notes: yes i know i have many other things i need to update and how dare i post something new, but. i wrote this up after midnight and i liked it so there.
fionna and cake's last name in this is mertins, because that seems to be the name everyone uses, so. also this is au, in case you hadn't already guessed. this is also super short because of reasons, but the next chapter will be longer.
summary: He's still dead, but he's getting warmer. (In which Fionna accidentally becomes involved with the Vampire King, and ends up falling for him. But life isn't that easy, is it?)
pairing: marshall lee ო fionna
disclaimer: own nothing
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turning your head to see a new day calling
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i.
When Fionna Mertins was a little girl, the boys on her street would try and scare her. As they are wont to do, they would tell her stories—of ghosts, goblins, ghouls, haunted houses, vampires, the works—and then they would watch as sweet, innocent Fionna's baby blue eyes would widen to the size of saucers as she tried to process what she'd been told.
Five-year-old girls are gullible and naïve—completely oblivious to the horrors of the world around them—and for Fionna, it was the same way. She'd never seen any scary movies or heard any stories about the supernatural before, and so the legends grabbed onto her and rooted themselves inside her in an almost unnatural way.
Sometimes she would run home, away from the laughing and snickering boys, and hide under her bed for hours.
But the fact was, Fionna was never as scared as she should have been.
Maybe it was her humanity—which allowed her to care and feel, even things like fear—or maybe it was because of her intense curiosity, but she was always more interested in the legends than she was frightened of them. And because of that inquisitive nature within her, she started to fear the creatures in the boys' stories less.
Instead she lived for adventure—to solve mysteries and explore the world around her and its wonders.
Growing up in a small town and as the only girl on her street besides her older sister made Fionna into a tomboy of sorts. Because most of her playmates were boys, she quickly grew tough and was able to hold her own in a game of roughhousing or the occasional fight. And, because she grew smarter and stronger, the boys lost their advantage of scaring her with silly ghost stories.
Which was not something that made them very happy.
So, when Fionna was the tender age of ten—all sprite-like, bright-eyed, blonde fairy child—one of the boys dared her to go into the 'haunted' house at the end of their street. Its name came from the horrible state the home was in—a broken-down front porch, dilapidated siding, broken and grimy windows, the small animals that entered only to never be seen again, and the ever-present strange noises that came from the place. Because of its unkempt exterior and the weird things that seemed to happen around it, the kids on Grassland Street had dubbed it 'haunted.'
And the thing was, all the kids were too scared to go near it, let alone inside it.
It had all started out as teasing being taken too far, and no one really expected her to accept the dare. But Fionna Mertins was not chicken, and she would not let some boy get the best of her because of some stupid dare.
So, after school had ended one cloudy autumn day, ten-year-old Fionna found herself standing on the cracked sidewalk in front of the creaky old house. Flashlight in hand, an old Kodak camera tucked away inside her green backpack that was slung over her shoulder, she turned and gave one last glance to the five trembling boys behind her.
She'd been a little frightened too, but the idea of the adventure that was waiting for her inside left her feeling more giddy than nervous. So with a roll of her eyes and a mock two-finger salute, she'd carefully picked her way up the collapsing front porch and climbed in one of the broken windows.
The boys from her street waited outside, a little too eager and fidgeting. It wasn't until the blonde had actually gone in that they'd started to have doubts about the whole thing.
Because, although Fionna went in, she did not come out.
So they waited, and waited, and waited some more.
Until the heard the terrified scream coming from inside, and it sent them running for their homes and Fionna's older sister.
Now Cake Mertins had been having a relatively peaceful day prior to the sudden sound of horrified shrieks and shouts, the banging at her front door, and the two crying eleven-year-olds on her front porch. And after coxing the full story out of the two, and recruiting some parents to help her search, they broke down the front door of the unsafe house in search of Fionna.
Who they found half-drowned in the cistern.
Apparently, she'd been coming back downstairs after investigating the second story and on her way toward the front door to report the house was ghost-free, when some of the floorboards in the kitchen gave out. They'd been covering the old source of water for decades, and had finally given out completely with the girl's added weight.
So the day ended with Fionna being rushed to the nearest hospital in a daze and with a newly acquired and intense fear of large quantities of water, and most of the peculiar happenings around the house being brushed off for several things.
The odd noises were attributed to the home's old age—it'd been standing for at least two centuries, after all, and old houses were bound to creak and groan at some point. And all the seemingly unexplainable disappearances were explained by the weak floorboards.
There was still something incredibly off about the old place, but no one except Cake Mertins seemed to take any notice of it. It was a pinprick of fear, a cold shiver down the back of her spine, the rise of goosebumps on her arms. It was something that made the seventeen-year-old extremely anxious and want to get out as fast as possible. So, after grabbing the old camera that her sister had dropped when she fell, the older girl hurried out and into the waiting ambulance holding her younger sibling.
In the end, the house was deemed absolutely unsafe and condemned, and the incident was forgotten after a year or so. Though the story and a picture of Fionna were featured on the news that Tuesday night.
That's the story of how the blonde broke her left ankle, fractured her right wrist, survived a seven foot fall, and ended up staying home from school for two months, but it's also the story of her first encounter with Marshall Lee Abadeer.
Otherwise known as the Vampire King.