They were young. Marceline remembered that. Short and stout and flat, they gamboled across the hills, holding hands, pink in blue, blue in pink, the colors in a way symbolic when intertwined together with the shapes of their chubby fingers. They stumbled and laughed and pushed each other over. Marceline sang, and Bubblegum blushed.
Marceline particularly remembered that. Bonnibel wouldn't sing. She wouldn't even hum, or whistle, or tap a beat out on her knees with the open palms of her hands. The only noises she emitted were carefully calculated phrases and the occasional accidental squeal when she fell and rolled down the side of the gently sloping hills.
The vampire princess, soon to be the self-proclaimed vampire queen once her chest swelled and her legs lengthened and thinned considerably, lived for the noises she could elicit from the girl, noises that the girl didn't mean to make. She didn't understand it then, but she would surprise Bonnibel just to hear her squeak.
When Marceline sang to her, terrible songs, awful songs that her father taught her, Princess Bubblegum would only blush.
And when Marceline sang her good songs, her favorite songs, songs that Simon had taught her…well. She would blush then, too. But she wouldn't look so frightened, then.
They were young, and there were many things that neither of them understood. They didn't understand the rotting corpses, the husks of cities, the piles of goo slowly coalescing into sentient beings (although Princess Bubblegum was slowly gaining a grasp on this, thanks to the efforts of her father). They didn't understand the tribes of half-human, half-processed food creatures that would travel together at night and hide in cool places at night to avoid the heat, who could be seen dancing around and stomping the ground and singing songs that sounded something like gibberish and something like sorrow (although Marceline was slowly becoming familiar with this last thing, as Simon lost his grasp on reality, as her father lost his grasp on sanity).
They didn't understand what it meant to be alive at a time when animals could speak and some of them were missing body parts and some of them had extra body parts. They didn't understand that this was not normal, that it was not normal to live in a trailer in which your decidedly human father created candy people and declared himself king over them, or in a cave with a man who no longer recognized you, who talked to penguins and declared himself king of snow and ice and waste.
But they understood each other. They knew every scar on each other, every ripped hole in each other's clothing, every facial expression, every smile, every frown, every tone of voice. They were all they had. They understood that, as young as they were.
They understood a hunger for knowledge, to know more, to understand more, a hunger more pronounced than the one that panged their bellies on days that their fathers forgot that they needed to eat, Princess her candy, and Marcy her red.
Most times, it seemed Bonnibel understood an awful lot more than Marceline, because her father was so conscientious about teaching her all that he knew, and because Marceline only understood what she could pick up on her own, and what Simon had taught her before he completely broke down. But Marceline knew that she understood something that Bonnibel could never quite wrap herself around, and this fact made her more sad than proud of herself.
She understood singing. She understood talking without talking, knowing without needing to, seeing without believing, believing without seeing. She understood laughing and hatred and fear and singing. She understood singing even when people told you that you couldn't. She understood doing things that people told you not to do. She understood the tribes. She understood the feelings that could only be expressed in one way. She understood what you can only understand through singing.
And she understood that Bonnibel never would.
They were young. Marceline remembered that. Marceline remembered a lot of things that Bonnibel did not.
Marceline remembered singing.
AN: Just a short little drabble about my OTP's childhood. Loosely related to my other fic, Denial Time. But you don't have to read that one to understand this one, or vice versa. I listened to Sing, by the Dresden Dolls, on a loop while I wrote this.
I hope you enjoyed it.
Feedback is always welcome.