#a world where a sane Simon got to take care of Marcy for as long as possible

[movedtodykedvonte]

Simon had just recently died in vampire world when Marcie arrived. He was in the stage of a freshly drained human and it’s likely the vampire king killed him.

All I’m saying if it had been just a few more minutes…

[gemder]

a bubbline wip, featuring a dissociative episode by our fave punk rock vamp. set shortly after Stakes.

She doesn't know how long she's been hovering over the couch like this, with her gaze trained on the bumps and dips on the ceiling and her bass planted in her arms. How many times has she sung that old song, so old and resilient it survived the death and rebirth of the world (and the both of hers twice over, now) just by hiding in the corner of her mind she doesn't like to visit? She can't see the sun or moon rise through the entrance to her hideaway from this part of the house, and the cave-imposed darkness tells her nothing of the time or how much of it has passed.

She doesn't dare budge from her spot. She's been turned twice now; she knows from experience that any sudden action, anything to startle her base thought process, could spark that bloodlust from last time. That was some ugly biz, if she remembers correctly. It's been a while, but something like an uncontrollable urge to drain the lifeforce of every living creature within 30 miles sticks to you. She's just going to have to wait it out, until the itch in the back of her throat dies down and she doesn't worry it'll become an insatiable burning for hot blood, no matter how long it takes.

Marceline has had an excessive amount of time to learn how to be alone; 1003 years, in fact. So why does it never get any easier? Why does being left never hurt any less? Why does she seem to be so completely destined for eternal loneliness? What asshat decided she deserved to spend the entirety of her neverending life without a single constant presence?

Mom went out with promises of keeping safe and finding food and I love you so much, sweetie, that alone is strong enough to bring me back to you. It took two weeks before little Marcy came to the conclusion that her mom wasn't coming back with food or supplies, or even returning empty handed. Simon let a stupid magical crown take over every single cell of his brain and wrote a bunch of scattered letters about it while it happened instead of, you know, telling the frightened 7 year old she was going to be left soon. Dad just up and left to go back to running the Nightosphere after a few weeks, with nary a parting word nor any notice. Her post-apocalyptic comrades had no choice but to flee from an otherwise inevitable extinction. Bonnie had to go and grow up, and in the process decide that her 900-something year old girlfriend wasn't mature enough.

(She checked that old, busted up camper as often as she could over the following months. There was never another life in that thing after she hopped down the little steps and let the screen door slam back with the carelessness of a 6 year old.)

(She found a decomposed corpse months later that just happened to be wearing some torn up rags that looked like her mom’s old sweater and jeans. It must have just been a coincidence, though; there were a lot of recently dead back then, and even more moth-eaten sweaters in the world.)

(“I’m trying to save you, but who's going to save me?” ‘I don't know, old man, maybe you could have saved yourself? You could have not purposely used the magical relic that was making you go bananas?’ If a 7 year old could make it through the apocalypse without magic then so could a fully grown man.)

(He left her to survive on her own in the name of being executive manager of hell and he still wonders why she wants nothing to do with him, why she used to have such a hard time so much as calling him “dad” when he’s never been anything like what she was lead to believe dads were supposed to be like.)

(She’s 1000 years old, how in the name of the nightosphere could she not be mature enough?)

(Over the years she’s replaced the world “hell” with “Nightosphere” the same way the being once referred to as “God,” back when even she was young, is now called by their proper name of Glob. The Nightosphere really is hell, so it fits.)

(Sometimes she takes the time to think about how she's the heir apparent to the actual, literal, real life hell, and how she's one of the oldest beings around these days, maybe the oldest to still really be sane, but still a messed up teen.)

(She doesn't know how old she was when she was turned; years and months and all that are hard to keep track of when the species that invented it is all but extinct. Is she old enough to drive? Probably. She does and can regardless, because screw the old ways. Old enough to drink, smoke, vote? Debatable. The point is that she’s 1000 years old but actually, like, 18. What the fuck.)

She drifts, both mentally and physically. She's had plenty of time and isolation to ponder the Big Things about life and the world and why and how things happened the way they did, and what it means. She will have an abundance of opportunities in the future to think about these things, too. Some day she'll reflect on this part of her life in the far away, nostalgia-filtered sepia tones she currently thinks of her childhood and adolescence. She'll remember when Finn and Jake were the heroes of Ooo, when Simon used to chase after princesses who will have long since passed, when she couldn't get over her ex-girlfriend who happened to be sentient candy. It will be distant and she will miss it terribly, the same way she misses her mother, and Simon when he was Simon, and fries in a long-abandoned diner. But it will be a wound long since closed and numbed, like the deep scar she got on her calf sometime in her early teens that still exists today, preserved in her immortality and a sentimentality that prevented her from insta-healing it away, sting and blood long gone.

She has forever to reminisce, but only right now to live in the present. She makes mental patterns in the bumps on the ceiling, and slowly loses grip on her body. She is a million miles upwards, where the sky holds no oxygen and the stars are still pinpricks in a sea of indigo construction paper. Like a kid poking holes in the top of a jar of lightning bugs, equipped with a fork and enthusiasm at being able to destroy something for the sake of encapturing something else. She is, at the same time, hovering above her uncomfortably hard couch. One of her hands slips from its place atop her bass, and Shwabl licks it from his spot next to her on the dusty carpet.

She doesn't hear the knock at the door. She is right there, but she is centuries back and in a different part of the continent entirely. She doesn't hear Bonnie getting increasingly agitated, trying and failing not to raise her voice at her through the door. She doesn't notice when Bonnie lets herself in regardless of Marceline’s lack of response, or when Shwabl jumps up to attention at the guest.

It's the “Marceline, what -” that breaks her dissociative spell. That tone of exasperation in that particular voice is a very familiar one, especially within the last decade. She comes to to find that there are fresh tears in the corner of one eye and the words to a song as old as her youth on her lips.

“Oh, hey Bombòn. How goes it girl?” Marceline has had a millennium to convince the world that she's chill and totally not a big mess, and it shows in the lilt to her voice that screams ‘I'm just chillin’’ and not ‘I've been dissociating and crying and probably singing for who-knows-how-long and I'm really messed up’. She still doesn't dare move from her spot, because moving around could still trigger what she's trying to wait out.

“It's been three weeks, Marcy. Three weeks, and all that heavy biz, and no one's heard from you since. Doesn't that seem even a little bit irresponsible to you? Didn't you think people would worry? Or even wonder ‘hey, what happened to that girl who saved all our butts and got revampified?’”

“Dude, I've just been chilling. You know how it is; jams, games, pets, it keeps a girl busy. It’s cool. Ice cold, in fact.”

Bonnie sighs. Marceline has heard that sigh a million and three times over by now, and she's learned to like that particular sound from the pink girl; it's the one thing about herself that she can't manage to sweeten to the point of oversaturation, until it (like the rest of her) is practically dripping sugar. Marceline likes to deal with the authentic rather than the idealized versions of people, because the latter rarely ever means anything good is coming her way.

(She rationalizes that the Ice King component of Simon, while not idealized, is not authentic in the least; the products of full humans getting mixed up with magic seldom are. The authentic Simon Petrikov is the one who found a 6 year old girl in the ruins of a suburban New Mexico town and still had enough selflessness in the aftermath of the apocalypse to comfort her and take care of her.)

The sigh doesn't lead to the reprimanding the vampire expects. Instead, she watches as Bonnie leans down in her peripheral vision to pet Shwabl, expression focused intently on the dog. She's doing that same schooled neutrality shit she used to do during those globawful trade meetings - the ones Marcy used to steal her away from the go gallivanting through the rock candy mines.

“What kind of sweet tunes have you whipped up, then? Lay it on me girl.”

Marceline lets her face adopt a smirk - the expression has become a reflexive habit after centuries of being a bitter undead loner - even as something in her stomach drops. Bonnie rarely asks about her music because she knows so much of it is personal, and that which isn't is vulgar or morbid and prone to being shared regardless, not to mention the fact that Bonnie’s interests definitely don't lie in the arts, or punk rock music, or most of the uglier parts of Marceline.

“You know my latest album is the epitome of personal mush, Bons. It's so personal I'd have to kill you if you heard any of it. But, I do have a new demo about a fisherman.”

Bonnibel definitely wants something out of her; she has that smile she reserves for Cinnamon Bun and Finn when he's going on about dumb 13 year old boy things, the one that's polite and reservedly encouraging, the one that Marcy has always found to be condescending although it always looks as sweet as its wearer who is literally made out of candy, almost as sweet as the girl’s public persona.

The thing about being 1000 years old and also a teenage girl is that you spend forever being a socially-minded person on some level or another, because back in the day that's how girls were socialized to be - social-driven creatures who cared more about what Allyson wore on Tuesday or what Theresa said about Serena in math class than anything practical. So Marceline has had a long time to notice the tells and ticks of the select few she surrounds herself with often enough to care about. PB smiles like her kindergarten teacher used to on particularly trying days when she thinks the people she's with are idiots but can't call them out for it. Her eyebrows droop when she's so tired that sheer willpower will no longer keep them up. She plays with her hands when she's nervous. She used to chew on her hair when she was younger and in the process of creating her kingdom, when stress was a new feeling she hadn't yet made a feedback loop out of.

This is totally, completely because of the sexist socialization of the old world, and nothing else. Totally not because they dated for a good chunk of time, or because one or the other might, maybe be having rose-coloured thoughts about the other again.

“Everyone and their granny has heard that one, Marcy. If you've had all this time to do nothing but groove and game then I wanna hear some tunes! Don't be a butt about it.” She's trying to gode the older girl, but Marceline is itching to get out of this particular conversation. Somewhere in her cursed, mostly re-dried blood she knows this is a test.

“I don't bust into your lab and start interrogating you about your experiments - can you just lay off, man?” she says it more harshly than she had meant to, but being yanked back to reality and immediately questioned over every move will do that to a person. “Tell me what's been going on in Candyland. You finally get all the earwax off of your junk?”

“You know if you did ask about my science experiments I would be happy to tell you all about them - well, the ones that aren't classified. It's called caring, Marce, it's a thing that friends do.”

A tense silence follows as Marceline thinks of something biting (but not petty!) to throw back at her.

“And yeah, actually, I did. The dingus left a huge mess but there's nothing my purple cleaner can't get rid of.”

Bonnie can't leave a single box unticked, can she?

“Glob, that stuff is nasty. The fumes make me gag, and I don't even need to breathe!”

The princess raises a brow at her. The queen furrows both of hers in frustration and fixes her gaze back on the bumps on the ceiling. When she was younger she used to make images out of the dips and dots in the kindergarten room ceiling; the RV’s was smoothed and didn't allow that particular part of her imagination to play around.

“And I think the expression you're looking for is sharing is caring, Bubs. It's a thing they used to say waaaaaaaay back in the day whenever the old people got tired of little kids fighting over toys.”

*******

this was gonna be a longfic feat. mutual pining by our fave disaster gays and more references to marcy’s life pre- and during the apocalypse bc i have a lot of feelings about Stakes. might come back to it, who knows!!!