Marshall Lee has never really regretted becoming a vampire.
He dislikes certain aspects of it, sure; not being able to eat normal food is kind of lame, the sunlight thing is a bit of a bummer, and the whole immortality shtick gets old pretty quick. (Buh-dum-tisss.)
But at the same time, he can't deny that super strength is epic, or that pyrokinesis rocks, and that whole immortality shtick can be incredibly awesome sometimes. And if there's one thing that he doesn't think that he can ever give up now, it's flight.
So yeah, being a vampire is not entirely horrible and Marshall Lee hasn't actually ever thought about what his life would be like if he were a normal mortal. Of course, if he'd never become a vampire, he'd have never lived long enough to meet Fionna or Gumball, so he'd never have a real reason to want to be mortal like them. It's a strange, circular thought process that kind of hurts his head to think about.
But it's a horrible, sinking thought that he's been dwelling on more and more often lately that he'll have to watch his friends die. It's something that he's always known, but tried hard not to think about. And it was easy for a long time because Gumball was still young when they'd met and Fionna was even younger than him. But now the Candy Prince is actually nearly twenty two and has grown to the point where even Marshall Lee has to tilt his eyes up to fully look at him.
It is a shock and a horror to realize that Gumball, little tiny Bartleby who was still getting scraped knees and insisting in the existence of cooties when he'd met the brat, looked older than him by several years. Marshall Lee doesn't look at all childish, but he will always have a softer, more youthful face and he will never truly be able to get rid of what's left of his puppy fat because he will never be older than eighteen, never ever, ever. And it's just plain weird to think that Bartleby has a defined jawline now. Weird and strange and kind of unfathomable.
He used to feel like being friends with Fionna was kind of creepy because she was so much younger, so much smaller than him, and now he can't help but wonder how long it'll take for her to start thinking that having a relationship, even a friendship, with an eternal-teenager would be weird. He doesn't want that to happen. God, he doesn't want that to happen so much.
But it will, and nothing he or she or they can do will change it.
Marshall Lee has never regretted becoming a vampire, but he is starting to wish that the whole thing didn't come together as a package deal.
But what, exactly, is he supposed to do? Stop feeling? Stop caring? Fionna makes him feel incredible, feel like more than himself, like there's something in him that's worth her attention and affection. She makes him smile and laugh and his cold, dead heart sometimes feels like it's jittering when she looks at him with those eyes that he sees in his mind when he slips off to sleep.
He can only watch and wait as nature takes its course, and try his best to avoid heartbreak for them both.
By now, Marshall Lee really should have learned that you can't solve your problems by running away from them.
The thing is, that's actually a very nice way to solve your problems when you're a vampire and your problems will probably die in another twenty years. That's how he's always done it in the past, anyway.
Accidentally piss off someone in the forest kingdom? No problem, just go chill in the land of fire for a couple decades and work on your tan, and they'll be dead when you get back. Screw around and end up offending some king or another? Simple, he's like eighty years old, he's already got one foot in the grave anyway.
But he can't solve his romantic problems like that. For one thing, the deal with Fionna's age is actually the problem in and of itself. For another, at this point he's just dug his roots too deep into this relationship to rip them up and plant himself somewhere else. Not without tearing his heart-guts to shreds, and seriously hurting Fionna in the process.
No, Marshall Lee has made his bed, and now he has to lie in it.
(Which, now that he thinks about it, is pretty much the entire source of his emotional turmoil. Beds and laying in them, that is.)
So yeah, you'd think that at this point Marshall Lee would just give in and accept that avoidance will not fix this, that you can't just pretend that there isn't a problem and it will magically go away.
Actually, that is exactly what Marshall Lee thinks, and so following their rather heavy making-out session, he pretty much disappears off the map. Marshall Lee is intelligent, but having intelligence does not always mean that you're smart.
The storm that night actually worked out in his favor, though; several minor towns were decimated by the cruel winds and harsh rains, and Fionna spends the next week and a half in a frantic tizzy to find missing children and repair houses and fix dams and bridges, and these are things that Marshall Lee couldn't really help her with even if he were willing to because almost all of the work is done during the day, when they can see clearly. So Fionna doesn't really notice his absence because she does what she can during the day and immediately crashes at night, and she doesn't have time to think about Marshall Lee or herself when she's too busy thinking about everyone else.
Marshall Lee spends this blissful fortnight of silence dwelling on his problems and possible solutions to them, throwing himself into even further depression and paranoia.
The most obvious answer would, of course, be to turn Fionna into a vampire. It's the easiest and simplest way to ensure that they can still be together despite time and distance; a vampire and their sire are always connected, no matter how far the space between them.
But even as it might be the easiest, it's also the most difficult. There are ramifications to throwing away mortality so flippantly. Marshall Lee has had a lifetime, has had many lifetimes, to grow used to solitude. Fionna is tough and brave and made of sterner stuff than most girls, but her heart is soft and mushy like a half-roasted marshmallow, and she will not handle the aging and death of her loved ones as well as he will.
It is a terrible knowledge to have, knowing that even as much as it will hurt to lose her, he will eventually grow numb to it.
But he isn't human like she is, never really was to begin with. Death among his kind is a natural, infinite thing. For mortals, especially ones as emotional as Fionna, death is very much finite. Losing Gumball would wound her horribly. Losing Cake would destroy her. Losing Marshall Lee… that's something that she will never truly have to experience.
So maybe, in the end… the easiest thing to do would be to break it off while it's still fresh, to cut down the tree while it's still a sapling and just let the roots die out on their own. Before Fionna gets too attached to the idea of a them together, before they push themselves so far physically that leaving would just be even more detrimental.
It will hurt. It will hurt them, both of them, terribly and horrifically and tragically. But in the end, Marshall Lee is used to loneliness, and the best thing for Fionna will be to grow old and die with her friends. And he will look back on her and their time together with equal parts fondness and misery.
But Marshall Lee, for all his strength and fortitude, still can't decide if he actually feels like this is a real solution or not, or if he's just trying to rationalize things.
So he does what he usually does when confronted with an emotional problem that he's too overwhelmed to deal with; he hides away and squirrels himself up in his house and ignores the world outside for a while.
And everything works out pretty well that way, with Fionna scurrying about to repair the damage of nature and Marshall Lee plucking at his guitar and thinking more in a week than he's bothered to think in the last few decades.
But he can only use the excuse of her being busy for so long, and sooner than he expects she's rapping on his door and inviting herself in, just like she's always done.
Marshall Lee is deep in thought and strumming his bass and is not entirely inclined to return to the world of the living, so he acknowledges Fionna with a slight nod, but doesn't do much more than that. She pauses in the doorway as if sensing his apathy and takes a hesitant step inside, glancing around like she thinks that he might have company, before entering fully.
"Hey," Fionna says, apparently deciding to chalk up his antisocial behavior as one of his Marshall Lee-isms. It is a testament to how much these last few weeks have worn on her and to how tired she is that she sprawls across his couch without any complaint, only a slight wince as her sore muscles loosen.
It's strange to think that one day there won't be this familiarity between them. Since he's known her Fionna has been a solid fixture in his life, and since they've started this relationship the idea of that fixture has changed and grown.
Marshall Lee says nothing, just runs his fingers up and down the strings. It will hurt, like ripping out his heart, but he's doing this because she needs him to. Even if she doesn't realize it. Even if she hates him for it.
"You okay?" she asks, twisting to look up at where he's floating, a bit confused and hurt because he's ignoring her. Marshall Lee doesn't like the way her voice sounds, doesn't like that he's hurting her, doesn't like what he's about to do next. But he feels like this is the only real solution where she can actually be happy at the end, and her happiness is more important than his.
"Yeah," he says instead, staring down at his guitar before sighing and throwing the strap back over his head and setting it down against the wall. He crosses his arms and stares at the ceiling, bobbing up and down lightly in the air, and he can hear Fionna shuffle on the couch. He pulls up what inner strength he has and says calmly, "We need to talk."
Despite having never been in a relationship before, Fionna has seen enough movies and read enough books to know that when someone says that dreaded phrase, it usually ends badly. She sits up fully and blinks at him, and the look on her face wars between being confused and being defensive.
"Is it about me being busy all week?" she asks, pulling up her knees and wrapping her arms around them, trying to figure out what might be wrong. When he shakes his head with another sigh she bites her lip and tries, "…is it about what happened the other night at my house?"
Marshall Lee turns to look at her in slight surprise and backtracks, "What? No, that was… no. That's not it." He opens his mouth to continue but Fionna interrupts him, every moment that passes putting her more and more on edge.
"Because I can try harder," she says earnestly, hands clenching into the fabric of her pants and twisting nervously. "I mean, it was kind of weird but it was also really, really good and if you give me a bit of time I can get used to it."
He stops her babbling with a raised hand, palm facing her in the universal sign for stop. He then brings that hand up to his face and rubs at his eyes with it, wondering if he looks as exhausted as he feels. "It's not that," he says quietly. Fionna falls silent and clings even tighter to herself like she knows what's coming, even if she doesn't really understand why.
It takes all of his willpower for Marshall Lee to say, "I just… I don't think that this is going to work."
There is a long moment of silence before Fionna lets out a nervous laugh, like she doesn't know if he's serious or not and wouldn't know how to react either way. It kind of teeters when he doesn't respond beyond crossing his arms and staring at the ground. It takes her a few seconds to find in the breath in her suddenly cramped chest to squeak out, "Um... o-okay. You mean… us? We aren't going to work out?"
Marshall Lee's eyes slowly rise to meet hers and he gives a small, uneasy nod.
At the motion, Fionna sucks in a deep breath and shudders it out quietly, like wind blowing through a plastic bag with holes in it, like he's just plunged a knife into her lungs and she can't retain air. To her credit she doesn't start crying, but Marshall Lee still has that horrific cold feeling of dread in his chest and he wonders again if he's doing the right thing with this.
"Why?" she asks, her voice wavering slightly, and she clears her throat and swallows to try and make it steadier. He can't hold her gaze anymore, can't stand to see the pain blooming behind her eyes, so he looks back down at the ground and shrugs like the answer is obvious. (And it is, but that doesn't make it hurt any less.)
"You're a human, Fi. I'm not. It's… it was a nice dream. But this is just going to hurt us both in the long run."
He looks up at her when she moves and can see in her face that he's said the wrong thing already. Immediately Fionna is on the defensive, her shoulders set and her eyes narrowed.
"And this isn't hurting us now?" she snaps, her eyes wet and angry and pleading for him to be wrong. "I know that you and I, we're different. I'm not some… some…" She shakes in a mixture of fury and agony as she tries to find the words, like her body is fighting over whether she should be mad or just sad. "Some stupid kid that can't think beyond tomorrow!" Within seconds the anger is gone, leaving her with this terrible feeling of tired numbness. "And I'm… willing to try and make this work. Aren't you?"
Marshall Lee says nothing as she takes a deep breath and closes her eyes, forcing a tear to roll down her cheek. What is he supposed to say?
"I want you to be happy," he tells her quietly, staring down at his hands. "And that can't happen if you spend your entire life waiting for something that isn't going to happen."
Fionna's eyes are sad and he can hear the absolute truth in her voice as she whispers, "But I'm happy with you."
He wants to say that she's happy for now. He wants to say that she'll be happy until she's twenty-five, or maybe thirty, and she stops wanting things like adventures and starts wanting things like family. She'll be happy until she outgrows him. He wants to say all these things, that he's doing this for her, but instead he just twists to look up at the ceiling, his hair falling out of his eyes.
A minute passes where he won't look at her and she won't say anything before she stands up, the movement startling him to attention. Her face is kind of red and her eyes are watery and she swipes one hand across her face before saying, "O-okay. I'm, um. I'm going to leave. And you… well, you can do whatever, I guess."
"Wait," he calls out, and she turns to look at him over her shoulder from where she's standing at the threshold, her eyes tired and a bit hopeful. After a couple seconds of working his mouth open and closed, he finally says quietly, "You should call Cake and wait for her to come get you."
Fionna stares at him for a moment before letting out a bark of humorless laughter. "No. No, I think I should leave now. But…" She pauses and thinks for a second before her voice wavers out and she finishes with, "But don't ever say that I didn't try to make this work, because I did."
The door closes behind her with a light snap, and the house is quiet again. Marshall Lee has lived a long time alone, but right now the silence of her absence is like the loudest thing he's ever heard.
He stays in the living room for a couple seconds before moving to his bedroom to stare at the ceiling there and try to ignore the hot, tight ache of his throat as he realizes what he's just done.
Fionna sits on the dock in front of his house for a long time, her stockings pulled off and her bare feet dipping into the chilly water of the underground lake. She stares as little white fish with pale milky eyes swim up from the depths and twist around like little ghosts flitting across her toes, curious as to what's causing vibrations in their water. Every so often one will get brave and nibble at her skin before darting back down and Fionna wonders if Marshall Lee ever steps outside and feeds them bread crumbs. Probably not. Marshall Lee doesn't really eat bread.
The things one muses on when they've just been dumped.
In the calm, rational part of her mind she knows that it hasn't really hit her yet, hasn't really sunk in. The rest of her mind feels like it's filled with cotton balls; light in weight but heavy in substance, like she's got a head cold but maybe that's just her tears clogging up her nose. Fionna is a very attractive girl.
She just doesn't feel like she has the strength to make it to the mouth of the cave, much less back to her tree house. Her legs feel like jelly and her arms feel like putty and her heart feel like lead, and none of these things are productive to getting her half a dozen miles away to her house. She stands up on shaky legs and wipes at her face, and looks down to the streak of wet now of the length of her thumb and stares at it for a long moment, like she's not sure where it's come from.
Fionna doesn't really know how she's gotten there but suddenly she's standing at the crest of the hill above the entrance to his cave, staring up at the night sky and the half-moon that shines with surprising brightness over the mountains. To the east, she knows, is the tree house, where she will collapse in emotional agony and cry her brains out while Cake does her best to calm her down. The idea is not at all appealing, but at this point she doesn't really know what else to do.
She turns to look over her shoulder towards the west, where the red-tinted lights of the Candy Kingdom glow faintly in the distance, an hour's walk or so from where she is right now. She thinks about Gumball and how little she's seen him lately, preoccupied as she was with Marshall Lee and her feelings for him and the sound of his voice and the touch of his skin against hers, and she wishes that she could go back to a year ago when life was so much simpler than it is now.
The sudden feeling of nostalgia pushes her westward, towards Gumball and familiarity, or maybe that's just the fact that she's bone tired and the Candy Kingdom is closer anyway, or maybe it's because she's just aching inside and Gumball has always been able to make her feel better. She doesn't stop to analyze it, to analyze anything, just pushes herself forwards and doesn't stop pushing and pushing and pushing until she's pushing herself into Gumball's castle and pushing herself into his bed and pushing herself against him despite his groggy, confused protests and clinging to him like a child seeking shelter from a storm.
Marshall Lee wakes to a heavy hurt and the bitter feeling of loss as he pushes himself upright and buries his head into his hands. For all that he felt guilty when he was with her, there are no words for the guilt that he feels without her.
Fionna trusted him. She trusted him to care for her, and in his attempt to protect her he ended up breaking her.
He grips his hair and pulls, lightly at first and then getting rougher, like he can punish himself enough by doing this. A question he hadn't had to ask himself since before he'd started whatever they'd had (had. What they'd had. Had, had, had had had had had had.) crawls to the forefront of his mind again, clogging up his thought process and forcing attention on itself.
What do I do now?
The easiest answer, the simplest, would be to continue living like he had before he'd met Fionna. He could go anywhere he wanted, do anything he pleased. His only obstacle before had been the sun and his heart, and after last night he'd pretty much assured that the latter wouldn't give him much trouble.
Only it is giving him trouble. It's giving him pain and agony and he might grow numb to it eventually but right now everything hurts and it doesn't want him to get to that point.
But what can he do? He did what he thought was right, what he thought would be better for them both, and of course it's going to hurt right now but he's been hurt before and so has Fionna, and they will both deal with this in their own way. He will grow used to this and he will accept this and eventually he will get past this, and if he tells himself this enough then he will believe it to be true.
Marshall Lee forces himself out of bed and into the kitchen where he can get something to eat, because his heart isn't the only thing that feels empty right now and maybe if he can keep himself busy doing mundane things he won't be inclined to think about Fionna and how much everything hurts right now.
He's just opened the fridge to pull out the closest thing in reach, a pomegranate, when there is a light knock on his door. He stills abruptly, but forces himself to relax. Fionna wouldn't have come back so soon, she has more pride than that. In fact, she might not even come back at all. (He wants her to. God, he so wants her to even though he knows that if she does he'll end up begging for forgiveness. Her pride is both a blessing and a curse in this instance.)
After a long internal debate, Marshall Lee decides that he doesn't really want visitors right now, thank you very much. He ignores the knocking as it quickly becomes insistent, sucking the color from his fruit and glaring at the ground until finally the person on the other side is banging against the wood like a battering ram. After a solid minute of this, his patience runs thin and his temper snaps and he snarls, stomping over to the door to roar in frustration at whoever dares to bother him when he's so stressed.
Before he can even reach the door it is flung open roughly, breaking the lock clean through and ripping out a chunk of his doorframe in the process. It slams against the opposite wall, creating a dent in the plaster. Marshall Lee is surprised into inactivity as Gumball, Bartleby Gumball, lowers his foot with a scowl and it connects somewhat distantly in his mind that Bartleby Gumball has just kicked his door down.
The two men stare at each other, one in surprise and the other in anger, before Cake slinks around Gumball's legs, her fur standing on end. The grin on her face is humorless and all fangs, and Marshall Lee's stomach drops as she chirps, "Hello! I'm going to do horrible, unspeakable things to you!"
And even if he tried, he knows that he won't be able to escape.
(i am totally and completely prepared for you to hate me. it's okay, i'm expecting it. go ahead and throw all of your anger at me, i can take it. (omgyouguyspleasedon'thatemei'msorry))
