Disclaimer: Adventure Time and its characters belong to Pendleton Ward. The song "Immortals" and its lyrics belong to Fall Out Boy.

A/N: I call this "AUish" because as far as I know, none of this is actually directly contradicted by the show (not that this in any way makes it canon, haha). But it does make it plausible, so there's that. Also, I intended for this to be like eight pages of a one-shot, and it mutated, as things are wont to do in Ooo, into twenty-nine pages, much to my surprise. Since I desired it to retain its one-shot feel, I'm not splitting it into real chapters but just chunks; so, the "chapter" breaks don't really mean much, except as handy stopping points. That's also why I'm posting it all up at once because continuity is mega-rad, dude.

All that being said, I hope you enjoy the story, and reviews are also mega-rad, and lumping awesome to boot. So, like, review.

Immortals

i.

(they say we are what we are

but we don't have to be)

"Why isn't there any…chicken…soup?!"

That plaintive cry echoes throughout the dead city, ricocheting off busted cars and broken buildings, and muffling in the freshly fallen snow that clogs one of its alleys. In the alley's center, an elderly man, his skin tinting to blue, shakes his fists in futile protest at the unsympathetic leaden skies.

And nearly gets concussed by the falling can of chicken soup.

"What? I'll freeze you!" he yells, spinning around with his hands extended, crab-like, but there's nothing there—no threats, no oozing monster. Just a deep divot in the snow, shadowed blue as his skin. He lowers his hands, the fear fading from his face, and fishes out the miracle can. "Er…"

"Simon? Simon, what's going on?"

He turns around, still cradling the can, but waves arrestingly at the girl halfway out of a rusting automobile. "Marcy! Stay in the car! I've got your soup, but it's cold now—the air, not the soup, although I suppose it'd be cold anyway, being that it's in a can and all—but whatever, I mean, you're not well, and what if there's more monsters—"

His protests fall on deaf ears, as Marceline disregards his concerns and clambers through the snow to his side, even though it's up to her knees and she's decidedly not equipped to be trekking across a polar landscape. She laughs upon seeing the can, like it's the prize at the end of a long quest, but her attention is quickly caught by something in the background.

Something smiling. Something pink.

The half-demon approaches the sticky substance where it's strung across the wall. "Is this who gave you the soup?" she asks, mirroring the smile hanging in the translucent material: the happiest semicircle of a curve.

"Huh? What?" Simon bleats, and he looks vaguely at the pink goop. "What's that? You think that thing gave me this soup?" He chuckles, but it's ranging towards a cackle, and Marceline slants him a suspicious look, which swiftly swivels to fixate on the crown hanging from his belt. Simon clears his throat and tries to salvage the situation and fails rather miserably. "What? It's just a wad of sentient bubblegum."

"Simon!" she protests, glancing nervously at her magenta benefactor, whose smile has faded. "That's really mean! I think she heard you! And she probably has a name, you big jerk!"

"Eh? She? Why d'you think it's a girl? It's a blob," the man says, pointing up at the strings of gum that wander up the wall like rigging on a ship. "Quite a bit of blob, too."

"You really are a jerk," Marceline declares, laying her hands on the gum somewhat to the sides of the eyes: her best guess as to where the ears are. "And of course it's a girl. It's pink. What kinda boy would be pink? Geez."

"A bubblegum boy, that's who," Simon grouses, but there's no real fight in his words, and he exhales a long sigh. "Fine, fine. 'Princess Bubblegum' here gave me the soup, sure. Can you just eat it now? You're sick, Marcy, and I want to help you. Would you let me help you like I've always done?"

Her dark eyes narrow, not oblivious to the sarcasm riding his words, but she capitulates with a nod. "Okay. I am hungry, anyway."

He beckons, already halfway back to the dilapidated husk of the car. "Come on. It'll be warmer in here, and safer, too. Once you've eaten, we need to get out of this city. Who knows how many more slimy monsters are prowling the streets."

Marceline starts to follow him, but she hesitates, glancing back at the gum. "But what about her? We can't leave her here, Simon. Those oozy monsters might attack her next, and she can't protect herself."

"She can if she drops ballistic cans of chicken soup on their heads," he mutters, but with a note of fondness. Rather more realistically, he poses, "There's enough gum up that wall to weigh both of us down, Marcy. How do you want to go about carrying her? Or are you suggesting that we chew her up and blow the world's biggest bubble and balloon away from here?"

The half-demon child laughs. "Oh, Simon, you're so silly! Blowing a bubble, geez. You're pretty dumb for being so old. No, we…pull her down, kind of, and mush her up until she's…person-shaped. Like…like a snowman, but with gum, and a girl. A gum-girl. Yeah. We'll make a gum-girl."

One of Simon's eyebrows rockets skywards, and he cranes his neck, scanning the lattice of pink elastic roped up the wall. "Well," he says at last, "I've heard stranger ideas. What the heck. Let's give it a whirl."

Giddy, Marceline claps her hands together and turns back to the nearly-featureless face on the wall. "Did you hear that, Princess Bubblegum? You can come with us. Just…come on down here."

The smile returns, spreading wide and semicircular again, and as the child and the old man watch, the strands of pink gum shiver and contract and coalesce, creeping down the building like a vine growing in reverse; it pulls in streamers and reclaims clumps until, at long last…

Simon blinks. "It's a wad," he echoes.

Marceline crouches next to the lump, which is almost half her height and possessing all the form of a beanbag chair. "Aw, Princess, that's not right. You need to have legs! And arms! Otherwise, how're you gonna do anything?"

The small, hazy eyes are half-closed, though, as if coming this far were exhausting enough, and with a last burst of energy, a tendril extends and scrapes loopily through the snow.

The half-demon cocks her head to the side. "Sugar?" she reads, and she sends a questioning glance to her adopted parent.

Simon scratches his whiskery chin. "Makes enough sense," he muses. "Not only are simple carbohydrates the core ingredients in most metabolisms, given the fact that she's composed of gum, it might also serve some secondary, structural purpose."

Marceline's brows pinch together. "…What?"

"She can't form a body without sugar," he explains, and he sighs again, more heavily this time. "But to get sugar, we'll have to venture even further into the city."

His small companion, though, falls on her knees and hugs the pink blob. "Aw, c'mon, Simon, we have to! It'd be great to have a friend!"

He blanches. "Aren't I your friend?"

She considers this. "Well, yeah, but…you're kinda like a dad, Simon. I meant a friend who'd be another kid. And then you'd have another kid, and we'd…" She falters, her chin trembling, and tears bead up in her eyes. They slip down her cheeks in crystalline trails and drip, soundless, onto the mound of gum, which looks up at her sympathetically. "We'd be like a family."

Simon stares at her for a long time, the crown heavy on his belt. One day, he knows, the power of it will pull him beneath its gilded surface and he'll drown in its depths; one day, he won't be able to be there for Marceline, to protect or provide or simply accompany. When that day comes, he would dearly like to guarantee that she won't be alone, even if all she has left is a princess made of bubblegum.

Walking over to her through the snow, he braces an arm around her small shoulders and presses a kiss into her night-black hair. "We are a family," he gently corrects her, and he empties his pack onto the ground. "Here, take Hambo," he says, passing over the teddy bear. "I think our new friend here will fit inside. That way, we can carry her to the sugar and still be able to run away if we have to."

Marceline scrubs the tears off her cheeks and grins, sharp-toothed and riotously happy, and she squeezes Hambo so hard in her arms that his seams threaten to burst. "Thanks, Simon! You're the best!"

He chuckles, a little embarrassed, but shimmies the empty pack over the pink blob and hefts the whole thing onto his shoulders. "You still need to eat your soup," he reminds her.

"Oh, right!"

It doesn't take them long to find sugar; the stuff is apparently more plentiful than chicken soup, or perhaps horrible slime monsters prefer more complex offerings. Either way, they find torn-open, paper-wrapped pounds of it spread about the shelves like snow in the first grocery they check. After exchanging a glance and a shrug, Simon sets his pack down and opens the flap while Marceline gathers handfuls of the sweet crystals and dumps them over the bubblegum blob.

Some of the grit sinks in, but most of it just spills over the top and sits there, delicious dandruff.

"Um…" Marceline bends over the bag, head tilting to one side, lips pulling to the other. "Are we supposed to do something, Princess…?"

But the bubblegum begins writhing, kneading the sugar into its own flesh, and the half-demon stumbles backwards. Simon catches her under the arms and pulls her a safe distance away, and both of them look on in wary interest as the pack begins to jostle this way and that as the gum surges about inside it. The motions are so violent, though, that the flap flops shut, and neither the man nor the child can quite summon the courage to approach closely enough to tip it open again.

At length, the shaking stills, and Marceline gets her weight back on her feet and creeps closer. There is movement again, but it is now sluggish and slow, and the half-demon reaches out and pulls aside the flap…and looks down into a face that is no longer so featureless, into eyes that are no longer so small and dark and a smile that isn't a perfect semicircle.

It's better, though. It's practically human.

Violet lashes blink across lavender eyes, and teeth as white and square as sugar cubes shine in her smile. Her skin is pale, barely pink at all, but it absorbed the majority of the sugar and so faded out; her hair retains its obnoxious shade and almost all its stickiness, too, falling in globs instead of strands around her small, round-cheeked face.

"Whoa! You're like alive and stuff!" Marceline exclaims, grinning another razor-edged smile.

The gum-girl bobs her head, and with the help of the half-demon's hand, unfolds herself from the pack, standing strong and steady on her new legs. "Bonnibel," she says in a voice that's light and sweet.

Marceline quirks a dark eyebrow. "Eh, what?"

"My name," she clarifies, and she touches a hand to her breast and bows. "I'm Bonnibel."

The other girl chortles. "Not Princess Bubblegum?"

Bonnibel tucks her chin to her chest in a posture of deep thought. "No," she says at last, "but I suppose I could be, if you want."

"Nah," Marceline dismisses, "I like Bonnibel. I'm Marceline, and this is Simon," she says, taking in her other friend with a wave.

"Yes, I heard," the gum-girl acknowledges, and she offers a bow to the old man as well. "Thank you for coming along to save me."

Simon arches a doubtful eyebrow. "We hardly saved you," he says. "You pulled yourself down off that wall without any help from us."

"Yes, but I had nowhere to go before," Bonnibel explains. "I had no reason to leave the wall for years, and no sugar to grant me form; you see, I got blown there during the final bombings." She stretches her fingers into stars and adds for emphasis, "Splat."

"Gross," Marceline remarks with a smirk, fangs just jutting into her lower lip.

Bonnibel nods solemnly. "Gross, indeed," she confirms, and then she smiles again, sugar-bright. "But then you two came into my alley, and spoke of friendship and family, and I…had almost forgotten about such things. I've been so lonely."

The half-demon boldly grasps one of her hands and extends her other to Simon, who completes the chain. "Well, you're not alone anymore, Bonnibel!" she declares, her smirk widening into an almost perfect semicircle of a grin.

"No," she agrees, "I'm not."

ii.

(i'll be the watcher of the eternal flame

i'll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams)

Slouched next to the campfire with her crossed arms balanced on her knees, Marceline stares through the flickering yellow flames at the sprawled figure of Simon. He's deep asleep, his crown hugged possessively to his chest, as if he fears someone will take it from him—and his fear is well founded, as Marceline has attempted exactly that over the years but has always been met with failure. Now she doesn't really try, because afterwards, Simon always seemed more enraptured by the power than before, and she doesn't want to be the one that pushes him over the edge.

She can't catch him if he falls. It's not like she can fly.

"You're doing that thing again."

The half-demon glances sidelong at Bonnibel, who's peering at her from the depths of her own sleeping bag, lavender eyes flashing orange in the firelight. "What thing?" she prompts, scratching idly at one pointed ear.

Now laughter flashes, too. "Trying to think."

"Har har," Marceline tosses back with just a smidgeon of acid. "You're hilarious, Bonni. Go back to sleep already before I bop you one."

But the gum-girl disregards that warning and sits up, smoothing out the rumples in her sleeping bag. "Really, though," she presses, "what're you thinking about? You're so intense, you look like you're gonna blow a blood vessel."

Exhaling through her nose, Marceline leans back against the half-rotten log behind her and gazes up at the stars scattered—like sugar, like snowflakes—across the velvety black expanse of sky, their light poorly hidden by the leafless branches of the surrounding forest trees. She fails to respond, although a muscle works in her jaw, pulsing like a heartbeat.

Bonnibel waits half a minute more before surrendering—but not in the way Marceline would have expected. Instead of rolling over and punching another ticket to dreamland, she wriggles out of her sleeping bag entirely and reclines at her friend's side. They're the same height, the half-demon idly observes: their arms, their legs are the same length, too. But these facts don't really surprise Marceline, and she's always secretly appreciated the unspoken explanation. After all, Bonnibel doesn't have any rules about growing up—the girl's made out of gum, for glob's sake. She could skip straight to adulthood if she wanted to, if she packed on enough sugar.

But she's always been very careful about how quickly she ages.

She's always been the same height as Marceline.

Their shoulders brush, and the half-demon sighs once more, blustery this time. "He's calling you Princess Bubblegum again."

The other girl hums, an unconcerned lilt. "It's a little creepy," she concedes, "but he's harmless. It's nothing to keep you up at night."

Marceline's lips twist in a grimace, one fang poking free. "It's not the creep-factor I'm worried about. I mean, I don't want him creeping on you, 'cause that's mega-nasty, but…" She trails off, her expression creasing further, and she pulls her legs closer to her chest, locks her arms more tightly around them; she's fairly bristling with angles, like a defensive star. "But he hasn't called you that in seven years, Bonni."

Eyes dimming, Bonnibel, too, stares across the fire.

"I think he's forgotten," the half-demon concludes in the most regretful whisper. "And not that he's forgotten that it's not your name or whatever. I think he's forgotten the last seven years altogether."

She tucks her chin in. "And he's calling you Marceline," she adds slowly as the realization occurs to her.

"Exactly," she agrees, even less than a whisper now. "He's never called me by my full name. I introduced myself with it, of course, but…he never used it. I've always been Marcy." She tries to swallow, but her throat's too thick, and the knot of emotion serves to slowly strangle her.

Until Bonnibel rests a hand on her shoulder, that is; then she can breathe easier. She takes in several gulps of the cool night air, willing its chill to calm the hammering of her heart, and she shakes her head in a terribly lost motion, black hair rustling in a waist-length curtain. "What're we supposed to do, Bonni? It's the crown, I know it's the lumping crown, but…I don't think I can save him from it. I mean, what am I? I'm a scrawny teenaged half-demon, not a hero. And it's taken him already. There's nothing I can do."

Pink fingers tighten in reassurance. "Perhaps not," she admits, low and gentle. "But he's not a lost cause yet."

"So, what?" Marceline rasps, half-sneering and hating the tears that burn in the corners of her eyes. "We'll sit around, twiddling our thumbs, until he becomes one?" She shoves the other girl's hand from her shoulder, not caring that such a forceful motion almost causes the threadbare fabric of her t-shirt to tear. "That won't solve anything!"

Bonnibel studies her in the shivering firelight, her expression inscrutable, her eyes dark and distant. "Not every problem has a solution," she says at length. "Some equations are broken from the beginning."

"Simon's not an equation," Marceline snarls, fangs gleaming gold, knuckles bleaching white. "He's a person."

A wrinkle appears in her brow. "I know that."

"Do you?" the half-demon snaps, and she unfolds her gangly limbs to stand, stiff and shaking, above her friend. "'Cause it sure as hell doesn't sound like it! It sounds like you're ready to write him off, like one of your stupid experiments when they go wrong!"

Bonnibel's lips seal in a thin line, but whatever she intends to say is never heard: across the fire, Simon stirs lethargically and half-opens one swirling, ice-blue eye. "Hrm, Marcy? Is that you? Are you alright?"

Marceline slackens like a sail that's lost the wind, flapping loose against the mast of her spine. "Yeah, I'm—I'm fine," she croaks, and her voice splinters into shards. "G-Go back to sleep, old man. Glob, you're such a pain."

"Hmph! You're no cakewalk yourself, kid," he mutters, and his white-lashed eyelid drops shut again, sweeping the snowy madness out of sight.

Marceline stands there and trembles, tears sliding slickly down her pale gray cheeks, until Bonnibel breathes a soft sigh and wipes them away. The droplets soak into her sugary skin, melting shallow depressions, but the gum-girl doesn't seem to mind. "We won't leave him," she declares, fingers lingering on the slanting planes of the half-demon's face.

She snorts, but there's no humor in the sound. "He'll leave us," she points out, cracking and hollow.

"Yes, one day, he will," Bonnibel murmurs. "But we'll stay until he does. It'll be his decision."

The skin strains around Marceline's eyes and mouth, and she corrects darkly, "It'll be the crown's decision."

There is nothing Bonnibel can say to that, so she says nothing.

It takes three more months, and Simon, lost in the depravity of his magic, is no longer so harmless. A horrified Marceline has to tackle him off Bonnibel, yelling and grabbing fistfuls of his beard and his coat, and even then, she can't hold him down unaided. He's old, true, but the crown grants him terrible power, and she's just a scrawny teenaged half-demon, not a hero.

In the end, Bonnibel whacks him in the head with a stick, and even though that knocks off his crown, both girls know that doesn't make a difference anymore: the crown is in his soul, its madness buried deep where they can't dredge it out. So she hits him again and again until he's exiled to unconscious realms, but she has more trouble extricating Marceline, who's sobbing into his chest, all regret and apology and anger.

Mutilated by the magic, he has betrayed her loyalty and her love, and that knife sinks up to the hilt in her heart and twists and twists and twists.

Bonnibel manages to untangle the other girl's fingers and drag her away; Marceline is incoherent in her grief, and she lacks the clarity to walk or stand. So after a dozen paces, Bonnibel lets her friend sag against her and cry a divot into her shoulder.

Before they flee, Marceline throws the hated crown as far as she can, heaving it somewhere into the dark trees. It won't help him now—he'll always, always find it, chained as he is to its irresistible anchor—but it makes her feel a little better.

It makes her feel like she tried.

iii.

(sometimes the only pay-off for having any faith

is when it's tested again and again everyday)

Three years pass, three years without Simon—but not without snow, no; they crossed some mountains, and there was a trio of winters to contend with, but this snow melts, and it doesn't taste like insanity—three years in which Bonnibel carefully adds seemingly inconsequential amounts of sugar to her own frame, because after three more years, Marceline isn't quite as scrawny anymore. She's still a riff on the theme of angles, pointed ears and teeth and nose and sharp triangles of collar- and cheek- and hipbones, but there's a softness now that wasn't there before, even considering their meager diets, their constant travel.

Bonnibel's taken note of these changes, but she has to, she tells herself, because she has to augment her own body to match. They've grown up at the same rate, and they'll continue to do so. She's not noticing anything because she wants to, oh, glob, no.

She doesn't admire Marceline's hair when it shines iridescent like a raven's wing in the moonlight. She doesn't stare when Marceline's movements are languid and lithe, smoothed by a grace that Bonnibel can't quite replicate, despite having almost exactly the same proportioned limbs. She certainly doesn't wonder what it'd be like to twine her fingers through Marceline's, and not for comfort or for support or simply not to lose one another on foggier days but just because she can.

She doesn't think about any of these things, ever.

Never, ever.

"Kssh. Earth to Bonnibel. Come in, Bonnibel. Over. Kssh." And knuckles rap on her sugarcane skull.

"Ow!" the gum-girl protests, and she swats peevishly at her friend's arm. Snickering, Marceline retracts her hand and plops down beside her in her usual effortless lounge. "You're back already?"

"Yup," the half-demon replies, tilting her head back to ease the kinks from her neck; Bonnibel resolutely does not trace her eyes up the slender curve of her throat. "No sign of any nasty monsters anywhere around our campsite—hooray." She raises a loose fist in a parody of triumph, and she tips her head forward again, opening one dark eye to peer at her friend. "Good thing, too, 'cause you woulda been dessert. How lost in thought were you, eh? Forget to bring a map when you wandered into that big ol' brain of yours?"

"Shut up, Marcy," Bonnibel grouses, and she sniffs importantly. "Maybe I was concocting marvelous plans about how to fix the entire world, and now you've gone and interrupted me, and everyone will suffer. Way to go."

But the other girl shrugs, an easy ripple of thin shoulders. "Well," she concedes, "I am the daughter of Evil Incarnate. If I didn't ruin the world's chance for, um, a second chance, then I'd hardly be living up to the family expectations."

She squints sidelong at her friend. "Yeah…what's up with that?" she asks. "Like, how evil are you?"

"Pretty evil," Marceline quips, forked tongue flicking out from between her sharp, sharp teeth. "But seriously, I don't even know. Glob, I haven't even been in the Nightosphere since I was way young; I don't remember much, 'cept for like fire and brimstone and junk. Mom thought I'd grow up better in the human world, but I guess she wasn't expecting the Mushroom Wars. 'Course, for all I know, Dad orchestrated the whole thing. Seems kinda like his style…more souls to munch and all. Whatever, though, right? I mean, if I am the harbinger of the Apocalypse or somethin', then mission accomplished 'cause, wow, did the Apocalypse happen hardcore. Go me, I guess." And she raises another fist, this one much more sarcastic, into the air and gives it a half-hearted pump.

Bonnibel absorbs this with the impartiality of a true scientist, and as such, she goes on to wonder, "Do you have any abilities? Outside of the physical characteristics, you don't seem particularly demonic."

Marceline shifts her weight, getting more comfortable against the pillows of their packs braced against the sheer cliff wall. "Who made you drink curious juice, Bon?" she asks in a lazy drawl, her eyes slipping shut, as if she intends to take a nap, conversations be damned.

The gum-girl tries not to take offense at this. "I just realized that we always talk about the present, that's all. Where we are, where we'll be going tomorrow, what's for dinner. Nothing consequential, really. Nothing about…before."

The atmosphere crystallizes, ever so slightly. Before means before Simon, and that just dredges up his frozen ghost. Marceline suddenly seems to have more edges than usual, but then, just as suddenly, she relaxes. "Oh, is that all?" she says, her tone determinedly light. "Well, dang, you shoulda just said. I think I've got some latent magical talent that I've never really messed with. Like I'm pretty sure I can open a portal to the Nightosphere whenever the plop I want, but really, who wants to do that? And I'm immortal, just like the old man."

Bonnibel lifts her eyebrows, impressed. "You're deathless?"

"I'm…something?" Marceline hedges, her brow furrowing, and she stares inquisitively off into the night. Storm clouds are brewing in the west; she can smell the change in the air from here, and she vaguely concedes that they'll need to set up the tent soon. "I mean, I'm aging, right? I don't know if I'll stop at some point or what. I'm only half-demon, after all. I think I'll live forever, though; it's a surety I've got in my bones. But, like…I also think I could die," she adds, more quietly. "That's in my bones, too."

"I don't want you to die," Bonnibel blurts before she can think better of it.

The other girl tips her a wink, and Bonnibel's glad the darkness hides her blush. "Aw, shucks. I knew you were sweet, but now you're just giving me cavities. Lemme just dig out my toothbrush and—"

"Shut up," she grumbles once again, and she pulls her knees in to her chest and sulks with her chin on their knobby curves.

Marceline sniggers. "Geez, I didn't know you were so sensitive. Guess you're not hard candy."

Bonnibel throws her a flinty glare. "I do have feelings, you know."

The half-demon rolls her head back again and flaps an unconcerned hand. "'Course ya do, babe. There's bound to be more than just sugar in your veins." She frowns but doesn't straighten up to ask, "Now how does that work, eh? How do you function? I'm not the only mysterious person in our intrepid little duo."

"I function on the same principles as everyone else," Bonnibel says, adding conscientiously, "at least, everyone else who exists in a corporeal fashion. The only difference between us is that I'm carbohydrate-based and you're protein-based."

"English, Bonni."

The gum-girl sighs. "I'm made out of sugar and you're made out of meat."

"Well, geez, you could've just said," Marceline says with hint of annoyance that smoothes into a luxurious shrug. "Whatevs. That's all I've got. I'm tappin' out."

Bonnibel stalls for a long time, trying to organize her thoughts, and they've never been so hard to file before. As of late, though, she finds that as much as she prizes her intelligence, she's liable to be receiving awards for idiocy if she remains in the unsettling grasp of this strange emotion whilst in Marceline's presence. But even with the threat of embarrassment, she can't find it within her heart to want to leave—just the opposite, in fact.

She'll do anything to stay.

Awkwardly, she clears her throat. "Marcy," she ventures, soft, "do demons…have feelings?"

"Just went over this," her friend drawls, twirling one finger in a circle for emphasis.

"No, I meant like…" Her throat closes up and chokes off the words, and only with determined prying can she open the pathway again. "Like, y'know…feelings."

Marceline blinks up at the faraway stars and watches for a few beats as more and more of them are covered by the incoming clouds. "Like feeling-feelings? Like love and crap?"

Love and crap, Bonnibel echoes internally. Oh, glob. What do I see in this girl. "Yes," she confirms aloud. "Like love."

"'Course," the half-demon replies, settling more deeply into her comfortable slump, lashes like crow's wings feathering on her cheeks. "I loved Simon. I loved my mom. I…think I love my dad? Ish? That one's hard to say; I don't remember the dude. I'll have to pop into the Nightosphere one of these days and have a big ol' family reunion." She shrugs again, clearly done talking.

Bonnibel's more than certain that her candy heart is going to crack in half. "And…no one else?"

Marceline furrows her brow and stares, once more, straight up at the sky. "Have I met anyone else?" she wonders, sounding genuinely confused.

The gum-girl reaches over and taps her fist into her friend's forehead, exactly as Marceline herself did when she arrived at the campsite. "Hello, you dingus! Me! What about me!"

The half-demon shifts her gaze down and across until charcoal irises meet lavender ones. "What about you?" she protests, bewildered.

Bonnibel resists the urge to throttle her, or perhaps just to burst into mortified flames. "Argh! Do you love me?" she all but yells. The words echo off the cliffs, mockingly hollow.

And Marceline explodes laughing. "Whoa, calm down, Bonni! Of course I love you," she says, still chortling, her arms wrapped around her ribs: "You're my best friend! Glob, what a dumb question."

A strange, curious ache sets in the back of Bonnibel's jaw, like she's eaten too much sugar—except she can never eat too much sugar, and this ache goes deeper, far deeper, right down to the molasses in her marrow. She turns aside stiffly, and it will rain soon; she can smell it too, the promise of moisture, the pressure of the surly atmosphere. They need to set up the tent. She needs to stay out of the wet, lest she start to melt.

But she gets to her feet, instead. "I'm going for a walk," she says, her voice small.

The humor hitches in her friend's smile, warping it into something closer to a frown. "Er…okay?"

Bonnibel doesn't reply, and as she wanders off into the darkness, she vows never to ask Marceline that again.

Never, ever.

It starts to rain, and Marceline curses, fumbling through their packs for coats, blankets—anything that will pass as a makeshift umbrella. "Stupid sugarbrain knows she's gonna melt but goes for a freaking joyride anyway," she mutters under her breath as she irritably knots a jacket around her waist and slips a second one on properly, hiking its collar up against the rain even though her hair provides more of a barrier than the stiff material can really hope to match. "Stupid lumping sugarbrain…"

She crawls out of the tent, and the steady plunking of rain on canvas is replaced with the rather more intimate plunking of rain on her face; the droplets are fat and heavy, each one bursting like a ripe berry as they strike her skin. Marceline scowls and retreats momentarily into the tent, snatching up a well-worn baseball cap and screwing it onto her head, and the pressure of it makes her ears stick out even more, appearing almost wing-like at a glance. The cap's bill shelters her face from the deluge, though, and grants her a modicum of comfort, so she sets out again, still grumbling but no longer quite so miserable.

The cliff road is dark and wet and treacherous, and only intermittent lightning flashes illuminate its tortuous length. Once upon a time, Marceline recalls, she and Simon had flashlights, but the batteries succumbed to time and use and went to rest with everything else antebellum, and they never did manage to find replacements. Marceline retains the flashlight, though, empty and useless as it is; it's stowed in the bottom of her pack, as if it will still keep her from getting lost in the dark.

It doesn't help her now, and not just because she didn't bring it along, and she slips more than once on the slick rocks, the broken asphalt of the long-forgotten mountain pass. Rusting guardrails flare and shine in the lightning's evanescent electric glow, but there's no sign of Bonnibel, not even a trail of half-melted sugary footprints, which Marceline has been hoping she'll find. Eventually, after a quarter hour of determined trekking, the half-demon discovers that the road winds back into the mountains, and along the path of least resistance, too—or the path of greatest resistance, if you're a pessimist—because it carves a tunnel into the rock face. Its far end is a distant gray smudge, and its arched length is opaque and black.

Marceline has no time to appreciate the brief respite from the rain; her breath hisses in past her fangs, instead, when she realizes what's lying on the ground just inside the tunnel.

It's a leg, still oozing sugary blood, molasses-slow.

"Bonni?" she yells, and its first iteration is a shriek, scraping up the octaves in her throat on a train of sheer panic. She grapples for control after that and manages to shout, rather more audibly over the raging storm, "Bonni! You in here? You alive? You better freakin' answer me!"

A weak reply reaches her pricked ears, small and shrill with fear. "No! Marcy, get out of here! Go away!"

Relief washes over Marceline like a tsunami wave, and it almost topples her, too. She hangs onto her balance with grim determination, and after a wavering moment of pure nausea, she gingerly lifts the severed leg—it's surprisingly heavy, for being made of sugar—and, biting back against the acid that rises unstoppably in her throat, ventures into the tunnel.

"Don't be a total moron, dude," she says, loud and carrying, although the cheerfulness falls terribly flat. "Who d'ya think you are, the lumping gingerbread man? You can't just go around lopping off your limbs and think you'll be fine."

"Didn't you hear me?" Bonnibel's voice possesses more of an edge now, its timbre buzzing like a saw. "Get outta here!"

Marceline homes in on the sound, stumbling in her haste and the inky darkness, and she can barely distinguish the shadow of her friend from the shadow of everything else. "Here you are," she declares, and she crouches down, willing the enveloping blackness to recede so that she can investigate the gum-girl's terrible injury. "I've, er, got your leg…I'll just set it down, shall I? Like right next to whatever stump you've got left, yeah?"

Bonnibel recoils in the thick gloom, though, her shoulder blades endeavoring to burrow through the stone wall behind her. "Glob, Marcy, I don't care about my leg!"

"Now that's just blood loss talking," the half-demon dismisses, and she scootches closer again, still wielding the leg like a determined carpenter wrestling with a broken chair. "Can I borrow some of your hair, maybe? I think I can, like, glue it back on, kinda, with the gum…"

"Stop it! You don't understand! Why aren't you listening to me?" Bonnibel reaches out, and at first she twists her fingers in Marceline's jacket's sleeves, as if she wants to keep her here, but then she uses her grip to propel her friend backwards, instead. "It's still here! It'll attack you next—"

But Bonnibel's warning is truncated as Marceline slams into her, and that only happens because something, in fact, slammed into Marceline. The girls' foreheads knock together sharply, dizzyingly, and with a discombobulated groan, the half-demon braces her hands on the tunnel wall and tries to lever herself back up. The weight on her back, though, is so heavy, and somehow, it's getting heavier…

"What the hell?" she grunts, and this close, she can read Bonnibel's expression: utter terror. The same fear lances through her willowy frame as a voice—low and guttural and riding cold, rancid breath—purrs in her ear.

"Ahhh, you smell good," the vampire says, slow with relish, and something that feels very much like a tongue slides slickly up Marceline's neck. "Like real blood, not that syrupy crap…"

The half-demon only has time to gasp, "Oh, shit—" before the vampire's fangs pierce the delicate skin on her neck and delve into the mineral-rich seam of her carotid artery. Agony like no pain she has ever felt before rushes through her veins: a wildfire or chain-lightning or anything that moves too fast to be predicted or blocked. It burns, it burns, and then, once her entire body is screaming itself hoarse, the pain switches direction, running against the grain of its own just-inflicted wounds as the suction starts.

She can feel like the life draining out of her, but she can't stop it.

Bonnibel tries. Not paralyzed by the vampire's poison herself, she drives her fist into the monster's head with as much power as she can manage, howling rage at him all the while. Her pummeling, though, achieves no victory, and helpless saccharine tears flood her cheeks.

Marceline's heart stops, a sudden arrest that leaves it hanging hollow behind her ribs, and it never starts again. The last thing she sees before the world fades into inescapable shadow is Bonnibel's horrified face, her eyes wide, their lavender irises washed gray in the darkness.

And then she doesn't see anything.

The vampire, swollen with blood like some disgusting, engorged spider, finally plucks his fangs from Marceline's neck and tosses her body aside with all the care and ease of a child discarding a rag doll. Another scream catches in the traffic jam in Bonnibel's throat, and she stares through the blurring screen of her tears at her friend's husk of a corpse sprawled limply on the cracked asphalt, just a shadow within a shadow.

"Mmm, delicious," the vampire says, his voice thick and lush like velvet now. "So much more satisfying than you, my candy princess. Your red was so watery, and your blood…mm, it was not very pleasing. Not nearly enough salt, no." He runs his tongue, stained with Marceline's ichor, over his icicle fangs, and his eyelids flutter at the pleasure of the taste.

A thousand desires flood Bonnibel, principal amongst them the driving need to rip out the vampire's throat, but before she can rush to any foolish action, a dry laugh rasps in the air. It's a quiet sound, and she's surprised she can hear it over the continual rumble of thunder and shudder of rain. Her own heart stills in her chest when a very familiar voice reaches her ears.

"Haha, oh, wow…did you think I'd take death lying down?"

Bonnibel's gaze flickers aside, and yes, Marceline's body is stirring, awkward like a marionette that's had its strings cut and needs to learn to stand on its own. Her hair sweeps across her face in a black curtain, but the strands slip aside to reveal her eyes, gleaming red, the dark red of sullen embers in a banked fire. Her lips pull back in a terrible grin, and the once-even serration of her teeth is interrupted now by the sharper points of prominent canines.

The vampire beast still squatting in front of Bonnibel stares at her, his jaw slipping open in wordless shock. With dint of great determination, though, he manages to speak. "I didn't want to turn you!" he all but squawks. "I wanted to kill you! I—I did kill you!"

"I'm the daughter of Evil Incarnate," Marceline lets him know, as she let Bonnibel know, and she stretches her arms wide like she's expecting applause. "You can't kill me."

She lunges then, faster than Bonnibel's eyes can follow in this gloom, and snarls her fingers in the bat-like fur rising up all over the vampire beast's body. She pivots on one foot and, with unprecedented strength, throws the monstrous form across the tunnel, where he slams into the far wall and groans pathetically.

The gum-girl stares up at her friend for a fracturing instant. "Marcy?" she whispers.

Marceline glances over her shoulder, and something in her face softens; some of the fire in her eyes dims. "This must be how Simon felt," she remarks, quiet and bitter and with half her mouth still cranked in a parody of a smirk. "Calmly accepting a curse just to protect a friend. Yeah. I think I understand now."

Her heart wrenches in her chest. "You…you came back like this…for me?" she croaks.

"Don't be an idiot, Bon," she replies, the insult curling fondly off her tongue, and her smile straightens out. "You already know I love you. Glob, you only just made me say it. So what did you expect? That I'd leave you here with this lumping freak to die? Geez." And she shakes her head. "You've got like the worst opinion of me, babe."

Her heart just writhes further. "Marcy," she echoes, plaintive and pleading—although for what, she doesn't exactly know.

"Sit tight, not that you have much choice," Marceline quips, and she jerks a thumb at the beast, who's stirring again. "I've got a vampire to slay."

The battle is hard to discern in the darkness, but Bonnibel can see that, for being new to the vampiric lifestyle—deathstyle? Unlifestyle? She'll have to work on that—Marceline manages to steal and keep the upper hand. Perhaps it's due to the fact that the other vampire seeks strength in his huge monstrous form, which might have been more of an advantage if the tunnel weren't so cramped; Marceline, by comparison, flits about easily, dodging and landing quick strikes, and Bonnibel is certain that it's not just a trick of the dark—she's certain that Marceline's flying.

The male vampire's roars suddenly cut short as the female dives in for the kill; humans might need to kill vampires with elaborate methods, all garlic and sunlight and wooden stakes in unbeating hearts, but amongst their own species, brutal violence suffices. Bonnibel closes her eyes, because even the storm-dark is not enough of a shield against the carnage, and she presses her fingers into her ears, too, so she doesn't have to hear the cold flesh tearing free of ancient bones.

She only knows it's over, then, when Marceline is gently pulling her hands down, and she blinks up at her friend. Smoldering eyes gaze back at her, level and searching, and the new vampire must feel her arms trembling beneath her grasp, as she sighs and lets go.

"Oh, Bon," she breathes sadly, "you're scared of me, aren't you."

She doesn't pose it as a question, already resigned to the answer.

"No, I'm not," Bonnibel protests, not admitting that she's more than a little disconcerted by the change. It's a lot to process, but she's a scientist by nature, and she approaches all things with as much clinical detachment as she can muster, and she scrambles for its objective comfort now. Marceline being a vampire just means there's a fresh set of variables to consider in the never-ending experiment of their lives. Nothing more, nothing less.

"My leg's torn off," she points out, as if that's a detail inconsequential enough to be forgotten. "I think the blood loss is having some ill effects on my constitution, that's all."

Marceline crouches down, her vision now augmented by the inclusion of infrared, and reviews the wound. "Yeah, it's not pretty," she remarks, her tone still a bit brittle around the edges. "I think my gum-glue idea is gonna work, though. It should keep things from getting worse, at least, while I nip back to camp and borrow a cup of a sugar, heh."

Bonnibel tugs a clump from her hair and hands the sticky wad over; the vampire accepts it without really looking and, after swiveling the severed limb so that it's lined up with the stump, she smacks it down haphazardly. "Um, there?" she ventures, tilting her head to the side without much confidence.

The other girl laughs, thin and light. "I'll seal it better while you head back to camp. Don't worry about it."

Marceline grimaces doubtfully, and she rocks back on her heels, not yet departing. The sullen embers in her eyes are shadowed by her lashes as she stares down at the ground. "I'm…not gonna end up like Simon," she whispers at length. "I know being a vampire comes with a whole ton of baggage, but I won't let the bloodlust drive me mad or anything. I won't go nuts." Her eyes flicker up. "I won't hurt you."

There's supplication in her tone. It's raw, so raw.

Brow pinching in sympathy, Bonnibel reaches out and brushes her fingertips across Marceline's cheek; the pale gray flesh is cool now, no longer suffused with the warmth of living tissue. It's more than enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she determinedly holds them at bay. "I know," she says, soft, and she taps a finger to one of the new fangs. "Besides, I have it on good assurance that I don't taste good to vampires."

"Well, we'll see about that," Marceline remarks impishly, and she sticks out her tongue, just to taunt, not to taste, but it's a fine line.

Despite the blush heating her own cheeks, Bonnibel rolls her eyes. "Glob, gross, Marcy."

The vampire chuckles and gets to her feet—or not, because she hovers above the crumbling asphalt—and this newfound ability gives her pause. After a second of deliberation, she shrugs out of her jacket, draping it over her friend, and then scoops the gum-girl effortlessly into her arms.

"Wh-What are you doing?" Bonnibel yelps, the blush returning full-force.

"Dude, I can fly," Marceline says with a shrug, and she unties the second jacket from her waist and arranges it on the other girl's legs; for a moment, then, she's just holding Bonnibel with one arm, and not apparently taxed in the slightest. "It's super radical. And, like, I can get us back to camp and to all the sugar your little candy heart desires in no time flat. Maybe it'll be the greatest thing ever, me being a vampire, eh?"

The optimism rings false, but she's trying, and hard.

After a second's hesitation, Bonnibel lowers her head to Marceline's collar, and as she shuts her eyes, she catches herself listening for a heartbeat. Her friend's chest is silent, though, and she twists her fingers in the vampire's shirt over the spot where the sound should've been. "I know it's a curse, and I know it won't be easy for you," she murmurs, throat thick, "but I'm really lumping glad you're still here."

Marceline's fingers flex. "Yeah," she agrees, "me, too."

"We'll be fine," Bonnibel adds. "We'll…we'll both be just fine."

Something like a laugh escapes the vampire as she floats out into the rain. "Oh? Is that what your science tells you? Is that a fact?" There's no real venom in her voice, though—just more bitterness.

"No," Bonnibel admits, the softest yet. "It's just faith. I believe in you. In…us."

Her lips tilt, and it might be a smile, though it's hard to tell for sure.