Gumball sighed in rich contentment, resting his head on her shoulder, fluttering his tired eyes. “Thank you for loving me.”
“It’s an honor to do so.”
Neither of them knew how much time had passed, but slivers of the early morning sun bled over the horizon of Elmore.
“Oh wow, I guess it’s good that it’s Sunday morning or else we’d be cooked. I’m definitely gonna sleep all day,” Gumball chuckled.
Penny stared at the glow in the distance, remembering her dream. “I’m sorry if this is silly, but will you watch the sunrise with me? I know you want to go to bed, but… I’m not ready to let you go yet.”
“That sounds perfect.”
Penny and Gumball laid down on the rooftop holding hands while silently watching the sky turn gold and peach. At that moment, Penny was at perfect peace. She didn’t think about how she was going to make it back home without getting caught or if she should mentally prepare for another argument with her father, for the only thing that mattered was that they were here together at this moment. The warmth of Gumball’s touch felt just as vivid as it was in her dreams.