Thank you all for the wonderful feedback on the last chapter! I'm genuinely touched by how positive the response has been to this fic. As with the first chapter this one comes with heavy trigger warnings, but no suicide attempts here. Just a heap of backstory and exposition.

I really appreciate the reviews you guys have been leaving for me. So if you so feel then please leave me a quick note to let me know if you liked the story, it makes my day when I get feedback.

Content Warning: Mental health, homophobia, self harm references, more feels.


"SIMON!"

He caught the hug she flung on him the moment he stepped through the door and staggered back a couple of steps under the unexpected weight; Marceline must have finally started eating properly again because she looked a little less gaunt than she'd been in the intensive care unit. That and her huge smile when she saw him almost brought tears to his eyes, he was so glad she was having a good day when he'd finally been allowed to visit. Everything had still been so new for her first weeks that he'd missed visiting, warned by her doctors to give her time to settle in before coming to see how she was doing for fear of disrupting her new routine. It had been the longest two weeks of his life.

"Hello darling, I've missed you so much! The house is so quiet without you, I almost put your records on this morning just for the background noise."

"I missed you too! Did you get my letter? Did you bring my guitar?" she asked excitedly. His face fell a little, he'd hoped she'd forgotten.

"Darling, I'm so sorry. I wasn't allowed. I wanted to, you know I did, but they wouldn't let me bring it. Because of the strings." he told her regretfully. It hurt so badly to see the smile fade from her face.

"Oh. Oh, of course, in case I strangle myself with them. Yeah I should have thought of that, cause I'm still crazy. It's nice to see you anyway." she said, avoiding his eyes. "Do you wanna come to the visitor lounge and sit down?"

"Sure. I brought you some other stuff though." Simon told her. They took a seat together in the lounge and he opened the backpack he'd been carrying. It had already been searched and approved by the nursing staff, there was nothing in there Marceline could use to hurt herself with.

"Oh, candy! Brilliant, thanks, Simon. I'm gonna share it with-" she glanced around, noticing there were other inpatients in the room, "uh, with Hambo. Yeah. I'll share it with my teddy bear. Hey, fuck your ugly skeleton face, Lydia."

"Marcy!" Simon gasped, horrified.

"Whatever, Suicide Squad. Eat your fat girl candy with your stupid bear, you're such a gross loser. Dirty faggot." a very thin girl across the room drawled, rolling her sunken eyes.

"Simon, she's super mean to me." Marcy murmured, looking genuinely upset. "She keeps calling me fat and a faggot, she's so homophobic. But you wanna know a secret?"

He nodded and bent forwards so she could whisper in his ear.

"It really hurt me at first but I know better now. She's got anorexia and bulimia and she's really insecure. I think she's lashing out because she doesn't know how to heal. Not like me, I'm really getting better this time. And Simon, I have a friend." she whispered proudly.

"A friend?" he whispered back. That was big news. Marceline hadn't had a close friend since the girl she'd liked had killed herself the year before. She nodded, smiling shyly.

"See the ginger girl reading her book in the corner over there? She doesn't talk to anyone, she has selective mutism. But she talks to me. She comes to my room at night and we whisper secrets to each other. She's really nice. And she likes candy. So I'll share it with her. I call her Bubblegum because that's her favourite, the sugary pink one with the strawberries on the packet. Can you bring some in with you next time you come?" Marcy whispered back.

"Absolutely, darling. I'll bring you and your friend as much gum as I can get." he promised.

It made Simon's poor heart glad to see that his foster daughter was improving. She'd been in St Luke's for more than two weeks now and so far the reports he'd received from her therapists and doctors were all cautiously positive. Marceline was reserved in group discussions and clashed with one girl in particular but never went out of her way to cause problems and seemed to be responding well to her changed medication. She repeatedly told staff that she wanted to get better and so far she'd done nothing to indicate that she wanted to end her life. But she still wouldn't talk about her mother and Simon knew that until she came to terms with it she'd never fully heal. So as proud as he was of the progress she'd made it was hard knowing that she was only improving temporarily. If she didn't deal with the root of her problems she'd just stay in the same cycle until she did finally manage to kill herself.

He was going to tell her about how their chubby rescue cat Gunther was, but at that moment they were interrupted by a loud voice shouting from across the room, an excitable looking blonde boy with what were probably his parents and brother.

"Jake you don't need to keep lying! I know you're really a magic dog! It's ok!"

"Finn, please. Please stop this, bro. I miss you, I want my little brother back." the older boy pleaded.

"I'm FinnMan! And I'm right here! Don't cry, Jake. It's ok. You're a good boy. Good boy."

"He was in a train accident and now he's delusional; he keeps hurting himself because he thinks he's a super hero." Marcy told Simon quietly while the boy's parents tried to calm him and prevent him from leaping around on the furniture.

They talked a little longer about home and stuff and how Simon was getting on without her, before a couple of strangers entered the room and walked over to where Bubblegum had just slid into a seat by the door. Marcy broke off from listening to her foster father and stared at them. The older woman had the same ginger hair as Bubblegum and the boy had the same eyes. He rushed to what must be his sister and hugged her, gurgling. She hugged back but didn't say anything.

"Hello, Bonnibel. I brought Neddy to see you. How are you feeling today?" the older woman asked with a strained and obviously faked smile. Bubblegum shook her head and looked away. "Bonnie come on, won't you talk to me?"

No matter how her mother begged Bubblegum just shook her head and stared at the floor. Simon was watching them too with an unusually serious expression on his face. He'd taken Marcy's hand the moment he noticed that she was watching the exchange intently, whether it was to stop her going over to intervene or just to offer her comfort Marceline wasn't sure. Eventually the woman sighed and dropped the pretence of being happy to see her daughter or even wanting to be there at all.

"Do you know how much of a waste of talent you're being? How let down by you we all are? I didn't want to have to do this but you will insist on being difficult. Well, not any more. If you won't do as I ask and give up this ridiculous vow of silence then I'm going to have to take away the only thing you care about these days. No more candy. Ok? If you want something you have to ask for it, you have to use your words and stop being so awkward. I refuse to let you carry on like this any more!"

Bubblegum looked up, horrified, and briefly met her mother's hard eyes before looking tearfully away again. She still didn't say a word though.

"Come on, Ned. Your sister doesn't want to see you today." the woman snapped, standing up. The boy began to wail, it was clear there was something not quite right with him either. He clung to his sister's arm but eventually the woman pried him off and away from her, he couldn't be older than about twelve and he was bawling loudly enough to draw the attention of everyone in the room. As the nurses and care staff escorted him and his mother away Bubblegum slid from her chair onto the floor for a minute, silently crying, before running out of the door opposite and presumably to her bedroom.

"Looks like your friend's upset." Simon observed quietly. "Maybe you should go cheer her up. Is candy the only thing that makes her happy?"

"Yeah. And talking to me. She likes my hair." Marcy nodded.

"Right. Then you'll be receiving some packages in the mail soon. The staff will have to search them but I don't think they'll mind. After all, they're for you. She doesn't talk to anyone, why would you share?" he asked with the ghost of a twinkle in his eyes.

"Simon, you're the best. I love you." Marcy breathed, standing up and hugging him hard around the shoulders.

"I love you too, darling. Go on, I'll be back next week."

...

"Shh, hey, don't cry. I brought you some chocolate." Marcy whispered when she slipped around the door of Bubblegum's room. The ginger girl looked up and offered her a watery smile, wriggling over so that her friend could sit on her bed with her.

"Thanks." Bubblegum whispered in her usual insubstantial way. "Mum's so mad with me."

"Yeah, I saw." Marcy replied. When her friend failed to take the chocolate bar she was holding out Marceline sat next to her and ripped open the wrapper, breaking off a little piece and holding it in front of Bubblegum's face. She opened her mouth and allowed her friend to place it carefully on her tongue, giggling a little despite her tears.

"Must be nice to have a Mum though." Marcy continued. "I miss my Mum. I wish I could tell Simon but he misses his fiancée, she left him because he got ill. And now he tries to fill up the big hole she left in his life by helping kids, he's really nice. I hoped he might properly adopt me but I'm too old for it now anyway. I wish Mum was still alive though. We were gonna go all over the world in her truck, we were gonna play music together. She taught me to play the guitar. I wanted Simon to bring it in so I could play for you but they wouldn't let him in case I try to hang myself with the strings. I wouldn't though. I'd take an overdose if I was going to do it again. I had it all planned out, I wrote a goodbye note for Simon and I pushed my desk in front of my door so nobody could get in. I just wanted to see Mum again, it always hurts so much to think about her. Like there's this huge gaping hole in my chest where my heart should be. Do you think maybe my heart died when she did?"

Bubblegum considered for a moment then unexpectedly laid her head against Marcy's chest. Marceline held perfectly still, barely daring to breathe while her friend listened intently.

"No." Bubblegum whispered. "It's still in there. I can hear it. But it got broken in the car crash and it hurts because it's all sharp and jagged. Like your feelings are broken and they're sticking into you. You're scared that if you love someone else they might be taken away from you too. Like, you're so scared of losing Simon that you plan your suicides for when you know he'll be there because you want to see if he'll still love you even if you push him as hard as you can. You need to stop being scared though because people die and that's just part of living. But you can't let fear stop you from loving people. Love is the only thing that holds the world together, it's the only thing that really matters at the end of everything."

"You're so wise." Marcy breathed. "How did you know all that?"

Bubblegum shrugged and sat up again, briefly making eye contact and smiling a little. Those were the most words she'd spoken out loud to anyone in two years.

"I watch people. I knew straight away that you had a broken heart. It'll keep on hurting until you heal it."

Marceline considered that she should be angry at being so thoroughly analysed, or maybe freaked out. But it was weirdly nice; Bubblegum had taken the time to assess her and watch her and work out how to help her. She had a gift for reading people and a drive to help. Even Marcy knew how rare that was.

"You're really clever. What are you doing here, Bubblegum? You should be out making the world a better place with your cleverness." Marceline told her.

For a moment the other girl looked away, eyes misting over. Then she began to talk even more quietly than ever.

"Mum says I've got Asperger syndrome. Neddy has full blown autism but I'm just aspie. And I'm really clever and I'm gifted and I should be a doctor or a diplomat or something. So she tried to make me go to all kinds of special schools and extra courses and activities so I could go to Oxford University and it was too much for me. I got upset and I stopped talking. When I didn't say anything in class the teachers stopped telling her about how clever I was so I didn't have to do so much extra work. I liked learning but if I failed at something she'd yell and get upset, ask me if I knew how hard she was working for me, if I knew how much money she was spending on my education. I didn't want her to spend it on me so I stopped going to school. And it was easier not to talk to anyone, nobody expected things if I stayed quiet. When I got anxious and sad I started hurting myself and one time I cut my arm far too deep and I bled too much. I passed out and Neddy found me, he must have started screaming and then Mum called an ambulance. When I woke up I was in hospital and then they sent me here. I've not been outside for a whole year." Bubblegum finally muttered. It was the first time she'd ever said it out loud, either.

"That's horrible." Marcy scowled. "Why can't you just be clever at your own pace? Why can't you choose what you want to do? It's your gift, you should choose how you use it."

"I like making things." Bubblegum admitted.

"Then you should make things. You should do what you want to do with your life."

"I'd like that."

They sat in silence for a while longer, quietly munching chocolate bars between them. Very slowly Marceline became aware that her hand was warm, the one not holding the chocolate. She glanced down carefully and discovered that the other girl had curled their fingers together and was using her thumb to shyly stroke the skin on the darker girl's wrist. There were old scars there, thin silver lines that told anyone who wanted to know that when those scars had been made Marcy hadn't been sure where she'd need to cut; they were all at the wrong angle to hit the arteries. She'd barely lost more than a cupful of blood before Simon found her. But Bubblegum was stroking the scars in fascination like she didn't even know they were a visual reminder of all of Marcy's flaws and broken parts. Like they were beautiful instead of ugly. Marcy hadn't ever thought of her scars like that before. She had an old one running right down the outside of her left thigh with little puckered stitch marks crisscrossing it from where they'd had to open up her leg to fix the bone shattered in the car accident. As she grew she'd had to keep going back to the hospital to have the titanium plates holding her leg bone together replaced with longer ones, it was really painful if she hit a growth spurt without the surgery.

"When I cut myself it was like I was bleeding out all the bottled up words I couldn't get out of my mouth." Bubblegum murmured unexpectedly. "I knew it was really blood but I pretended. I never meant to hurt myself or nearly die. I like eating candy though. The sugar makes me feel better, like how I felt when I cut myself. I think it gives me a little endorphin boost. Those are the happy hormones in your brain. I like science too."

"You're the smartest person I ever met." Marceline told her honestly. "And the kindest. Listen, I've never really had a friend like you before. If I promise never to try to kill myself again will you promise that you'll only have candy instead of cutting yourself when you feel bad?"

Bubblegum looked up, surprised.

"Are we friends?" she whispered.

"Yeah, I think so. Do you promise?"

"Ok. I've never had a friend like you either. You're so pretty and your heart is hurting, but when it gets fixed it's gonna be the most beautiful heart ever. Like it was made of ruby. I'd like to see that."

"Then it's a deal. I swear it on my kinsfolk and ancestors. I guess that means Mum and Simon. It's an old Romany oath, my Mum swore it all the time when she said she'd always be there if I woke up in the night. I guess I was the only kinsfolk she had left, maybe that's why I've been so ill since she died. Because she broke her oath and now the curse rebounded on me. It's old gypsy magic."

"Magic isn't real." Bubblegum replied quietly.

"Yeah, I know. But maybe it happened anyway."

"If you died I'd miss you. So don't try to die anymore because I like you." Bubblegum continued in the same soft whisper.

"Ok. Don't hurt yourself again because I like you, too. Hey Bubblegum? Can I brush your hair? I bet I can make it look really pretty and smooth if you don't mind me taking some time with it."

"Ok. Don't pull it though."

And that's how they spent the rest of visiting day, hanging out in Bubblegum's room and talking in whispers, eating the chocolate Simon had brought and taking turns to brush each other's hair and try out different styles. It was the most fun Marceline had had in longer than she could remember.

...

"Joining us for therapy today, Bonnibel?"

She didn't reply, but nodded at the carpet and tightened her grip on Marceline's hand. They'd agreed that she'd come to therapy, something she'd refused to do since she'd come to St Luke's, if Marcy would hold her hand and talk for her. It felt good to be needed. Almost like another little sliver of shattered ruby had reattached to the chunk of jagged gem-heart in Marcy's chest.

"Well, there's always room in our circle. Who's going to start today? I want us to talk about how we approach feelings of wanting to hurt ourselves, how do we express that to others?" the therapist asked smiling around at them.

"I'm not trying to hurt myself. I just wanna be beautiful." Lydia said quietly, looking down at her hands. She'd had a long conversation with her parents the day before and had been a lot less confrontational since.

"Ok, so how do we recognise when we want to hurt ourselves?" the therapist asked instead, looking around the room.

"Oh! I want to test my skills!" Finn shouted brightly. "Like, I wanted to see if my teeth were really stronger than rocks so I bit some. But my nemesis put kryptonite in them and they broke my teeth, it's the only thing that can hurt me. But normal rocks are nothing, I can bite through them. I know I need to test my skills when I get itchy in my head."

"Itchy in your head. So can anyone else relate to how Finn feels when he wants to do something that might hurt?"

"They tell me to burn things." a younger girl spoke up. Her name was Phoebe and she was there because she kept setting things on fire, including herself. Her arms and legs were peppered with small burn scars from the many times she'd experimented with holding matches against her skin. "I can hear the voices in my head telling me to burn things, and I tell them I'm not allowed but they won't be quiet until I do it. I don't want to. But I have to."

"I just feel like everything hurts too much." Marceline spoke up hesitantly. "Like, my skin hurts and my heart hurts, but it's all just imaginary pain. And that's when I know that if something happened to kill me I wouldn't try to stop it. I'd just let it happen. Pretty soon after that I know I need to start saving my meds so I can die, because the pain is there all the time. Like, I can't sleep for it. I feel like there's something sharp in my chest."

"So it's like a physical pain that's caused by mental pain? Does anyone else have similar symptoms?" the therapist nodded to them all.

Bubblegum squeezed Marcy's hand urgently and leaned over, whispering almost too quietly to hear in her ear.

"Bubblegum says that she never wanted to hurt herself, it just felt like she'd explode if she didn't. Like there was pressure in her skin, all the words she couldn't say had to come out some way." Marcy announced to the group.

"You're a pair of faggots." Lydia replied tiredly, but there wasn't the usual level of vitriol in her words. She looked exhausted. "When I want to be sick I can feel the fat seeping into my stomach out of the food. And it's disgusting, it makes me feel gross. I don't want to die though. I need to eat to live. It just hurts so bad in my stomach." she added in a quiet voice.

"So the common theme here is that we all have mental pain expressed in physical ways and we all react to that pain physically. But in the long run do any of those things make the roots of the pain any better?" the therapist asked, looking around at them all. They were all quiet for a moment, shrugging.

"I got hit by a train. We were playing on the tracks, Mum told me to keep away from there but we thought we'd hear it in time if a train came. We didn't, though. It wasn't going fast but it killed my friend and I survived. Why would I survive if he didn't? Unless I'm special? But if I'm not FinnMan then who am I?" Finn asked unexpectedly. "I just want to be a hero, I don't want him to have died for no reason."

"You're a crazy little weirdo, that's who you are." Lydia replied with an eye roll. And of course the whole group session just descended into trying to make Lydia shut up and stop disrupting everyone again. But for a couple of minutes at the start there Marcy felt like she'd made real progress.

...

Marcy lay awake, staring at the ceiling and counting under her breath. Any second now, Bubblegum was obsessively punctual.

"Four, three, two, one, hello Bubblegum." she said, finishing her countdown out loud.

"Hey." the ginger girl whispered, tiptoeing across the room to her bed and sliding in between the sheets with her. Marcy immediately wrapped her into a hug and they snuggled quietly for a few minutes like they did every night now.

"Do you think Lydia's gonna die?" Bubblegum whispered after a few minutes.

"No, why? She's here, isn't she? So she must be getting better." Marcy replied.

"But she might die anyway, she looks like she's fading away. Maybe her body can't relearn how to eat normally. Even if she wants to get better now, maybe it's too late."

Marcy just shrugged, she didn't like the skinny girl and she wasn't going to cry if she ended up dead. But generally people dying wasn't a good thing so she supposed she should feel bad for Lyds. She had a lot of problems.

"Why did she call us faggots today?" Bubblegum whispered to her.

"Cause she knows I'm gay. I think she thinks you're my girlfriend." Marcy replied equally softly.

"Oh. I'm not your girlfriend, am I?" Bubblegum asked.

"No, I don't think so. You're just my friend. You're a really good friend though." Marceline replied. There was a sort of warm swirling in her chest when she said it and the word girlfriend kept bouncing around the back of her head like it was made from rubber. But Bubblegum didn't want to be her girlfriend or she'd have just said so, right? So Marcy ignored it and just enjoyed the feeling of having someone close to her, someone warm who curled against her stomach to stomach and wound their fingers into her hair. It was comforting, having someone to fall asleep with. She waited up every night for Bubblegum to come to her room now.

"Hey. Tell me something interesting?" Bubblegum asked quietly.

"Like what?"

"I dunno. Something I don't already know about."

Marceline thought hard about it for a while.

"Did you know that even though they're both types of the same instrument the bass and the guitar are really different to play? You don't use chords the same way on a bass and you finger it differently." she finally whispered. Bubblegum giggled a lot harder than she had up to that point and Marcy had to shush her for fear of bringing the nurses to see what the noise was about. "Hey, you're being loud!"

"Sorry! It just sounds really naughty." the redhead replied around her giggles. "Have you ever fingered anyone?"

"No. I had a girlfriend but she didn't want to do anything. She just liked me because I brought her razorblades into school. Then she killed herself. I dunno, I miss her sometimes but I just liked that she was nice to me. I don't think I loved her." Marcy whispered softly

"Oh. That's sad. Did you kiss her?"

"Yeah, a few times. She wasn't really very good at it though."

"What's it like?"

"Warm, and really soft. Girl lips are so nice, like silk or something. And girl breath is so sweet and delicious. I knew when I kissed her that I was definitely all the way gay. I had a boyfriend one time but he was a dick so I dumped him. And he wasn't as nice to kiss as girls. Kissing girls is awesome." she replied after a minute's thought.

"Do you want to kiss me?" Bubblegum asked, still in the same innocent whisper with no idea what kind of affect her words were having on the other girl.

"I don't know. Perhaps. I just, I like you. But I don't know if I should kiss you." Marcy breathed, almost unable to get the words out. Fuck, she'd let someone get close to her again and now she was having feelings and if she kissed Bubblegum then there was pretty good chance that the redhead would die and then she'd be alone again. People she loved died, she was safer if she didn't love anyone. So kissing the other girl was probably a really bad idea. Wasn't it? Maybe it wasn't, she'd have to think more about it. Because Bubblegum had said she had to start letting herself love people again or her ruby-heart wouldn't heal, and people who loved each other kissed, didn't they? Marcy hesitated, unsure what to do. She was caught between her natural instinct to push anyone who got too close as far away as she could and the urge to maybe let Bubblegum stay close, see if she wasn't too broken to love after all.

"Ok." Bubblegum replied lightly. "If you do want to I'd like that. But I like being your friend too."

"I'll think about it. I just, I don't want you to get hurt because of me." Marcy finally whispered.

Marceline fell asleep the same way she had for weeks, with her arms wrapped tightly around Bubblegum and wreathed in the scent of the other girl's favourite gum on her sweet breath, wondering what would have happened if she had kissed her, whether it would be safe for either of them.