It was unclear to Death how much time had elapsed since she had returned to the Underworld. He had never seen much need to mark its passage in his realm as it no longer mattered to any of his denizens. Still, it seemed like it shouldn't have been long enough to accrue the list of offenses he was currently rereading.

He looked up from his list at the woman sitting before him. She was still clearly the Marceline who had come to him however long ago for permission to live—well, stay—in the Underworld, but her look had changed significantly. Her hair was shorter and spiked in a variety of directions, the grey cloth wrapped around her to form a dress bore a striking resemblance to a burial shroud, and her hair and already-pale skin were smudged and smeared with white dust from the ground. All of this gave her a faded, ghostly appearance. The only color she couldn't dull came from her crimson eyes, which were currently glaring at him in silent defiance.

Death put down the list and walked to the table, taking a seat across from her. "I assume my guards told you why I called you here?"

"I broke some other stupid rule," she said, notably lacking in remorse. "But I don't know why this one was so bad. They didn't bring me to you the last times."

"The problem is there have been enough 'last times' that I can't ignore it anymore. You're stirring up quite a bit of trouble in my world."

She snorted. "What did we do that's so terrible?"

Death looked at the list again. "It looks like you've been involved in multiple occasions of harassing the dead, malicious haunting, aggravated spooking, conspiracy to terrorize mortals, aiding and abetting poltergeisting…"

"You make it sound all evil and official when you say it like that," she complained.

"How would you describe it?"

"They were just pranks! We were just having fun with people, giving them a bit of a scare. What's the big deal?"

"We've also gotten numerous stories of your 'gang' physically interacting with mortals." He looked up at her. "Violently."

"Only ones that deserved it," she muttered.

He laid the list back down between them. "The point is, your gang's fun is causing trouble for the rest of the ghosts who are just trying to sort out their issues. Some of them actually want to be able to move on to the Dead Worlds, not just linger on in limbo to mess with people."

Marceline hunched her shoulders. "So? We weren't stopping them."

"Your mischief has a habit of slowing down the process of introspection. Besides, I can't have my dead messing with the living. Reflects badly on how I run the place."

She rolled her eyes. "All right, fine, but why are you blaming all this on me? What about the others?"

"I can deal with them more directly. I've restricted their movements until they tone down their haunting methods to a more reasonable pace. You, I don't have such control over."

Marceline smirked a bit proudly. "So, what? Are you going to ground me from the living world? Make me polish all the skeletons or clean up after the Deathwyrms?"

He tapped his finger on the table, looking down. "Actually, I was thinking it may be time for you to leave."

Her indignant demeanor cracked slightly. "What, you're kicking me out?"

"Marceline, you're the one who came here, begging me to let you stay even though you're undead, not dead. You said you were sick of the living world, but in no time you joined up with a gang of ghosts and started spending more time up there than you do down here!"

"I have to go back to feed," she argued. "The blood down here is gross. Besides, those guys actually accept me and want to hang out, unlike most of the dead around here."

"They like having someone corporeal who can more easily affect the living. But you're not helping them, Marceline. You're just making it easier for them to find reasons to stick around the living world instead of moving on."

"Maybe they don't want to move on," she mumbled.

"Or maybe you don't want them to."

She flinched slightly.

Death leaned forward, folding his hands together, and took on a firm, but quiet tone. "Why did you come here, Marceline?"

She looked at him sideways, confused. "I told you. I didn't want to deal with the other vampires and the stupid mortals anymore. I figured people here would get me."

"Everyone here was once a mortal too, except me, of course. Same personalities and problems even after passing over. Why are you really here?"

She squirmed a bit, then glared up at him, but couldn't hold his gaze for long. "I just got sick of it, all right?"

"Sick of what?"

"Everything!" she blurted, her temper flaring. "The world, the people, the stupid mutant things! I'd just rather be here where things just stay the same all the time!"

Death sat back. "Ah."

"What?" She glared at him. "Why are you looking at me like that?"

"How long ago were you turned?" he asked. "It was just after the Mushroom War, right?"

"Almost five hundred years ago," she said reluctantly.

"Yeah, I figured that was about right." He scratched his mandible. "Those anniversaries have a tendency of making people reassess their life. Well, un-life in your case. So you'd had enough of the living, but you didn't go back to the Nightosphere, which tells me you were looking to get away from everyone. Fresh start, right?"

"Maybe," she admitted.

"If you really wanted a blank slate, you know you could have taken a drink of the water down here. Forget everything and everybody you knew."

"No!" Her eyes flashed with sudden, vibrant fear. "No way."

"Right, thought not. And you didn't stake yourself, so you weren't ready to move on to the Dead Worlds just yet either."

"Look, is this my punishment?" she snarled. "Getting analyzed by a skeleton for eternity?"

He chuckled slightly before standing up and gesturing her to do the same. "Do you know why some people stick around as ghosts instead of going straight to the Dead Worlds?"

She stared at him, still leaned back in the chair with her arms crossed. "Because they want to?"

"Because there's something they're not willing to let go of yet. There's still something they care about enough to keep clinging to the living world. Or someone, even if they can't remember them."

Her eyes flickered down away from his.

Death opened the door and stood, holding it with the patience of the grave. Marceline broke first, finally getting out of the chair and floating out of his house.

Hovering over the white bone meal sand that surrounded the modest building, she hunched with her arms wrapped around herself. "So that's it, huh? Even Death doesn't want me around."

He closed the door behind them, shaking his head. "I tried to explain it to you when you asked me to let you stay here: there's a big difference between being dead and undead. One day, when you die for the last time and you're truly ready to let go, I'll be there to welcome you just as I was five hundred years ago. But it's not that time yet.

"However, if you're going to continue haunting the land of the living, little spirit, I won't send you away empty-handed."

He led her to a wall of musical instruments that rose from the ground in his yard. Looking over them, he selected one and held it out to her. "I'm going to give you the one thing every ghost is truly looking for."

She stared at him dubiously. "A guitar?"

He smiled his eternal toothy grin. "A voice. For their pain to be heard."

He continued holding the guitar out. Slowly she reached out and took it, looking it over curiously.

Two stools appeared on the platform at the base of the wall. Death took a second guitar down from the wall and sat down on the nearest stool. "You can stay until you know how to play to my satisfaction. That's the new deal. Or your punishment, if that's how you'd rather look at it. Now sit down and hold the guitar on your lap like this."

She did, the instrument settling naturally against her. Sure enough, he could see a spark of interest beginning to flicker past the wall of indifference she'd put up.

"All right, now put your fingers like this. See which ones are on which strings? Hold them down tight now. Now try strumming and see what that sounds like. Good. That's called a C chord. Now switch your fingers like this. See the difference? Try that…"

Slowly, hesitantly, notes began to flow through the silence of Death's garden. Over another undifferentiated span of time, they would become melodies and songs and harmonies, but for now they were simply the disjointed, careful sounds that always have to come first when one is learning how to speak.