AN: Alternative title: "Hell Inside His Head, Part I" (I don't anticipate this being more than two parts, but I'll be sticking to the monthly releases regardless.)
Je n'ai pas voulu faire mal aux lapins.
Only a few seconds passed before Marceline knew she was someplace else. A sudden falling sensation forced her eyes open, and she stuck a landing before she even knew what was going on.
The world was black, but there was a half-open door in front of her—purple doors of a regal sort, jeweled with ruby and reinforced with tough metal, reverberating as she rapped her fingers on it. At her feet, a padlock rusting brown easily the size of her torso rested. "He's been holding out this long...?" she murmured aloud. But the decay of the lock made sense to a tragic extent: Crona's sudden collapses, his resurgences in memory, and the headaches were all tied back to this place.
Each step deliberate, Marceline's boots clacked against the invisible floor of the mind space until she passed through the door. She almost expected it to slam behind her like a horror movie locale, but it remained utterly still. In front of her was a claustrophobic hall composed entirely of rose stems, and thorns. Lots and lots of thorns. The soft dirt ground wasn't stable, and she felt herself losing footing constantly, much to her agitation.
At random, a thick bundle of stems shot out to block Marceline's path. With the speed it emerged, she jolted in place, then quickly coming to resent the cheap scare; perhaps the horror movie comparison was more apt than she initially thought. Her first move after that was to go invisible so as to simply phase through the obstacle, but she found herself unable. That was immediately concerning, but she wouldn't dare turn back. Marceline ducked beneath the spike-riddled bundle and kept moving, only to be provoked by similar strands bursting from the walls in succession.
For a moment, she stared ahead with a look of clear confusion on her face. "Why don't you want me here, Crona?"
The thorns, and the roses, and the dirt, had no reply for her, of course. So she trudged onward in silence, accumulating small cuts at the worst of times. She refused to be deterred by such a flimsy attempt at scaring her away.
The way forward was no straight line. Arbitrary zig-zags, forks in the path, and earthen stairways put a damper on progression, until finally the narrow walls opened up to a circular room no bigger than her living room and kitchen combined. It looked sort of like a hotel's lobby, except—
"CRONA!" she shouted. Immediately upon seeing him, back turned in the center of the room, she ran to him and caught him in her embrace. The flabbergasted way he reacted, awkwardly swiveling to meet the hug, was a dead giveaway that he was real.
"You're fine," she breathed out. "That's awesome. That's really awesome." The warmth radiating from him was palpable, and for a few moments, she cherished it.
"I don't know what's been going on outside, but I can assume you've been taking good care of me." He said, followed by a bashful "Thanks."
Marceline smiled easily. "I got the gist of it from Peppermint Butler. I'm—I'm ready to talk those memories out with you, man. Here, I'll show you the way back; I still remember the route to those big doors outside."
Then, Crona's expression darkened with concern. "That's not going to work."
Marceline's smile didn't quite leave yet, but she did a double take while looking at him. "What?"
"Take a seat, please." He walked over to a sofa that fit into the room's circular curvature. He slumped forward, looking forward with his mouth slightly agape. Marceline found her place next to him, studying him in a fixed gaze. "It's been a couple hours, hasn't it?" he asked. She nodded.
"I've been trying to get through that passage y-you just came from. It...it refuses to work; when I walk through, it's like passing through a waterfall with a rock face behind it."
Marceline glanced on the opposite end of the lobby, spotting a pair of elevator doors. "What about there?" she questioned hopefully.
"Forward, you mean." He swallowed. "To tell the truth? I'm not ready to go there, Marceline. If I even can.
"I don't even know what memories are waiting for me there. H-Hell, I don't even know if I'm Crona! You're in my head, so i-it's likely that I'm just a fragment of the whole self." As he spoke, the back of his palm burned anxious circles around his forehead. Teeth bared, she cursed her optimism from mere moments ago, as if this could be so easily solved by simply dragging him out of his own head.
"Don't be an idiot." Marceline frowned, and spurred by the moment, she gave him a peck on the cheek. The way he flustered and turned rosy convinced her all the more of his identity. "Of course you're Crona."
She got up, only halted by a gentle tug of her wrist from Crona, looking away from her. It wasn't a possessive move, rather, one fueled by desperation, fear, and loneliness. He wasn't so sentimental as to lean into her shoulder for her comfort, but the contact between their palms seemed to put him at ease. This lasted for a minute, at minimum.
"Come with me." She said at last.
"You shouldn't go." He said. The rhythm of his voice carried a quiet anger—an anger that she knew was directed at himself. "I don't know what the depths of this place holds. But—but it's not your burden to bear; I never asked you to do what I should be doing by myself. Listen to me, Marceline: I'm not asking for you to hurt yourself."
Marceline's response to his plea was cold and authoritative. "I don't care." She noticed the growing mass of rose stems forming in his shadow, as he sat in silence.
With the press of a button, the elevator doors parted. Crona seemed ready to join her, but when she stepped past into the elevator, his feet were planted squarely outside, demeanor crestfallen. He reached out slowly, only for his hand to disappear into a ripple of thin air, just as he had described.
"I think...I will come with you, Marceline." He said. "Not the way I am now. But you'll find me, and...I'll guide you." He started out passive and resigned, but at the last second, he seemed to muster a semblance of courage, and he glared at her. "But know this; if you die here, I will never forgive you."
Without her prompting, the doors shut abruptly, and she felt a mechanical clunk before the creaking descent of the box started up.
The elevator ride started out as mundane as any other. No music, but it was well-lit and clean, as she might have expected for a place inside Crona's head. Then, she heard the very distinctive sound of cables snapping above, and it went to hell fast. She took an involuntary gasp as her feet no longer touched the floor. The sensation of falling at such a breakneck pace with no prior warning was nauseating, made worse in conjunction with the failing bulbs brightening in and out.
But it wasn't an abyss she was falling in; eventually, the elevator crashed, all the blinding speed brought to a complete halt, ending with a bang as the elevator box crumpled in on itself. A fire started from within the cramped wreckage, and if not for the faint, flickering light beyond the mangled doors, she might've not found a way out of such blackness.
"I'm fine..." Marceline limped out of the half-open doors. Her injuries were bad, but she had the utmost confidence that her regeneration would render them trivial—still hurt like a bitch regardless. "Could be worse; warn me when you decide to break down again, elevator." She said this, in spite of the metal shard that now ran through her left femur. It felt like her leg had been weighed down with kindling for a campfire, and then set it ablaze with gasoline and a lighter. And it would continue to stay like that, until she did something about it.
She hesitated, gripped the long shard by its protruding end, and wrenched it free from flesh at once.
Her body gave up on her before she processed the agony, preemptively collapsing on her palms as soon as it was out. Marceline didn't scream or yelp, and the oxygen in her lungs only pumped out breaths in harsh sputters. She would lay there, on the cold floor, for a period of minutes before the pain dulled enough for her rational mind to take over.
"Wound's gonna close, Marcy. Wound's gonna close." She said. "Just give it some time..."
Looking up deliriously, she observed her surroundings almost expecting to be attacked. The floor was cold to the touch, and hard. The walls were brick and mortar, no windows to the outside. Where she currently stood, she saw no doors either, but a thick shelf on the right of her field of view seemed to obscure much of her field of view. Through the densely-packed shelf, she spied an orange light and felt its warmth, the sound of its crackling only overpowered by the unmistakable clangs of a hammer at the forge.
A blacksmith's place... Why here? Marceline questioned, with the expectation that she would learn as she went. On that note, now that she had successfully into Crona's mind, she knew little of how to bring him back to reality—with no way back, her only option now was to go even deeper.
So she crept, moving closer to the dancing shadows cast in the light. Only faintly could she make out the items on the shelf, when the dark retreated the right way. Her hand wrapped around a metal tool, holding it up to her eye to perhaps glean its function.
The first thing she noted was the blood that stained it, a sight that made her stomach churn. Under most circumstances, she would note its peculiar presence with scent, but the smell of blood had long melded with iron rust to create the perfect disguise to the senses. The tool itself appeared a ghastly thing, though small, meant for plucking with rounded 'claws' on the end. How many people have lost an eye to this thing? Marceline didn't want to think of that, but was compelled to regardless. Unsure of the tool's role in Crona's past, she set it silently back in place.
She couldn't turn invisible. She couldn't fly. The only thing she could do to combat what lay beyond the shelf divider was show herself and prepare to fight.
"Hey." Marceline stomped with her foot forward, fists clenched. She was expecting to see monsters, and the feral demeanor she'd adopted in anticipation made that obvious, but none were there to greet her.
There were three; two children, and an adult. The latter was a skinny woman in frame, almost uncannily so, her face entirely covered by a welding helmet. Her golden-blonde hair was tied up in a bun, and the rest of her jet-black gear seemed to be made for work at the forge. She ignored Marceline's presence entirely, her faceless gaze locked onto the gray anvil where she toiled away at a longsword. Beside the anvil was a cauldron big enough to be a tub, suspended by ropes on the ceiling. A sickly green liquid that stung the eyes brewed within, its purpose unclear to Marceline—she suspected nothing good at all.
Her eyes shot to the other two in the room, children, seated on a high table only faintly given light from the forge. Just at first glance, Marceline was struck with an odd familiarity looking at them, as though their identities were sitting on the verge of her awareness. Damnably, she couldn't discern the features of the boy on the left, too far in the dark for her to see. He sat numbly, small fingers twisting around the edge of the table in what looked to be fear and anger. Sitting to his right was a kid—no, hardly a toddler—wrapped up in a tattered cloth with a similarly vacant expression, his cheeks brightened by the nearby flame.
"Crona?" she mouthed, gawking. His face was cute and pudgy like most at that age, but even so, the resemblance to his matured self, if he was indeed Crona, was uncanny.
It feels weird...but I could learn something talking to him. She kept her distance, wondering if the fangs would scare him. She bent down to his eye level. "Crona," she whispered. "Is that your mom?"
Crona's dodgy pupils fell on her, and he said nothing. Marceline maintained passive eye contact, and to her surprise, he quickly retreated beneath the white cloth at the earliest opportunity.
"Knew I was terrible with kids." She joked, if only to cope with the grim surroundings. When Crona dared peep up from the blanket again, she was quick to snarl at him like a fairy tale monster, which again spooked him back into hiding. That was worth a guilty laugh, and she felt compelled to ruffle his hair up as an apology for her tricks.
On the other hand, his mother was not worth an ounce of levity she treated Crona with. Marceline stalked past the witch's anvil with a careful expression.
"I've come this far," she said, voice muffled behind the helmet. "And I can't turn back now."
The hammer struck the claymore, sparks flashing at the point of contact. The witch had entered a methodical rhythm, and her tone was just as calm when she spoke. "I can change everything. I'm the only one who has the courage to try. Even if it means defiling the things I love."
Marceline's hands curled up into white-knuckled fists, listening to her drivel.
Perhaps the witch's calm was indicative of sanity, but to Marceline, the detached way she talked pointed only to a deep madness. Marceline almost saw the witch's sweat through the helmet visor, trying desperately to justify herself to her own guilty conscience. "...I shall make the sacrifice. They will be martyrs to catalyze a better world."
"I should deck you." Disgusted, Marceline raised her fist to emphasize her point. Only the small children in the room served as a deterrent from direct violence against the witch.
Her fists shook, and wavered. She's not real. Just a memory. Less than nothing. She continued her forward advance, past the forge and the flames and Crona and the witch, and deeper into the darkness that swamped this place.
On some conscious level, Marceline knew that it wasn't just moral outrage that fueled her anger towards the witch. Rather, she knew his plight: to be made a tool for the ambitions of a parent. The thought incensed her with her own share of bad memories, whilst imagining the hells Crona had to have experienced—"martyring" himself for a psychopath's cause.
But what cause? She would only know if she walked deeper into that abyss. Eventually, the brick walls and the dubious tools became less clear, until she was literally walking into black.
She hit a wall. Maybe... Her palms felt around the wall—bingo: a doorknob, cold to the touch.
Suddenly, she heard the smoldering flame roar, and the screams of small children. The sound made her freeze up in horror, and she flinched through the duration of it. "Crona, and Ragnarok." She said the names of the children she saw, so if nothing else, this place and this obscure memory would be burned into her own.
With a shaken grip as a result of the physical and mental strain this place was putting on her, Marceline opened the door.
She jolted and sputtered as the door frame swung open, realizing her mistake. Sunlight broke into the abyss of the room, and her body tensed up in preparation for the blinding pain.
But it never came. Even as she turned around her palm in the direct, warm light, she didn't feel pain. Perhaps, she wondered if this was just her own state of shock moments before being turned to ash, but she saw no signs of deterioration.
She took a cautious step forward into this golden, sunbathed place, still surprised that the rays hadn't reduced her to a pile of ash wearing a leather jacket and jeans.
Marceline chuckled in self-deprecation; she should have as expected as much, since it wasn't real sunlight she was stepping in. But it felt like sunlight—at least as she remembered it. She took slow breaths as she walked, overwhelmed with the sensation of being vaguely human again. Not even the artificiality of this place swayed the strong feelings this place brought; it was like she was a child again, laying in her mother's lap on a Sunday afternoon.
But where was she, really? Through clouded eyes, she looked closer at the sky she previously beheld with absolute awe, just now perceiving the glass and the massive iron framework that arched up and down—it looked like a greenhouse that stretched for miles on-end. The area's beauty was untouched, but slightly less reassuring than the idea of being in open nature as she had assumed before. "Nothing to fear. For now." She said, adopting a mentality to stop and smell the roses while she still could.
The grass rustled beneath the boots as she advanced slowly through this serene place, partially on account of her bad leg. It wasn't a straightforward walk—there were slight hills and cliffs that reluctantly forced the mighty vampire queen to walk around them, for fear of putting unnecessary strain on the injury. If only she could fly. If only, if only, if only...
Five minutes came and went, and Marceline was still treading along the lonesome path. Only the far-off birdsong kept this place from sinking into an eerie quiet.
Then, standing at the summit of a hill, she came to a dead stop when she saw, and heard, what was ahead.
The dissonance between the Crona she knew and what she was seeing left her without words. She never thought anything that could come out of his mind would be so...adorable, really. Their floppy ears and pink fur belonged in a child's toy box, not within the inner self of someone so serious and grim. Rabbits, of all animals?
Surprisingly, the whole nest of them didn't scatter when Marceline approached from atop the hill. That said, they hardly seemed to acknowledge her presence either. Their red, beady little eyes were fixated amongst themselves and nothing else; what shallow creatures, if pleasing to the aesthetics.
But one in particular was bold. Diverging from its like-minded others, the pink rabbit stepped towards the shadow casted in front of her. Its bravery was a small shock to her, and she only wondered what compelled the creature to risk its safety. Two or three paces away from her, the rabbit stopped in its tracks and craned its head up at her, making eye contact.
Alongside its reckless nature, the rabbit had another trait that placed it at odds with its brethren. A simple difference, but notable nonetheless, it had bright blue eyes that seemed nearly crystalline the longer she looked into them. Despite her professed dislike of the overtly 'cute', she had to admit that she was a little charmed; in her head, she took to calling the rabbit Hambo—and the name stuck.
She reached to pick him up, but as she should've expected, he fled—not away, but around her back, practically hugging her heels. Shy, like someone I know. She thought, an eyebrow arching. Based on Hambo's behavior, she took a quick look around for danger, perhaps a fox or a snake that intimidated him. No one was there, save for the other rabbits.
"What are you so freaked out over? It's nothing." Despite the limp in her leg advising otherwise, she squatted down in an effort to soothe the frightened thing. Her fingers ran through his light fur in slow repetitions, finding a simple comfort in calming Hambo down some. It didn't do much to ease the sting of her wound, but with this meager distraction, she could force it somewhat beneath her awareness.
The activity left her in an almost trance-like state, in a good way. It wasn't as though she had lost touch of reality; she still knew why she was here, and of her end destination, but there was time to stop and smell the roses, so to speak. Although, that tranquil feeling didn't seem to be mutual between her and the rabbit, as every attempt to appease reaped no results, frustratingly enough. He trembled with a far-off expression, scared or traumatized of something that wasn't present in the moment.
She knew it would be a vain effort to try to talk with him, but this was a mental world, where the rules of reality were not always so neat and consistent. She laid down to his eye level, even pressing his little cheeks between two fingers. "You can tell me what's up, y'know."
Predictably, Hambo had no reply. Although, Marceline couldn't truly claim to be disappointed when this was the result she expected. Even in realms of utter madness, sometimes rabbits were just rabbits.
She stood up, for fear of wasting time whilst stalling on her journey to save Crona. When she took that first step forward, however, Hambo hopped to keep up. Initially, she was endeared, but she found herself grimacing now. It's not like I can just drag him with me. She thought. Though Marceline felt something of an attachment to him, she didn't want to experiment with the consequences of bringing one abstract, disjointed part of Crona's mind to another so carelessly.
So, as a final act of sentiment towards the pink rabbit, she gently pushed him in the direction of his colony. "C'mon," she coaxed. "Even if you don't like 'em, it's for the best, little guy. Safety in numbers, and all."
It was right after her attempted farewell that she heard the resonant tolling of a bell. The sound was thunderous, echoing, and powerful, causing her to freeze up where she stood. Her head jerked around fiercely, trying and failing to identify the bell's point of origin.
By now, the rabbits had all but scattered. All except Hambo, who stayed at Marceline's side, almost convulsing with fear at this point. This was a bad omen if she'd ever seen one.
The sky grayed. The grass withered to brown dirt. And then, at the center of this once-idyllic, sunny patch, a hole appeared from naught but thin air, a swirling, pitch-black maelstrom from which a sole person exited.
The thing that emerged could be described as a shade, but even shadows belonged in reality—nothing like this ethereal, evil creature. It radiated black the same way a candle illuminates the surrounding area, the sunlight failing to shine light on its vaguely humanoid features. As if its appearance alone didn't screech 'DANGER' through a megaphone, it had three arms and three, imposing swords to match. Bound by heavy chains, it limped aimlessly throughout the field, almost zombie-like in its gait.
Marceline looked back at Hambo, realizing that his fear wasn't so misguided after all. "I see your point," she said, getting down on her stomach in hopes of using the small hill as a hiding spot. The pain in her leg never felt greater, now that a threat to her life appeared out of thin air.
So for now, she was stuck observing in a helpless state. The shade was stalking towards a bush, gaining a smidgen of speed as it got closer and closer. All the while, the bush visibly rustled, teaming with the life of some poor soul who happened to be hiding within.
"Just run, idiot. You're faster!" Marceline whispered through bared fangs, barely holding herself back from jumping in there herself. Her eyes were glued to the sight, silently expressing feelings of rage and powerlessness.
The shade rose one of its swords, a thick, but blunt, claymore. It opened a strange, jagged mouth, and moaned. Then, at once, the sword crashed down into the bush like a guillotine.
A shrill squeak like a scream echoed. She expected to see an immediate spurt of blood, but no! The lucky thing was still alive! With such vigor, it bolted through the grass taking a zig-zag path, in hopes of throwing off its pursuer.
The shade moaned again, louder; though its eyes were hidden beneath the brim of a tattered hunter's hat, Marceline suspected its pupils struggled to follow the rabbit's speed. It shambled after the rabbit, just as slow as she'd predicted. She grinned.
Marceline clutched onto perilous optimism as she rooted for the rabbit from her cover. She sincerely believed that the shade was a mindless idiot, standing no chance at securing its quarry.
But optimism can be a brutal weapon against oneself, if shattered.
In an abrupt movement, the shade took one of its blades, curved and thin, and hacked off its own arm. To Marceline's horror, the cutlass glided through shadowy flesh like a hot knife through butter, and the arm flopped to the grass, twitching like a headless chicken. She blinked, and stared slack-jawed at the sight; this was a nightmare that descended into deeper circles of Hell the longer it went.
The arm's twitching ceased, and stilled into a tight position, like an imitation of a cat ready to pounce.
When it started moving without the burden of the rest of its body, its speed was blistering, unnaturally fast as it propelled itself forward by stabbing the dirt and pulling itself again and again. The distance between it and the rabbit closed rapidly: ten meters. Five. Four. Three...
Marceline's voice caught in her throat at the last grisly moment. The animal barely turned its head before the killing blow was dealt; the only comfort to be taken was that its death was swift, though far from painless.
"Why is this here, Crona?" she mused aloud, horrified. This was far too abstract to represent any one memory, yet the violence it presented was so gruesome and vivid; could there be an experience so traumatic that its mere recollection would destroy him, if not filtered through this bizarre lens?
Regardless of this memory's origin, the fact remained that she was no longer a bystander within his mind. She was able to be hurt, killed, if each step wasn't measured and each action considered carefully. Her heart ached, but she had to move quickly.
The shade moaned and its chains rattled as it walked over to retrieve its quarry. Taking advantage of its distraction, Marceline ran with a limp in the opposite direction, gesturing for Hambo to follow. The greenhouse had a rectangular shape, and there seemed to be no exit in sight along the walls; nowhere to go but the long trek forward.
The plains gave way to woods, and although it wasn't the most dense forest, there was enough trees for her to use as cover in case the shade turned its pursuit on her.
Eventually, her ears adjusted to the sound of a cold and deadened silence behind her. Whether that meant the shade had disappeared, or turned its sights elsewhere, she didn't know—she kept sprinting onward, adamant in her refusal to look back.
She hated being this fearful. She wanted to fight, and banish these inner demons herself.
But her stamina failed, and as soon as there was a sturdy oak tree to lean against, her knees wobbled and gave out. Taking in heaving breaths, she sat with her back to the trunk, clutching fistfuls of dirt in her frustration. The initial flaring pain of the wound came back in full force, after forcing herself to run a long distance in a short span of time. "Walk it off." She willed herself to stand, taking about two steps. "Walk it...off." Teeth grit, she fell again, furious and exhausted.
"You...don't mind waiting here, right?" Marceline laid a hand on Hambo, brushing him out of sight by her leg.
I can kinda see it ahead. She thought, squinting hard at the hazy path forward. A door. At least, Marceline assumed it was a door, based on the vaguely rectangular shape. Strange, her vision usually picked out things much farther with far better accuracy. Her injury was one explanation, but more likely than that, it was possible that diving into Crona's subconscious had weakened her more than she presumed.
It made sense; she couldn't fly, her wound was healing too slowly for her liking, and come to think, the flow of natural magic within her felt dried up in its entirety. By all practical definitions, human willpower was all she had anymore.
And if that was the case, then waiting around with a killer on the rise would accomplish less than nothing. There was a branch sizable enough to serve as a walking stick at her side, and from a sitting position, she gradually pushed herself up to her knees, where she was able to ungracefully transition to a stand. Oh, it hurt like all hell, but now the simple act of moving forward could be accomplished without her limbs giving out in seconds.
She waited a few seconds. Caught her breath. Got used to the feeling of standing, and adapted to the greater pressure on her bad leg. She was ready.
Hambo was peering around the corner of the trunk, wide-eyed as ever. Marceline poked the grass beside him with the stick. "C'mon. Let's get moving."
He whipped around to look at her, teeth visibly chattering. Even in such a simple creature, she perceived the depth of its dread and raw terror in that moment. She knew it wasn't merely a tendency of his to be frightened.
He was warning her.
Out of the corner of her eye, a lightning streak of black burst into her field of vision. She jolted to action—just in time to see how deep the shade's sword had caught into her side.