AN: This was the product of two thoughts about the Farmworld universe. The first was based on my, possibly incorrect, assumption that the flashback in "I Remember You" implied that Marceline and Simon met after the Mushroom War was over, which would make the fact that Farmworld!Marceline still knew him despite the fact that he died during the world in this universe something of a plot hole. The other was that, in the canon universe, in the present day - that is, present day relative to the setting of the series - Simon opens a portal to 1000 years in the past to right after he put on the crown for the first time, so he could say good-bye to Betty who he never saw again after that incident. Only to discover that the reason he never saw her again was because Betty jumped through the portal to be with him in his time, consequently sparking the reason that Simon opened the portal in the first place. Stable time loop, y'all. But in Farmworld Simon isn't alive in present day, so he couldn't have opened the portal, so Betty couldn't have jumped through it. So what exactly happens to her in this universe?
Betty looked at the little dark-haired girl – Marceline Abadeer, aged four and a half years, half-human and half-demon, if she was to be believed and Betty didn't have any particular reason to doubt her, not even on the last point, not after the things she'd seen the past few years – trudging her way through the snow alongside her and frowned, but quickly wiped the expression off her face, lest Marceline see and misunderstand. Betty wished, not for the first time this trip, that she could pick Marceline up and carry her; a little girl shouldn't have to walk through the snow for hours and hours on end. But with all the supplies Betty was laden down with from her trip to the other side of the city, she really couldn't juggle carrying someone, even a small four and a half year old someone, too. She might be able to manage Marceline's backpack, stuffed with a bulky, but not particularly heavy, down comforter, a pillow, and a stuffed animal that had been dubbed 'Hambo,' but Marceline had seemed so proud to be contributing, her little mitten-covered hands clutched tightly around both straps, and Betty wouldn't take that from her. Besides, they were almost there now. "Once we round this corner we'll be able to see my home."
"Really? We're almost to your house?" asked Marceline.
"It's not exactly a house; it's a tent, actually." She might have liked a real house, but she needed to live here and there weren't any houses, or any building left standing at all, this close to the epicenter of what happened. Even if there had been any, Betty wouldn't trust their structural integrity to live in. And there was no question of her trying to build one herself; that would be an unmitigated disaster. "But yes, we're almost there." They came around the corner and Betty gestured at the structure ahead.
It was a nice tent, at least, the best one Betty had been able to find at the sporting goods store. Then, since she didn't have to worry about portability or anything, she had done it up as nice as she could. The inside had enough rugs layered on the floor to make the ground relatively soft to walk or sit on, a good quality stove – luckily the tent had come with a built in chimney of sorts – and a smattering of cookware, a sitting/eating/study area, and her bed with a little end table, all furnished with pieces that were probably nicer than what she had had in her college dorm room. Then she'd tried to increase the tent's natural insulation by laying blankets on the roof and hanging down the sides and topped it off with layer of waterproof fabric to protect against the snow. The snow mobile out front – which Betty had originally used to help transport the heavier and more unwieldly items she had scavenged – added a nice touch to the overall picture, she thought, though now that there was no gasoline left, it was mostly just a worthless piece of junk.
"Wow," Marceline said, her eyes going wide. "Your house is purple."
"Yes it is," Betty agreed. It had been the largest bolt of waterproof fabric she had found, and why not purple? It's not as though she had been terribly concerned with aesthetics even before, and now… well, there didn't seem to be much point in it.
"And I really get to stay here with you?" Marceline asked, bouncing on her toes as best she could in snow boots and looking perfectly balanced between nervousness and excitement, with just a dash of hopefulness thrown in.
Betty smiled softly down at her. "Yes really. I want you to stay here for as long as you like."
"Even for forever?"
Betty sniffed a few times, but she seemed to be all cried out for the moment. She gripped onto Simon's, now slightly damp, shirt and snuggled in closer, though with the two of them stretched out on her couch like this, there wasn't really much closer to get.
"What can I do love; what do you need?" Simon asked, stroking her hair.
Her mother back, alive and healthy again, but Simon couldn't get that for her. No one could. "Stay," she requested instead. Because if she couldn't have the one thing she wanted, then what she needed was Simon here with her.
"Of course," he said. "I'll stay for as long as you want me, I promise."
"For forever," Betty said, because she couldn't imagine ever not wanting him here.
Simon smiled at her, and there was a light touch of something teasing in the edges of it. "Was that you asking me to move in with you, or a marriage proposal?"
"Neither. Both." Because she hadn't meant either of those things when she said it, exactly, but now that it was out there, she realized it was exactly what she wanted.
"I…" Simon hugged her in tighter and kissed her on the top of the head. "We can talk about this more in the morning, when you're feeling a little less emotionally overwrought."
"I'm still going to want to marry you tomorrow," Betty said, the words coming out as something between a threat and an assurance.
"I certainly hope so."
"Even for forever," Betty confirmed.
"Thank you!" Marceline said, giving a tight hug around Betty's waist. Then she cried, "I'll race you there. Onetwothree, GO!" and ran pell-mell toward the tent.
"No fair. I can't run carrying all this stuff; I'll fall over," Betty called after Marceline as she continued at her same measured pace.
"Nuh-uh! You're just scared 'cause you know I'm faster than you," Marceline said.
"I'm scared? That's it. Just wait until I get my hands on you; you're going to be in so much trouble, missy," Betty said, struggling to contain her amusement at Marceline's antics.
Marceline froze for a moment when she heard that and looked back up at Betty almost nervously. But then she seemed to come to the conclusion that Betty was teasing her and grinned broadly, showing off her delicately pointed teeth. "You hafta catch me first," she taunted. Then she slipped off, not into the tent like Betty had been expecting, but around the back of it.
Betty wasted no time, heedlessly dropping her things in the snow and taking off at as fast a run as she could manage. "Marceline get back here right now! Marceline Abadeer! Marcy!"
When Betty rounded the tent, Marceline was already looking down into the hole under the collapsed building, exactly what Betty had been afraid of. Luckily, just as Marceline was about to take her first step down, Betty caught up with her, scooping her up and holding her in tight, adrenaline pumping through Betty's body and making her feel a bit wide-eyed and shaky all the while.
"Ow, Betty, that hurts," Marceline protested, squirming in Betty's grip.
"Ow, Simon, that hurts," Betty said, instinctively flinching backwards.
"Good, that means it's working," Simon replied, keeping a tight grip on her hand. Once he was certain she wasn't going to pull away again, he resumed applying the antibiotic cream to the scrape on her hand which Betty had gotten when she had tripped and had had to catch herself on the park bench she was now sitting on. After the cream had all been rubbed in, he eyed the hand critically before holding his hand out for her other one, which he then began to wipe clean with his handkerchief soaked in water from his water bottle.
"Why do you all this stuff with you?" Betty asked. "We're only going for a short walk, and it's not as though I planned on tripping."
"Well I would hope you hadn't planned on it," Simon said. "Still, I thought I might as well bring it in case one of us did trip. Always be prepared, right?"
"You were never a boy scout," Betty said; she was fairly certain it would have come up by now if he had been.
"No, but do boy scouts have a monopoly on being prepared now?" Simon asked. He carefully folded his handkerchief up, then went to put the antibiotic cream on this hand too. Knowing what to expect now, Betty didn't flinch.
"Hmmm. Well, I suppose old fashioned antiquarian-to-be's can be prepared too," Betty teased.
"Yes, but I'm your old fashioned antiquarian-to-be," Simon said, and Betty hummed in agreement. She liked the sound of that. She liked it a lot, actually.
Finished with the cream now, Simon capped it and stuck it back in his pocket, then pulled out a small bandage, which he placed over the one spot on her hand that was bleeding just a bit. "There, that's not that bad, is it?"
"No, it wasn't that bad," Betty said, rolling her eyes good-naturedly. "Though I'm not convinced that the antibiotic was necessary for a couple of little scrapes. And it really did sting."
"Yes, well." Simon looked down at his hands, still cupping one of hers. "I'm only hurting you because I love you."
Oh. "Oh." They hadn't before… oh.
It must have taken Betty a bit longer to process that than she fully realized, because all the sudden it seemed, Simon started to pull away and go to stand up. Betty quickly twisted her hand around to grab him by the wrist; she didn't want him going anywhere. "I love you too."
Betty adjusted her hold on Marceline, so she still had a secure grip on the girl, but she wasn't holding her so tightly it was painful anymore. "I'm sorry sweetie," Betty said, giving Marceline a quick kiss on the forehead. "You just scared me. It's very important that you don't go down in there."
"Why, what's down there?" Marceline asked. She craned her head to peer down into the gloom, but she didn't make any attempt to get away.
"The end of the world twice over, and the man that prevented one and caused the other," Betty answered. Marceline turned back to Betty with a perplexed expression, and in fairness it was a cryptic enough answer to go over even an adult's head. "It's a long story, and we need to get all our supplies inside and put away. I'll explain it to you later tonight."
Marceline was honestly probably more of a hindrance to getting things put away than she was a help, but she was so earnest about trying to help that it really didn't bother Betty. And she did seem to start to get a handle on things somewhat as they went. Then Betty was able to distract Marceline from asking about the subject by making dinner for the two of them, something that excited little Marceline so much that Betty found herself worried about the last time Marceline had eaten all over again. But eventually dinner was finished and the dishes all cleaned and Marceline settled herself into Betty's lap and Hambo into her own lap and prompted, "You said you'd tell me about the bad man who ended the world."
"Oh no, he wasn't a bad man at all," Betty rushed to clarify. "He was the best man I've ever met. The bravest and the smartest and the sweetest and most kind-hearted…" Betty closed her eyes for a moment against the stinging in them.
When she opened them again, Marceline was staring up at her intently. "Was he your boyfriend?"
"Of course I still want to!" Simon said, and his vehemence on the matter settled the nagging worries Betty had been starting to have on the matter. "But that was something we agreed on before this blasted crown changed everything, changed me. I'm going crazy Betty; I can feel myself slipping away. And I love you more than anything in Heaven and Earth, much too much to hold you to a promise you made to a different man, and force you into something you're going to regret."
While he was speaking, Simon had placed his hand on her cheek apparently unable to help but reach out to her, even while he was trying to push her away. Push her away for her own good, or at least what he thought was her own good, and that was all the proof Betty needed that Simon wasn't as different as he thought he was. Sure, his hand pressed to her face was cold and blue, his hair had gone white and stubbornly long, his teeth were pointed, his nose almost impossibly large and elongated, and his formerly warm brown eyes were now an ice blue so light they were almost white. But beneath the superficial, they were still the exact same caring and kind eyes she had fallen in love with.
Betty reached up and took Simon's hand between both of her own. "I know what the crown is doing to you, because I've been right here beside you this whole time. And even though it kills me to see you have to go through this, right here beside you is still where I want to stay forever, in sickness and in health. Besides, look around you Simon; the whole world is going crazy. I'm not even sure that forever is going to last past tomorrow anymore. What I do know is that not being with you for as long as I can, that's what I would regret."
"He was my husband," Betty corrected. "We met years and years ago, back before the War, before you were born even. He was training to be an antiquarian – that's someone who studies and collects very old things – and one day he brought home this crown. He tried it on as a sort of joke, but then it changed him. He started seeing things that weren't there, screaming and yelling at them. He was scaring me and when I hid from him, he got upset and started screaming at me." Marceline was staring up at her wide-eyed, and Betty, reminding herself how very young her audience was, skipped past all the fear and despair she had been feeling and the devastation Simon had wrecked and went straight to the end of that particular incident. "Eventually he realized what was wrong, and threw the crown off his head, and he started acting normal again. We locked the crown away, and even though it still seemed to affect him a little bit, he didn't go crazy like that again. We hoped that might be the end of it."
"Then the war happened. And that's when things got very dangerous," Betty said.
"I know," said Marceline. Betty looked down at little Marcy, so young and so sweet, clutching her stuffed animal, and realized and appreciated for the first time that the world at war was all Marceline had ever known, just war and then endless ice and snow. How strange. How terrible.
"That's all over now," Betty said, giving Marceline a kiss on the top of the head, before continuing. "The thing about Simon's crown is, it didn't just mess with his mind. It also gave him magic powers over ice. We tried to limit his usage of it as much as possible, but sometimes he had to put it on so he could use those powers to protect us. And the more he wore the crown, the crazier it drove him, sometimes when he didn't even have it on. Still, we tried to live our lives as best as we could. And it was as we were doing that that we heard about the bomb.
"It was a terrible, terrible bomb, far worse than anything that had ever been used before. And by some cosmic coincidence we were right near where they were planning on dropping it. So Simon put on his crown for the last time, and he used his powers to freeze the bomb right before it hit the ground." Betty closed her eyes again, and this time felt a few tears trickle their way down her face.
"What happened then?" Marceline asked after a minute when Betty hadn't continued.
"Simon!" Betty cried, her relief when the bomb hadn't detonated quickly turning to fear and worry when she approached Simon from the safe distance he had made her retreat to and saw what had happened to him in stopping the bomb. "Don't worry, I'll get it off you."
"No," Simon said, the word struggling to get out between his shallow, labored breaths. "Might go off."
"But we can't leave it like this. It's crushing you; it'll kill you!"
"Gonna die anyway… Feel pretty, pretty crushed," Simon said. "Princess. Come here."
Betty left off her ineffectual attempts to push the bomb and came to kneel down by Simon's head. He was right; even if she did manage to get the bomb off of him, it wouldn't make any difference now. He was still going to… "You can't leave me like this," Betty begged. "Please Simon. I can't do this without you."
"Can. Strongest person I… I know," Simon insisted. He shakily reached out to her and used his thumb to wipe a tear from under her eye. The second his finger touched it, the tear turned to ice, and it stung as he wiped it across her face. "Sorry," he said weakly, letting his hand drop.
Betty picked his hand back up and kissed it before cradling it between both of her own. "It doesn't matter. None of that matters, just stay with me. Please, I need you."
"You'll be… you'll be alright," he assured her. There was a brief flash of fear in his eyes and his hand tightened almost imperceptibly around hers. "Betty, the crown… It's upset."
"The crown's upset? I don't understand; what do you mean?"
"It likes me," Simon said, and Betty spared a brief baleful glance for the cursed thing. How could it possibly like Simon after what it had done to him? When she looked back at Simon there was something wry about the edges of his expression. "I know. But it does. And it's… upset I'm dying. Don't know what… what it's gonna do. Won't let it hurt you. Stay safe princess. Please."
"I will. I'll stay safe, I promise," Betty said, the words coming out as sobs. She would promise Simon anything, anything at all, right now. "I love you, Simon. I love you so, so much."
There was a spark lighting up the depth of Simon's eyes when she said that, and Betty watch it slowly dim away to nothing as he sighed out with his last breath, "Love you too."
Betty took a deep breath in and wiped the tears from under her eyes. "The bomb landed on top of Simon and crushed him. He's dead." It was the first time Betty had said it out loud, for who was there to say it to now, but doing so hadn't made it any more real; she had already been far too aware of the stark reality of it. "The crown wasn't happy about having its master die, and immediately after there was a bright flash of light and a cold gust of wind. When I could see again, there was a small circle of dirt around me, and beyond that, snow and ice everywhere I looked."
"You mean it's the crown's fault that the whole world and all the people are frozen now?" Marceline asked.
"That's right," Betty said. "That's why I live here. I have to make sure that no one goes down there and accidentally sets off the bomb, or worse, puts on the crown." Because if the bomb went off now there was no one left for it to hurt really, maybe it would render Simon's sacrifice pointless, but that wretched crown had already done that when it froze the world. And Betty would not allow it to take anyone else the way it had Simon.
"I want to help!" Marceline said.
"You do?"
"Yeah, because you're my best friend, Betty, so Simon is my second best friend. And if I see anyone trying to bother him in his hole or take his crown, I'll tell them to get lost." Marceline didn't smile so much as bare her teeth, showing off how exceedingly sharp they were.
"Very intimidating," Betty complimented and Marceline's teeth baring morphed itself into an actual grin.
"So I can help?" she asked.
"Yes, you can help," Betty told her. Truthfully, she didn't think there was going to be anything to help with; Betty suspected more and more each day that there was no one else left alive to chase off, and even stumbling across Marceline crying in the middle of the abandoned street earlier did little to dampen her growing conviction. After all, Marceline was half-demon and Betty got the idea she was capable of surviving things that a normal human couldn't. If she was being totally honest with herself, Betty thought that the reason she was staying here had less to do with needing to be absolutely sure there was no one else that might stumble across the crown or the bomb, and more to do with this is where Simon was, so where else could she go?
"Besides," Betty continued, "if I've got you watching to make sure no one messes around with the crown, that'll give me more time to do my other job."
"What other job?" Marceline asked, clutching Hambo tighter to herself and forming her hands into fists. "Is it far away from here?"
"No it's right here. My other job is… spoiling you rotten," Betty said, tickling Marceline, who shrieked with laughter and began trying to squirm and wriggle her way free.
"Nooooo!" Marceline wailed once she managed to get away and she darted over to the far side of the tent. "I don't want to be rotten!"
Betty jumped up as well, and chased Marceline around until they both ended up collapsed on the floor in laughter. If Betty's laughs were a bit rusty and maybe just a little too desperate, well Marceline was still only a little girl; she couldn't tell the difference. And Betty still wasn't sure how she was going to manage without Simon, but for the first time, she started to think that they just might muddle through after all.
"I guess I never really thought about children seriously," Betty said, leaning back against the kitchen counter. "But I do like the idea in the abstract, at least."
"I think we should have a little girl," Simon said as he chopped up ingredients for dinner. "And she'll be just as wonderful as you are. And as smart and funny and beautiful and sweet –"
"You're the sweet one," Betty said, a broad smile spreading its way across her face.
"Don't interrupt," Simon chided, playfully pointing the knife at her, and Betty threw he hands up in mock surrender. "As I was saying, we should have a little girl as amazing as you, and then I can spoil her rotten."
Betty laughed. "That sounds like terrible parenting. I'm pretty sure you aren't supposed to actively plan on spoiling your kids."
"Bah, supposed to," Simon scoffed. He set the knife down on the counter and walked over to Betty, placing his hands on her hips and she wrapped her arms around his neck. "We are going to have a little girl and then I'm going to have two princesses and I'm going to spoil them both."
"Is that so?" Betty asked wryly.
"It is," Simon agreed before leaning in and kissing her.