Oneiric Nightmare
Universe: Genderbent canon universe.
Pairing: Gumlee, but with mentions of Fiogum (one-sided feelings).
Words: 8,829
Rating: T for some mild gore, verbal profanity and potentially distressing situations.
Summary: When Ooo's greatest hero, Fionna, is afflicted by a magical curse, Marshall Lee and Gumball enter her dreams in an attempt to fight the monster that has entered her mind. However, as the two inevitably begin to bicker, their plan falls apart completely and their shared dream quickly becomes a horrific nightmare.
Soft sunlight struck a billowing cloud of dust particles as it poured through an overhead skylight, causing the dispersed motes to glimmer and sparkle like myriad airborne gemstones.
The bar of light fell almost directly onto the face of a youthful teenage girl, her face framed by undulating ripples of thick blonde hair that burst forth, no longer constrained by the distinctive hat she usually wore. Her pale faced appeared to glow in the illumination, relaxed and serene, her eyes gently closed.
Only… she was too serene.
The cream-and-ginger tail of Cake the Cat swished nervously through the air as the feline regarded her friend, with concern etched across her whiskered face.
"Oh, sister," she murmured weightily, practically sighing the words out. "It's been almost three days now, an' chew still haven't woken up…"
On the opposite side of Fionna's bed stood the hunched, lab coat-swathed figure of Doctor Prince, who was busy manipulating a syringe of clear liquid. "Quiet, please," he muttered without diverting his eyes from the task at hand. "I'm measuring out a dose here. I have to be very cautious to get the right amount, or your friend's head may explode."
Cake cringed at the imagery that the doctor's words brought up within her mind. Fionna was already within a precarious enough state as it was. In this instance, she was as calm as a sailing ship on a breezeless ocean, but Doctor Prince had informed her earlier that the human's situation was unstable at best. Reportedly, she had been writhing uncontrollably throughout the course of the previous night, and had even come close to choking on her own vomit.
It was too late for regrets, but the shapeshifting feline couldn't help but wish that they had never entered that dungeon in the first place. The warnings were all too obvious, but the daring duo were always willing to forsake a few disturbing rumours if an epic adventure and a rare and powerful treasure was involved. The allure of escapism and discovery was too much to resist.
And it had now come to this.
Cake was so absorbed in her emotions – a mournful stew of sorrow, guilt and fear – that she barely noticed the double doors at the far end of the infirmary swing open. The two portals, fashioned from twin giant slabs of chocolate, made a soft squeal as they revolved inwards on their hinges. Gentle footsteps echoed around the spacious room as they hit the biscuit-tiled floor, creating a rather subdued and apprehensive rhythm.
"Oh, Cake, you're already here, I see." As the friendly voice, tinged at the edges with melancholy, joined the footsteps, Cake finally broke out of her trance and turned to face the speaker.
Prince Bubba Gumball appeared as resplendent as ever in his magenta and rose-tinted outfit, his tuft accurately positioned and his bubblegum body at a perfectly upright angle. Yet the perfection of his features ended at his face. His cheeks were paler than usual, the stress lines on his forehead accentuated, his eyelids drooping with melancholy. The sadness in his amethystine eyes caused his gentle smile to curdle somewhat.
"Howdy, Gum-Gum," Cake greeted, though her sentence lacked its usual vigour and enthusiasm. "So you've come to see her too?"
"Of course," Gumball replied, edging closer to Fionna's bedside. He was cautious to steer clear of Doctor Prince, who was now carefully stirring another medical concoction in a beaker. "I came as soon as I could. I would've visited as soon as she was brought in, but I was rather busy at the time…" The candy prince sighed, his voice taking on an edge of bitterness. "Sometimes being prince of a kingdom really sucks."
Gumball gently extended his arm to sweep a stray lock of honeycomb hair out of Fionna's face. "I'm sorry, Fionna…" he murmured. The expression that he held as he gazed down at the comatosed human girl could only be described as heartbreaking.
Cake shook her head. "No, Gumball. If anyone should be sorry, it should be me. I suggested enterin' that dungeon in the first place, without even knowin' how dangerous it was. I mean, if I had known a monster like that was down there, an' it was willing to go this far to protect its treasure, then, well…"
"Don't blame yourself, Cake," Gumball replied without taking his eyes off Fionna. "There was no way you could have known. The rumours surrounding that dungeon were vague, at best. And I had no idea that this monster was little more than a legend, until now…"
The bubblegum monarch straightened up and turned towards Doctor Prince. He hesitated a little before speaking, as though afraid of the potential response. "Doctor Prince… Have… have you made any more progress on developing a cure?"
"Not much," the doctor responded without turning around. "The concoction I'm currently mixing should be enough to keep her body functioning normally for another day. But as for actually waking her up, well… I fear we may be out of options. I've tried almost everything, but it seems there is no cure for this condition… this 'Oneiric Nightmare'. Did you say it was instigated by a magical curse?"
"Sorta…" Cake replied. "It happened jus' as we thought the monster was down for the count. Fionna had pierced the thing's heart with her sword, but then it just kinda dissolved into goo and then it… it… absorbed into Fi's body and… and…" The cat's voice broke.
"Magical curses aren't exactly my specialty," Doctor Prince admitted as he jabbed another syringe, this one stocked with the full concoction, into Fionna's forearm. He readjusted his glasses upon his nose. "If that's the case, perhaps you should go to Wizard City. Believe me, I've been there before and magical curses is almost all they talk about."
"Perhaps." Prince Gumball stroked his chin thoughtfully. "All knowledge of the creature causing Fionna's condition has been lost to the centuries. Legend has it that it was capable of entering the minds of its victims and incapacitating them by transforming into a nightmarish dream that prevented them from waking. There's no known cure, but maybe… just maybe…" The pink-haired monarch uttered the word as if it were a prayer to Glob. "…maybe Turtle Prince's library has something that can give us a few clues…"
Very suddenly, a derisive chortle reverberated around the room, followed swiftly by a disembodied voice, whose tone was just as derogatory. "Holy Glob, you must be desperate if you're thinking of getting advice from that turtle-headed moron." Another mocking cackle followed before the voice continued, "It's honestly hilarious, how little you guys know, despite the fact that you pretend to know everything."
Gumball clenched his jaws together, instantly recognising the voice as belonging to one of his less agreeable associates. "Marshall Lee, show yourself!" he demanded. "You're not supposed to be in here without a doctor's consent!"
Under his disguise of invisibility, the vampire's reply was ubiquitous. It was impossible to pinpoint his location by sound alone. "Ohohoho! What's the matter, Gummy? Does it bother you that you can't boss me around like one of your sweet, sugary little candy people, with all your rules and laws? Let me tell you, a vampire king takes orders from no-one."
The candy prince's entire body convulsed, his signature quiff undulating like jelly as he felt two icy palms make contact with his shoulders. Marshall Lee the Vampire King materialised at that moment, his fanged grin widening with glee at the way in which Gumball's face had paled. "Heh heh heh!" the vampire snickered. "You're so soft, Gummy. Too bad your brain is a tad hard-boiled."
The bubblegum prince's rose-tinted face was now closer to the colour of the towering snowdrifts of the Ice Kingdom, but it quickly flushed back to an even deeper shade of pink as the monarch's brow creased in indignation. "How dare you!"
Crimson eyes rolled as Marshall leant casually backwards, floating freely in mid-air, before swivelling back to meet Gumball's. The vampire's irises glittered darkly, like twin rubies with sharply-cut edges. "Come on. Is that really the best that you can do?"
Cake interjected before Gumball could emit another retort, turning on the newest arrival. "Jus' cut it out, Marshall! Whatcha doin' here anyways?" she demanded, her feline irises glowering.
"Whoa," Marshall Lee replied, chuckling lightly as he put his hand up in a time-out gesture. "Take it easy, kitty. I only came here to see Fionna. She's my friend too, isn't she?"
Gumball's eyes fixed on the vampire like purplish laser beams – albeit laser beams that were not very effective against their target, as Marshall simply ignored them. The prince was fine with the vampire having come to visit Fionna, but he strongly objected to the lack of respect he got from the black-haired rocker. Why was it that Marshall always had to reduce him, making him seem like an utter fool whenever he happened to be in the vampire's company?
Doctor Prince, meanwhile, surveyed the unfolding scene impassively from behind the lenses of his dark-rimmed glasses. "Well, I suppose my work here for the moment is done," he muttered conclusively, stopping only momentarily to pick up a briefcase before striding towards the door.
"W-wait!" Gumball called, a note of desperation creeping into his voice. "Don't you… surely there's… some other way… some advice you can give us?"
Doctor Prince did not look back, even as he grabbed the chocolate handle of the door. "You heard. I've done my analysis. There is no known cure for her condition." He waved dismissively. "I will be back to check on her in five hours' time. In the meantime, Doctor Ice Cream will oversee her."
As the door closed with an echoing slam, Marshall shot a triumphant smirk Gumball's way. "Expert advice can only go so far, Gummy. Guess it's a good thing I have the cure."
"You have the cure?!" Gumball and Cake both screeched in unison, incredulous.
"Mmm-hmm." Marshall's arms were folded nonchalantly as he hovered above the ground, eyes closed.
"Why didn't you say so earlier?" Every word that Gumball spoke was insistent and sharp, as though signalling a countdown to detonation.
Marshall rolled over in the air, so that he was facing the other two with his stomach parallel to the ground. "It didn't seem like it was that much of deal. Not until I heard about what happened last night, though…"
In response, Cake huffed. "That kinda makes me question how good a friend you are to her, really. If you knew what was wrong, then why didn't cha just come straightaway?"
The vampire's scarlet gaze fixed on the cat. "I don't think you'd understand. I live a… pretty complicated lifestyle." He punctuated the last sentence with an irritatingly enigmatic smirk.
Gumball did his best to reign in his frustration. "Alright, Marshall. Where's this cure?" It was even more difficult to keep the longing from entering his voice.
"Right here." After a quick rummage in the hooded cloak that Marshall had donned to protect himself from the outside sun, he brought out a sizeable crystalline vial filled with soft cream-coloured powder, each mote as round and fluffy as a dandelion clock.
"This is Dream Powder," Marshall informed before Gumball had time to ask. "One single breath of this stuff causes you to fall asleep, and allows you to enter the dreams of those around you."
Violet eyes filled with a chaotically swirling mixture of wonder, fascination and incredulity fixed on the vial the vampire held. "So… your plan is… that we enter Fionna's dream… and try to expunge the monster from the inside?"
Marshall's smirk widened. "Correct. Hey, Gummy, you might not be so hard-boiled after all."
"That's still a ridiculous and rather reckless idea," Gumball huffed, his mouth curdling. "Entering someone's dreams? Do you have any idea of the amount of risk involved in that, Marshall? It could end up affecting our psychology permanently, and –"
"Ya think I didn't know?" Marshall casually tossed the crystal container upwards as he said this. Gumball felt his stomach involuntarily lurch as the vial plummeted, only for Marshall to capture it expertly at the last minute before it hit the ground. "Life's more fun when you live it risky."
"I can agree with that," Cake put in.
Gumball's facial muscles tensed in aggravation. He didn't want to do this. He had an intense feeling of trepidation in his abdomen, as though something would go horribly wrong, with the situation ending up far worse than before, should he agree to this. But what if it really was the only way? What if… what if he had to take this risk in order to see Fionna's glimmering oceanic eyes again, in order to see fierce determination irradiate her face as though a passionate flame blazed within her?
A long pause followed – or at least, to Gumball, it felt as though an aeon had passed; an uncertain balance between two decisions. "I… alright. Fine. Let's do it, Marshall."
"Yeah!" Cake cheered, considerably more ecstatic now that she knew there was a course of action she could take in order to save her friend. "Fi, we're comin' for ya!"
The candy monarch cleared his throat. "Er… Cake. I think it's best if you don't come in with us. We'll need someone to stay awake, to watch over us and wake us up when the time comes. Also, when Doctor Ice Cream arrives, you can inform him of what's happening."
Cake's smile snapped off her face. "Wh-what? Why… why me?! You know that I bash on monsters fer a livin'! You guys'll need me in there."
Gumball's mouth twisted uncomfortably. "This… I'm not sure if this monster will be the same type that you're used to. It'll require… more than just a bashing. Right, Marshall?"
Marshall Lee shrugged. "Hey, come on. I know as much as you do about this thing. I just figured that because it involved dreams, we could use this stuff." He tapped his pale fingers against the surface of the vial.
"But… if you an' Marshall go in alone… won't cha just start arguin' an' messin' everythin' up?" Cake protested.
"It'll… it'll be fine, Cake." Gumball was struggling to believe his own words. "Besides… you know so little about this creature. I'm not really sure if you're prepared for it…"
"I can take on anything –"
"No, you can't," Marshall interrupted, his voice surprisingly and uncharacteristically earnest. "Gummy's right for once. You see… in a dream, crazy stretching powers mean nothing. From what I've heard, this monster fights with its mind, not its body… however that works. Gumball might be able to handle it, but you…"
Cake's expression changed rapidly from determined, to crestfallen, and then to one of outrage; changing with an exaggerated stiffness that was almost comical, like a series of photographic stills being projected through a film reel. "You… so you… think I'm… thick?" she spluttered, not so much inquiring as demanding.
"Well, no, of course not, but –" Gumball started.
"Well, yeah," Marshall Lee replied bluntly. The vampire ignored the glare the candy prince sent his way. "But that's only the half of it. See, you have absolutely no idea what you're getting into. That's why you can't come."
Before Cake had time to protest again, Gumball cut in hurriedly: "Cake, we need you out here. Fionna needs you, too. It's not just as simple as kicking a monster around the block this time."
"Whatever," Cake huffed, refusing to meet the eyes of the others, her feline irises instead fixed on Fionna. "It's your choice. But if something happens to Fi and I'm not in there –" She broke off, her voice wavering with worry.
"Everything will be all right, Cake," Gumball murmured sympathetically, though the assurance of his words was hollow.
"Let's get going, Gummy." Marshall turned towards him, claret orbs showing nothing but sincerity. He was no longer floating; he stood, poised and tense, though he deliberately hung back from the shaft of sunlight that lanced across the room. He dug his pale fingers into the vial and brought up a large handful of slumber-inducing powder to his nose. Just before the vampire's face became slack and vacant with sleepiness, Gumball thought he saw a smirk flash from Marshall's lips, as though he was attempting to convey a secret message.
As the vampire fell back in a drowsy and rather melodramatic collapsing sequence, he tossed the vial upward, throwing it in a tall enough arc to allow Gumball to stumble forward and catch it before it hit the ground.
"Good luck." Cake muttered as the bubblegum monarch shoved his hand inside. The cat's voice was still morose, but her words were genuine. Gumball nodded in the seconds before he filled his nose with dream dust and watched the world around him blur and distort into oblivion.
"You took your time, didn't cha?"
That sarcastic and impatient sentence was the first thing Gumball became aware of upon entering the dream. He heard it before he saw anything, much less before he saw Marshall Lee himself.
Scenery erupted into existence around him, fully formed from its first moment of creation. A quixotic paradise unravelled before him and out in all directions; an impossibly gnarled and beautiful oak tree dominated the area, radiating gigantic buttress roots that were each vast enough to accommodate an entire city. The upper branches were lost in the atmosphere, the moss on the roots stretching for miles. Coils of twisted vines, thick as the stone towers of a fortress, constricted the great tree, whose diameter was probably larger than that of the entire planet of Ooo. An indigo lake, more aptly called an ocean, pooled in a world-sized hollow beneath the arboreal behemoth, filled to the brim with an entire galaxy of stars. The celestial lights shone brightly, despite the fact that the sun shone down simultaneously from a cloudlessly blue sky.
Gumball observed the dreamscape from his vantage point, from the edge of one of those leviathan roots, its mahogany cliffs plummeting into infinity before reaching the surface of the lake. Although Gumball had read up extensively on the subject of dream-travel, nothing he had read in the battered tomes of his personal library had prepared him for… this. For lack of a better word, Gumball was dumbstruck.
It took a few moments before he could tear his eyes from the scene, etched in such phenomenal detail – he even began doubting that it was really a dream – to meet the expectant gaze of Marshall Lee.
"O-of course," he replied somewhat detachedly. "Time is meaningless within dreams. A single second in the real word could equal entire hours within the dreamscape…"
Marshall shrugged dismissively. "Whatever. You're here now, and that's what matters. So tell me, genius: if this place is supposed to be a nightmare, then why in the fucking Nightosphere does it look and feel so lovely? I mean, I can't remember the last time I felt sunlight like this without burning up."
"From what I've read, this is the dreamscape monster's way of preventing its host from waking. If you were having a nightmare all the time, then the terror would eventually be enough to shock you awake. Or perhaps you'd eventually realise that you were dreaming and your mind would start to fight back. Either way, that's why the monster constantly changes the dreamscape. It keeps things running just like a real dream, but keeps everything just plausible and wonderful enough to keep its host subdued. Sometimes it even uses its host's own memories to construct a dreamscape. But it isn't always rosy and perky; it fluctuates between good and bad, like real life. Hence the name Oneiric Nightmare."
"Sounds great," Marshall replied, glancing down at the swirling constellations in the water below. "Glad to have you on board, know-it-all. Will we be able to change the dream at all, y'know, just by thinking about it?"
"Um, no." Gumball was unsure whether to take his dubbing of know-it-all as an insult or compliment. Knowing Marshall, it was probably an insult. "It doesn't work like that here. I guess you've dream-travelled before. But in an Oneiric Nightmare, we're almost as helpless as the host. Of course, we know that we're dreaming… but that doesn't mean we can manipulate it. This is the monster's creation, Marshall… I think that any attempt to change it might alert it to our presence… or worse…"
At that, Marshall chortled in his typical derisive manner. "What's worse than that, Gummy? C'mon. We're in a dream. We can do anything, right?"
"Marshall," Gumball insisted, his anger growing. "Did you listen to a word that I've said?"
"Who's the more experienced dream-traveller here?" the vampire posed, red eyes pulsing.
"Marshall - !"
Before the pink-haired candy monarch could register what was happening, he was plummeting the endless drop down to the lake. A body pressed against his own, dragging him downwards, a fanged smirk visible several inches from his face. "Marshall…?" he mouthed, surprised at the vampire's proximity. But even moreso, he was surprised at the fact that he wasn't feeling uncomfortable at the close contact, or angry that Marshall had recklessly thrown himself with Gumball in tow off the edge. In that moment, violet eyes clashed with red. The candy prince merely felt content – safe, almost, in the vampire's tight grasp. Although he couldn't rationalise the feeling, he could hardly deny that it was there. Unless that, too, was perhaps part of the dream?
All too soon, vampire and prince separated. They hit the water, but that instant was not an experience of submersion; instead, it was almost like passing through a window and then rebounding off the other side of the surface, as if it were an aquatic trampoline. Gumball shot upwards before corkscrewing towards the ground, his body revolving too rapidly for him to be aware of much more other than a beige-greenish blur. He hit the ground much more softly than was realistically possible. But then again, this wasn't exactly reality, after all.
Gumball picked himself up, his eyes immediately settling on Marshall Lee's perfectly upright, unruffled body just a few short metres away. The vampire had his back to him, his ruby irises fixed on the scene before him: a veritable plethora of granite detritus, a series of crumbling ruins, decrepit but still retaining a mystic and grandiose aura. The ruins curved upwards endlessly in an enigmatic, tiered spiral, amphitheatre-like and interspersed with all manner of foliage. Yet the sky above was non-existent.
"Marshall, where are we?" Gumball demanded as soon as he had reoriented himself enough to stand without wobbling. Even so, he skittered slightly on the sepia stones. "What in Glob's name did you do?" The candy prince spoke the last word of that sentence as though Marshall had committed an act of utter perfidy.
"Calm down, Gummy. I know what I'm doing. Big old Dreamguts hasn't noticed us yet, I assure you." Before Gumball could protest otherwise, the vampire rapidly continued. "Look, it doesn't matter if he does notice us or not. So long as we have enough time to find Fionna and convince her that she's dreaming, everything's rosy, right?"
"You don't understand, Marshall," Gumball stated in exasperation. You idiot, he almost added.
The red-eyed immortal shook his head, spluttering. "Oh, Gumball, Gumball! There are so many things that you don't understand, well, I wouldn't even know where to begin." His tone grew more impatient and irritable, his eyes smouldering like bubbling magma. "All you ever do is read dusty old books. That's where all your know-how comes from. But I'm the expert here, you see. I can sense Fionna's presence here, in these ruins. Probably thinks she's having the adventure of a lifetime. But she isn't. That's why you've got to wake up to reality, Pinky. You can't pretend that you're still in your cosy little castle, holed up in some library, nibbling on those pathetic little cupcakes you love so much. It's like you're the one who's stuck in a dream. Just so fucking oblivious." Marshall's eyes snapped away from Gumball's gaze. "Well, do you want to save Fionna or what?" he spat bitterly.
Gumball attempted to reply with his own retort, but the words stuck in his throat as though caught in a spider's web hanging just above his larynx. He couldn't argue with Marshall's tirade. It was true. Not only that; it also disoriented and confused Gumball, throwing him right off balance. Marshall had driven an unforeseen knife into his gut, hit him with a fault of his that he hadn't even been previously aware of. And there was something else, too. Something that hid behind Marshall's words, a shadowed truth, just out of Gumball's hearing range. But he could sense it.
A shade too bewildered to answer, Gumball merely followed the vampire into the looming entrance of the ruined dungeon.
The fern-framed beige brickwork quickly gave way to a damp, columned tunnel dripping with turgid moss. The enclosed walls pulsated with dim, eerie luminescence of a dilute indigo hue. The echoing chord of Gumball's heels against the bricks abruptly turned into a series of thick splashes. The candy monarch glanced downwards, realising through that action that the dungeon's floor was covered with a thin watery meniscus that pooled around the feet of the columns in urgent ripples, rapidly clambering up the sides, borne by extreme surface tension. All around the two infiltrators, water was moving up the contour of the walls, sloshing towards the invisible recesses of the ceiling through inverted waterfalls. Had it not been for the obscenely coloured weeds that flourished between the cracks and chasms of the brickwork, Gumball could have appreciated the place as having a sort of mysterious beauty.
Marshall sped rather angrily ahead, his toes lightly skimming the water as he floated onwards, indifferent to Gumball's calls of "Marshall, wait up!" The candy monarch eventually broke into a run, but with the deepening water now lapping up almost to his thighs, it was getting more and more difficult for him to manoeuvre. The vampire was steadily fading into the vanishing point of his vision.
"Marshall!" Gumball yelped, suddenly desperate at the notion that said vampire might actually leave him – totally alone, in this fabricated world that was out of his control, armed only with second-hand knowledge picked up from an out-of-date volume. "Marshall, what are you doing?! You know we can't separate! That'll only increase our chances of becoming lost in the dream!" He almost stumbled over in the thick liquid around him, his arms flailing in order to keep balance, his body laden with water and soaked up to his belly. "I… I know you understand, Marshall… I… I…" He hesitated a moment before speaking again, cringing slightly as he felt his pride slipping off his tongue amongst his words. "I need you."
His words merely reverberated back to his own ears.
The fructose-coated prince continued, following the dark speck that was now Marshall, struggling through the depths, until a set of intricately carved steps saved him from total submersion. The steps were the same pale indigo as the walls, though they were woven through – veined, in fact – with thick blue and crimson strands that shuddered and vibrated within the stone, as though they were the intricate tendrils of an incessantly pulsing circulatory system.
As Gumball stepped, sodden and gasping, onto the first step above the waterline, it came upon him like a shock wave; a ringing buzz that rattled his teeth and rocked his bone marrow. The sensation was intermittent, however. The stones paused between pairs of vibrations, eerily akin to a real heartbeat.
The sugary monarch's body shuddered both in anticipation and with the rippling pulse beneath his feet. These steps, with their entangled capillaries, were an unsettling and timely reminder that he was walking across the body of a baleful creature that, should it sense his presence, could easily crush him, and wipe him away like an irritating gnat half-drowned in its sweat. But it wasn't just that; although Gumball had read that the monster's organs and biological systems could occasionally manifest within the Oneiric Nightmare itself, that usually only occurred when the dreamscape had been altered. In other words, whenever the creature deliberately changed its surreal form, a tiny portion of its original guise appeared momentarily as its cells reconfigured and readjusted; a gigantic web of bronchioles leaning out of a mountain, a matrix of neural tissue hanging amongst the boughs of trees. An ode to the fact that this dream was not a dream at all, but actually an organic, sentient, living prison. And now it stirred.
Gumball was almost afraid to find out what had changed, though it was the why that bothered him even more so. Perhaps this was merely a change engineered to preserve Fionna's blissfully oblivious state, but if not… If Marshall had instigated this change, then it would not be a stretch to say that he and Gumball were done for.
The vibrations stopped suddenly, the arteries and veins visible within the stone phasing back into the dreamscape. Gumball clambered to the crest of the stairwell, reorienting himself atop a raised walkway, support columns on either side plummeting downwards into a vertiginous drop. The marble path itself was barely two feet wide. The bubblegum prince picked his way along carefully but quickly, heading ever closer towards a circular platform in the distance. Beams of ice-blue light scattered in all directions from the stage, illuminating the infinite vaults of the ceiling overhead. As Gumball strode closer, his eyes picked up movement; a violent kinetic storm. Rose hairs pricking upwards in dread, he searched for any sign of Marshall amongst the energetic scuffle, but there was none to be seen. He did, however, catch a sudden flash of blonde swirling within that tornado of antagonism.
Fionna.
He edged closer, more briskly, the desire to see if it was really her nearly overpowering his caution. Yet he moved onward, and as he did, the distant figures gradually clarified.
Enamel-white eyebrows as sharp as icicles, narrowed cobalt irises and an avalanche of frosty hair materialised from the fray into the majestic figure of the Ice Queen. Frigid sparks danced across her razorlike fingertips as she fired bolts of icy magery towards her blonde adversary. Fionna dodged the barrage almost effortlessly, moving fluidly through the oneiric air, slashing clean through beams of pure crystallised magic with her glittering adamantine sword.
"Give it up, Icebrows!" the heroine crowed. "You're not laying one icy finger on Prince Gumball!"
Gumball was almost tempted to cheer at that remark. But he attempted to suppress the elation surging in his chest, remembering that the Ice Queen that Fionna was engaged in combat with was fake and meaningless. Besides, even though he had crossed the first hurdle by finding Fionna, he was far from being out of the woods just yet.
"Oh, am I?" Ice Queen retorted, her smirk glaciating. "You might just be too late for that, Fionna the Human Girl." Yet another frosty charge arced from her fingers, yet this time it was aimed at a point wildly distant from said human; instead, it leapt over Fionna's head, clearing the distinctive upright ears of her hat, and towards a cowering pinkish figure some metres behind the girl; a fabricated facsimile of himself, Gumball realised.
The not-Gumball yelped pathetically as he attempted to retreat, but the beam of icy magic caught up to him before he could do so, wrapping around his leg and trapping it in a crystalline cocoon. Mimeo-Gumball fell flat on his face unceremoniously.
Gumball winced at the sight. Even though the Ice Queen was not actually targeting him, the situation that unfolded before him was painfully realistic (Gumball had to admit there was some irony to that, considering that it had happened within a dream) and not all too different from some of his previous encounters with the Ice Queen. But watching himself was far more agonising. Did he really appear so helpless, so vulnerable, so pathetic, to Fionna's eyes? Considering it would have been the human girl's memories that had been used to construct the dream, he could only assume so.
Perhaps Marshall was right. Perhaps he really was a useless, spineless, soft-hearted child with no experience of the outside world. It was true that he often ensconced himself behind the protective walls of his kingdom, and on the few occasions when he left that sanctuary, he did so with a comfortable entourage of Banana Guardians and other precautionary measures. When was the last time he had exposed himself to this much danger, anyway?
But even as he was thinking this, he was desperately sprinting ever closer towards the battleground. Right now, Fionna needed him. And he could do it. He could prove that he wasn't useless, he could pull off the rescue, even without Marshall's help. He could do it.
"Fionna!" he yelled, dashing right into the fray, ducking to avoid a blast of frigid radiation from the Ice Queen. "Listen to me! This is a dream!"
The blonde appeared to hesitate at that, marine irises regarding Gumball curiously. She glanced over her shoulder at the Gumball-puppet, slack and half-frozen on the floor, before snapping her gaze right back to him again. "A dream, you say?" The final two words of that sentence reverberated continuously through the surrounding air: "You say? ...You say? ...Say? ...Say?"
"Yeah." Gumball was aware of the fact that the vigorous action of a moment ago had abruptly ceased – suspended in a freeze-frame, the Ice Queen's frosty features petrified in a sadistic snarl. Aside from Gumball himself, Fionna was the only thing that moved, approaching him cautiously, her head cocked to one side.
"A dream? Is that… is that why there's two of you? Is that why…" She glanced vaguely around the expansive chamber, visually absorbing the narrow stone walkway and the elaborate platform. "What is this place…?"
"It's a dream," Gumball explained again, urgently. "Your mind is being psychologically manipulated by a dangerous monster, Fionna. It's kept you here all this time, stuck in this dreamland, for three whole days. It's going to obliterate you from within until there's nothing left. You have to believe me. Please."
For one single moment, the blonde human regarded him uncannily. Her expression was inscrutable, formed from a pair of aquatic abysses leading to a hollow interior. Fionna's corneas were glazed over with a film of matt indifference. Robbed and reduced of their original spark, the radiant marine glow Gumball knew so well.
"Yes…" the thing that was Fionna spoke, in a familiar tone, yet in a timbre that felt so horrendously alien and wrong. She spoke as though through a digital recording, her syllables mere synthetic pseudo-sounds under an auditory disguise. The blonde's mouth widened in a smirk so un-Fionnalike that Gumball reacted instantly, stumbling backwards like a newborn foal.
"What… what in Glob's name are you?" he demanded shakily.
"I do not need to tell you that, do I? …Prince Bubba Gumball." The formality of the speech was deliberate and intimidating. Said candy monarch took a further step back as the fake Fionna approached. "You know. You know that this is all a nightmare. A horrifying construct of your inner subconscious that you're just dying to escape from… Or is that girl your one true concern? Would you be willing to sacrifice yourself for her like that?"
"I…" This was not how it was supposed to happen. This wasn't planned. Oh, how, how could he have been so stupid? He should've seen through this. He should've clocked that this was not, was never the real Fionna. Had Marshall been here… had he not aggravated Marshall as he had done, things may have swung in a very different direction…
"Yes. I know. I see. That is why you're here, is it not?" The oneiric monster, within the dream-flesh of Fionna, shrugged. "Well. There's only one place for you to go, Prince Gumball. Only one course of action is acceptable. You must lose yourself."
Before Gumball's mind even hit upon the meaning behind those words, the hollow human spread her arms to their full span. In the same instant, the world around him began to peel – quite literally – ripped strands of dreamlike reality were torn from his vision in a matter of milliseconds. Crackling static came as the only replacement, a psychological loss of signal. Gumball hung suspended in that blurry grey world of nothing, yet even through the deafening sound of absence, a voice could be heard. The familiarity of it was fading, though the bubblegum prince could still, just about, discern who it belonged to and what was being said.
"Gumball… Gumball - !" yelled Marshall Lee.
Then all sound cut out.
Four walls, metres apart, so close that they practically touched. A low ceiling, no lights. The only illumination was imaginary. Words scrawled in an ugly brownish pigment inhabited the walls, some faded so that they were barely discernible, amongst other, more recent sentences embossed clearly against the old. These words were the sole companions of their ancient inmate, who sat cross-legged in the dead centre of the cell.
The man was not twenty years old physically, yet the ragged chaos of his once-bright rose hair was revealing streaks of shiny grey. His haggard, lined face gave him a tortured, archaic look, and, when coupled with the expression of quiet yet intense confusion upon his features, he appeared far older than his years. The quality fabric of his magenta outfit had once made him appear resplendent, but now, with the garments hanging in tattered rags, their colour bleached almost bone-white by time and trauma, he could only be described as a skeleton.
He lived within a timeless loop. That much he knew, though he neither questioned that fact nor accepted it. He merely observed impassively.
He knew this place. He'd been here for a while – it was almost like a home to him now. Repeating events scheduled in a linear lineup. That was his life. He would stare at the walls and attempt to comprehend the words. He would wonder, he would stare, completely unaware of how the words got there and who had written them. He figured, from the clotted crimson-brown hue, that they were written in blood, and so he copied the behaviour of this nameless graffiti artist. He would rip open one of the many scabs that webbed his forearms, and use the haemorrhaging liquid to write whatever came to mind. Sometimes he would draw pictures. There was, however, little space on the walls now, so he had begun using the floor as his canvas, surrounding himself with lines and images so that only one wordless space remained, which was where he sat.
He had an inkling that there may have been some meaning to what he was doing, once. But that meaning, whatever it had been, was now lost to the ages. The action had now become so habitual that he no longer felt pain whenever he tore off a scab or pressed his fingers into the wound in order to bring them out again, dripping with his own blood, to write.
As for the words themselves, he only recognised a few of them, those being the most recent ones. The familiar text was without meaning, composed of nonsensical characters and words in a variety of different scriptures. However, some of the older, less familiar sentences, could be read and understood coherently. One of the oldest writings that was still bold enough to be legible read: "I am Prince Bubba Gumball of the Candy Kingdom. I am Prince Bubba Gumball of the Candy Kingdom." That sentence repeated over and over, a simple statement of pure fact, as though the writer had been trying to remind himself of something. Another, similar repetitive sentence read: "Don't forget Fionna and Marshall Lee." And another one, only just legible but still chilling in the haphazard and desperate way in which it had been written: "THIS IS ONLY A DREAM. ONLY A DREAM. WAKE UP, WAKE UP… Please." The last word of that sentence had clearly not been part of the original text, as it was bolder and so had possibly been added more recently. The letters were much smaller and almost resigned in the way that they had been written – reduced in both meaning and size.
The detainee could not help but wonder who Prince Bubba Gumball was. The name was vaguely familiar, though perhaps that was only because he had read it upon the walls so many times. He could only assume that Gumball had been a previous inmate who had resided in this very cell. He could only imagine what had become of Gumball in the end. But judging from some of his writings, he had most likely, eventually, lost his mind. "Poor guy," he would sometimes mutter, and the walls would echo his sympathy for this man he had never met.
And so the loop continued. There was little change. After filling the entire floor with gibberish, the captive saw he had no choice but to write over the older, more faded scriptures. He felt a pang of guilt at doing this, somehow. It felt as though he was erasing, painting over, the only evidence that the cell's previous occupant had ever existed.
But then, one or two or fifteen loops later, when even the gibberish he had written had become indistinct and unfamiliar to himself, the voices began.
He could not be certain whether the noise came from within his head or without – though there was not really much distinction between the two spheres at this point. Whenever the voice spoke, the actual speech varied, but the gist of it was this: "Gummy? Gumball? Where are you? Yell if you can hear me. Right, okay, you gumwad, I'm getting stupidly hungry right about now. If you don't answer me RIGHT NOW, you son of a biscuit, I'm going to suck all that pretty pink from your face when I get to you. Well, I'm going to be doing that anyway. But you didn't need to know that."
The voice phased in and out of amplitude and pitch, distorting and fragmenting. Though the prisoner could still understand it. He could only assume that the speaker, who was searching for Gumball, was some sort of old acquaintance or friend of his. Or enemy, perhaps, seeing as the speaker was quite willing to threaten him.
The jailbird considered responding. What could he say? Perhaps "Gumball's gone" or "I don't know" or "Gumball's not here, try somewhere else". But he didn't really know much more about Gumball's whereabouts than the one who sought him did, so what would be the point?
But nevertheless, he tried it anyway; the words tumbled out of his mouth almost on impulse. "Gumball's… not here," he spoke slowly and carefully. It was an alien sensation, addressing someone else other than himself or the room around him. He could not remember the last time he had done so.
Perhaps because of the unfamiliarity of the situation, the prisoner almost jumped in shock when his addressee responded. "Gumball…? Is that… you? Or is that fucking monster trying to play tricks on me again?" The voice held an undertone of barely restrained hopefulness.
Before the prisoner could even begin to consider replying to that, the nearest wall bulged inwards very suddenly, swelling like a metallic buboe. The jailbird flinched and recoiled. Steely pus erupted from the heap, congealing into a vaguely humanoid shape, before splitting vertically and fragmenting into shards as a dark figure forced itself through.
The newcomer exhaled deeply, his throat forming a sound that was halfway between a sigh and a gasp. The metallic wall that he had warped through slowly reformed into its previous position as he left its chrome mass, though a few slivers remained, wedged in the infiltrator's hair and in the creases of his clothing, like flakes of eggshell coating the bodies of the newly hatched.
For several seconds, or more appropriately perceived as a minute or more, the nameless prisoner simply stared at this impromptu intruder. Crimson irises stared back with equal intensity beneath a dark overhang of scruffy black hair. The fabric of his chequered shirt and the denim of his jeans were torn, frayed and faded, discoloured and then recoloured by all manner of unsavoury natural pigments. The man's pale skin was unblemished, his body youthful, yet his eyes were incongruously aged. The prisoner saw in an instant that there were many layers of emotion and memory within and beyond those eyes; regret, trauma, frustration, resentment, hatred and weariness; years and years of it all. But that near-relentless stream of negativity was now superseded by a new expression, one that the detached inmate could tell had not existed within the dark-haired man's features for a long, long time. Relief.
"Gumball…" the infiltrator murmured softly. "Finally. You fucking little…" His words broke off.
"Who… who are you?" the prisoner garbled, shifting backwards a little more. Even though he did not feel particularly threatened by this man, the sudden change of pace from his life's usual indistinct monotony was difficult even to comprehend.
The other man gave a laugh that came out as more of a bark. "Ha! I had a feeling this would happen. Glob damn it." Fanglike canines bared in a melancholy smile as the dark-haired man shook his head. "I'm Marshall Lee, the Vampire King. Only son of Hunsonia Abadeer, ruler of the Nightosphere. Singer-songwriter, bass player extraordinaire." He shrugged.
"Marshall Lee…?" the prisoner mused. "You're… one of Gumball's friends…?"
"That's right, Gummy. I'm here to get you out of here." He paused. "Don't cha want to get out?"
The words struck a neural chord within the prisoner, activating a portion of his brain that had remained dormant for a long while. In an instant he became truly aware of the fact that he was trapped within these claustrophobically arranged walls, and, for the first time in a long while, wondered just what lay outside. He recognised the tininess and pitifulness of the cubic bubble he lived in, and realised that he hated it.
"…Yes. I do." The words were spoken with more fervour than he consciously felt.
The ancient jailbird could have almost sworn that Marshall had sighed in relief. "Great. Well then, come on! Let's get out there. Back to the real world…" He leant back against the bloodstained wall behind him, as though exhausted. "Glob, it's been a long time, hasn't it? Time moves differently in dreams, yeah, I know… But that doesn't change the fact that it's been years. Everything could've changed beyond recognition…" He met the prisoner's eyes. "It's been a long haul, you know."
"What?" the inmate inquired, blinking. "What has?"
"Finding you, of course! I almost gave up along the way, and you'd better thank your lucky stars I didn't. Otherwise you'd be stuck here, trapped in this dream-prison within the confines of your own mind, until you died." Marshall let the unsettling weight of those words settle on the prisoner for a moment. "And now… Well, to be honest, it's better than I'd hoped. I suppose Fionna did pretty well doing the heroic thing, beating up that monster. But… it left its mark, didn't it? There's still some residue, even now. Made it even more difficult to find you…" He chuckled bitterly. "And now I find you, you don't even fucking know me.
"Should I be bothered? Maybe not. You always used to act like I didn't exist. In fact, you probably hoped that I didn't exist. Well, you got what you damn well wished for." Resentment and rage were now overtaking Marshall's features. "So oblivious! Glob, sometimes I was convinced that you knew, but you were just ignoring it because you didn't want to consider it. And of course, you were always more interested in Fionna. But if truth be told, I kind of hate it too. This way I can never get you out of my mind. The fact that I can never leave you behind…" The last two sentences reverberated almost lyrically.
The prisoner only understood portions of what was being said. He was puzzled, to say the least. Yet something was now definitely firing deep within his subconscious mind. There was something here that he should know, but didn't.
"Why?" he finally asked. "Why come for me in the first place… if it was that difficult?"
Marshall chuckled once again. "Yeah, I get it, Gumball. Having your memory wiped and manipulated by a dream monster, yeah, it makes sense that you wouldn't know shit. But still. You can't see it, can you? You never could." The vampire stepped forward. "But if I have to spell it out for you so that you'll understand, so be it."
The prisoner flinched, but held his position, when the dark-haired immortal clapped his hands on the former's shoulders. Ruby eyes bored into amethyst, intensifying as Marshall spoke.
"I never asked for it. It just happened, you know? And considering I feel so passionate about it, passionate enough to dedicate years of my life trying to find you again, just so I can tell you this –" He broke off. "No. Wait. Let me start that again…"
As Marshall began speaking, his hands moved inadvertently. His fingers flowed up the other man's neck, coming to rest at his cheeks, lightly brushing the area beneath his eyes. The rose-haired man's eyes widened, but he did not jerk his head back or otherwise react to the close contact.
"The reason… why I came back… why I decided to help you get Fionna out of this dreamworld in the first place… why I endured so much crap, just to see your stupid bubblegum face again… Everything…
"Is all because I love you, Gummy."
Marshall's next action was unprecedented. The cherry-haired Candy Person did not know how, but suddenly the vampire's lips were on his own, their flesh connecting and intermixing; the sugary prisoner tasted the vampire's mouth, which was a strange, yet not unpleasant, savoury flavour, and despite being long dead, his flesh was not at all cold. The bubblegum prisoner briefly wondered how that was possible. But then, he suddenly yelped in pain.
"What are you doing - !?" he gasped. Marshall had sunk his fangs into the outside of the Candy Person's cheek, and, amidst a deep slurping noise, the pink-haired man felt something – not blood, but colour – being leeched from his skin. This continued for several moments before the vampire pulled back, licking his lips and smirking.
"Sorry," he explained, "I was really hungry. Though eating in a dream is only psychologically satisfying. I guess I'll have to do the same to you again once we're back in the real world." The last sentence was spoken only partially jokingly.
The real world. It was something the Candy Person had only just begun to perceive, yet he was beginning to, gradually, understand more. It would probably take years to fully lift the obscuring psychological mist that clouded his mind, but at least he had an inkling… The fragments of cognition, waiting to be pieced together.
A deep sigh emanated from the man before him. "Maybe… maybe it's better this way. We can use this to start all over again…" For a few moments that claret gaze was distant, gazing beyond the wall he stared at and into the foreseeable future. When he turned back to the prisoner, his features had softened somewhat. "So. Do you remember anything at all about who you are?"
"I'm…" The Candy Person took a moment to search for memories that he was somehow blockaded from; neural pathways that resided within his brain, but no longer belonged to him now, after years of neglect and manipulation by outside forces. Violet eyes scanned the haemoglobin graffiti on the walls, resting on the phrase "I am Prince Bubba Gumball of the Candy Kingdom." There was a momentary flicker of recall. But the thought rapidly streaked back into the depths of his mind. For all intents and purposes, it was forgotten. Yet it still had an impact.
Who was he? The Candy Person didn't doubt that he could never be the same person as he had previously, as Marshall Lee had known him. But he had an identity, one that was out there, waiting to be discovered. However long it took.
So he didn't hesitate when Marshall offered him a hand – he reached out and gripped it tightly. Gumball accepted his name, for now. He accepted Marshall. He allowed the vampire to guide him as the pair hit the wall running, plunging into a glorious kaleidoscope of oneiric imagery, to emerge on the other side in a new reality.