Marceline leaned against the dank wall of the cave that she had stumbled into in a desperate escape from the sunlight. It had been days at least since her transformation, since she had killed the Vampire King, or weeks, or years. She had lost track, wandering through a daze of hunger and temptation. Time was split neatly for her now, into the relief of dark and the frantic pain of sunlit days, but she couldn't remember how much had passed.
And for weeks she hadn't eaten. She had tried to force herself to eat the food that she had consumed before she had been bitten, but the mere thought choked her with nausea. The hunger was crippling, strangling her thoughts. She could feel her ribs, jutting out from her sides. As she wandered from dark place to dark place, her mind filled with a crimson mist. She had to isolate herself from any other living creature; she was weakening, and the hunger would consume her if there was blood within her reach.
Marceline was not a saint, not by any standard. She herself would be the first one to admit it. She had never been against tricks or violence, and she couldn't afford to spare others pain at any cost to herself. But neither could she swallow the idea of stealing lives for her own sustenance every day of her unending lifespan. It would drive her insane- more insane than she was already, too far into evil and psychosis to ever come back.
And so she wandered through scarlet dreams, through a haze of hunger that gripped and moved her limbs, as she weakened from fighting it every step that she took. She was dizzy, too drained and exhausted to think clearly. She slept through the scorching days, through most of the dismal nights, and she lost track of sleeping and waking and day and night and wondered if she would ever open her eyes again.
One night, she looked out of the mouth of her cave with heavy eyes that it taxed her to keep open. The moon was nearly full, casting a soft silver light across her skeletal form. There was a group of trees near the edge of the cave that cast a shadow over its mouth to protect her on bright days. She thanked them, mentally, for helping her.
The nearest one was an apple tree. The fruit was dark in the moonlight, crimson-black as blood spilling from a deep gash. Her cold heart thudded quickly, somewhere between lust and anticipation. She wondered if they tasted of blood. She stumbled to her feet, moving like a marionette with snapped strings. The few strides it took to cross to the tree felt like leagues as she willed her disconnected, failing body to move. Finally, her bony fingers clenched around one of the fruits. Half-delirious, half-convinced that they would be filled with blood, true crimson, redder than the juice of rotting cherries, than the heart of old wine-
Her legs collapsed as she sank her fangs into the fruit, biting through her lip as the colour red swirled into her mouth and dripped from her chin, restoring a spark of strength to her fragile bones. She dropped the grey, drained apple and reached greedily for another, not caring that there was red dripping from her teeth like blood, or that she could hear her own crazed laughter, or that after an eternity of starvation, her body wouldn't be able to stand the sudden excess. But she couldn't help laughing, with mad relief, that she didn't have to be a monster after all.
She didn't have to be like her father.