"We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with sleep." THE TEMPEST
The lights scoured the lab with their intensity, peeling away at her sanity. She sat crouched over her table, scribbling notes and periodically checking the monitors. Her bubblegum hair was slowly falling out of its knot, her skin had taken on an unhealthy sheen, and her lab coat had a several stains on the once pristine white. Small cuts littered her face and large scrapes covered her right arm, but they were minor. All minor. No need to care to them. Not yet. Not until he was okay.
The periodic beeps of the monitor (too spread out… not enough, her sleep deprived mind whimpers) begin to flatline and it for a second she can't breathe. Because no, no, this can't happen, he's the hero, her hero. She calms herself instantly, if there's one thing she is, it's controlled and thinks of a logical way to continue.
She proceeds over to the operating table he has been lying on, unconscious for hours…. maybe days. She bites her lip when she hooks an experimental solution up into the IV. If her hypothesis is correct, it should begin to rebuild his nervous system by traveling through his blood and into his brain. However his biochemistry is completely different from a candy rat or even a candy person… so all she can do it hope.
The monitor gives a few half-hearted, warbling beeps before giving up. And she knows she's lost him.
She doesn't cry, but something heavy settles in her chest and she knows that it shouldn't end like this, not for him, not now. It should have been on the battlefield, surrounded by friends, it should have been when he was old and content with his life.
She thinks about kissing him, remembering fairy stories and his silly beliefs about liking someone a lot. She doesn't, but she very nearly does and it doesn't feel silly when she thinks about it, but she's smart and she's logical and she knows that it would be pointless.
But then she looks down at him (cold, lifeless) and thinks. And she's trembling, but she has to fix because she doesn't know what else to do.
So she rips him open.
Until one day his eyes blink awake and he's mostly the same but sometimes she wakes up ice cold and prays to Glob she made the right choice and sometimes he looks dangerous, terrible even. But he's there, he's alive and that's all that she cares about.
And she had lived before him (long before him, if she dares think about it), but she isn't sure she can live after him.
a/n: i wanted to write a fluffy finn/pb fic because i love them and there isn't enough, but this happened instead.