Rising to her feet, Bonnibel's tears and laughter both continue, her shock and despair giving way to relief, but also fear. She wipes away her tears once more and replaces her helmet on her head, making sure that the suit seals properly. The princess takes breaths to still her beating heart, but she has difficulty calming down. Her helmet's UI blinks to life and confirms her suit's safe status, and although she is barely any calmer than before, she decides to return to the small cave where the pod was being repaired.
As she walks across the grey dust, her mind replays the kiss over and over again. With every repeat, though, new questions arise in her mind. Is Marceline really in love with her? Why didn't she say anything about it sooner? Was she afraid? What is she afraid of? Did she think it would end like the last time? Were they even ready for a second chance being together?
As she reaches the top of the hill, she finds Marceline alongside several tuffbones, working diligently to repair the orbital capsule. She takes a few steps in their direction and considers saying something to the Vampire Queen, but her nerve breaks before she can, bringing her to a stop as she silently watches the work continue.
Marceline, after a moment, feels her eyes on her back and glances over her shoulder. Their eyes meet for a moment, before both bashfully avert their gazes, blushing slightly.
By the next day, the capsule is nearly complete. "Well, it's no Banana Man's rocket," Bonnibel comments, "but it'll get us in the right direction.
"The main thing will be shielding it for reentry," one of the tuffbone engineers says. The capsule had been designed for bringing things—primarily explosives, to be used on the leaflan asteroid insults—out of the atmosphere, not for bringing anything back in. And certainly not after being torn apart and practically glued back together again.
The princess, wearing a thin, leafy new tuffbone-made suit, leans over the table and looks at the schematics. "Right. What do you have?"
"Not much. I can throw in a few mints to prevent space breath."
She crosses her arms and walks up next to the capsule, looking over the cracks in its thin membranous exterior, which is reinforced by less than a millimeter of an iron-based alloy the tuffbones cobbled together. "This'll be dangerous…"
Marceline walks next to her friend and places a hand on the capsule's wall, wearing a thin spacesuit of her own, although without a helmet and far more aesthetically-based than the princess'. "We have to try, right?" she asks. "For your kingdom."
Bonnibel nods, then sits down and begins helping to reattach the pieces to the main body of the capsule. Marro and Brisket enter the cave, the former apologizing to PB. "Sorry for the trouble our distress signal caused, Princess. We didn't know how strong the magnetic force would be."
"No, it's actually really neat! We can follow its path straight back to Earth." She stands up and smiles at the tuffbones. "This was a pain in the butt, but that's the price of having neighbors, I guess." Bonnibel inspects the exterior, making sure she's covered as much as she can and that there isn't any more bits of capsule left to attach.
Meanwhile, Marro and Brisket walk just outside the cave, still in clear view of the orbital capsule, to find Marceline staring at Earth. When she notices them, she drops to her knees in order to get on their level. "Ambassador Marro… will we ever meet again?" she asks sadly.
"It's natural to drift apart, my friend. We've come and gone from places of supreme beauty. But sometimes, miraculously, we drift back together again." Marceline smiles and begins heading into the capsule alongside Bubblegum, as Marro finishes his comforting words. "Until then, we'll let time do its thing."
The two women wave at the tuffbones as their door rises up, then the princess presses a few buttons on the dashboard. After a moment, the exterior is covered in Spark, the pink fusing together to form a solid cover over the capsule. It rises from the ground, a bit unsteadily at first, before streaking off into the darkness of space, retracing the path Marceline took to arrive on the asteroid.
There is little communication between the two women; the princess occasionally gives updates as to their progress, but beyond that, they rarely speak, instead opting to look through the semi-opaque walls of the capsule.
After three hours, Marceline notices their velocity decreasing. "It's slow moving, now."
"We don't need to go far," Bonnibel explains. "Gravity should take over before long."
They wait in silence again, before the Vampire Queen sighs and crosses her arms, ready to get something off her chest. "Bonnie, I want to let all of this go. All of it." The princess glances over at her. "...But, it's not easy. There's a fear."
"What are you afraid of?" she asks, somewhat nervously.
Marceline simply chuckles and leans against the wall. "Not much anymore." She sighs again. "But I remember the way you faded away from me, and how that scared me." A scowl appears on her face as she remembers her falling-out with the princess centuries earlier. "And I can't reconcile that with my present self."
"I needed my own life."
"...Yeah."
"I never saw the danger. It's such a long life, I was sure there'd be time for us again." Bonnibel looks at the wall of the capsule, touching her hand to her reflection's. "But then you were gone, and time seemed finite again, and I was afraid." She solemnly shakes her head, then looks at her friend with a sad smile.
"So… you invented space travel just for me, huh?" the Vampire Queen jokes. The two women gaze into each other's eyes, blushing slightly, but the tender moment is interrupted as something rocks the entire capsule, a crack spreading up the pink exterior, although the metallic frame remains unbroken.
The capsule begins rumbling as both women nervously sit on the ground, too afraid to stand up, and the cracks continue to spread. "We've entered an orbital debris field," Bonnibel cries out. "There's too much space junk!" Flames begin forming around the semi-orbular vehicle as it enters the atmosphere. "I-I don't know if we'll make it though! I couldn't prepare for this!" She turns to her friend. "I'm sorry, Marceline. I wasn't thorough enough. I-I left too much to chance!" Tears begin falling from her eyes as she panics, thinking they're both about to die. "I'm sorry… I'm sorry…"
"Hey," Marceline starts, putting her hands on her shoulders to comfort her. Their eyes lock, then they become entwined in a tender embrace. "If we don't make it, I just want you to know that I love you. I always have, even when we weren't talking." She puts her hands on the princess' cheeks. "And I always will."
As the flames turn from orange-red to blue, the two women lean into a deep, passionate kiss. They remain locked until their capsule slams into something large, and the vehicle shatters.
After a moment, they blink their eyes to find themselves surrounded by candy people, all of which seem to be groaning in mild pain and discomfort.
"Oh no you don't, vampire!" a voice yells at them. They turn to see a Suspencer rushing towards them with a stake in-hand, emblazoned with the Vampire Queen's name in large white lettering. "I've got too much cash riding on your having-been!"
"Guards," Bonnibel calls as Marceline watches her would-be attacker in confusion, not afraid in the slightest. Three banana guards rush forward to apprehend the man, dragging him away.
"Unhand me! If you had any idea who I was, you wouldn't dare—" He notices a figure standing off to the side, although neither PB nor Marceline can see them. "Kevin! Tell them, you pathetic half of a nothing!"
Nobody steps forward, and he is dragged off kicking and screaming by the guards. The Vampire Queen cocks an eyebrow as she sees this; the figure is familiar, although she can't remember where from.
The following day, Marceline and Bonnibel are hanging out in the princess' restored outdoor lab after learning what had happened while they were gone; the tuffbone distress signal, the thing that had caused Marceline and Finn to get struck and caused the former to destroy the princess' origin outdoor lab, had spread to clone-Cinnamon Bun and magnetically charged him. He added candy people (among others) to his mass and made a giant version of himself, then became a de-facto dictator. All the while, Suspencer had broken into Marceline's house and stole some of her demo tracks and planned to release them to the public, claiming she was dead in her absence.
The Vampire Queen hangs out the window, chatting with a couple fans and signing autographs. "Thanks Marceline! We're glad you're back!" they exclaim.
"Pff~!" she laughs. "Did you think the infinite darkness of the universe could keep me from my fans?" She scribbles her name on a couple pictures, then slides back in and shuts the window.
As soon as it's sealed, she flops onto a beanbag chair and lifts up her music journal with a groan. "I can't believe ol' what's-his-name wanted to release my raw demos. Too embarrassing."
"Aww, I bet they're great," Bonnibel reassured her. "But I respect the privacy of your work."
"Haha, is that why the whole kingdom thinks you were away at a 2-week-long brunch?"
"...Yes."
Marceline pulls up her new acoustic guitar and puts it on her lap. "That was a pretty neat ship, Bonnie. Too bad those space ferns made off with it."
"They'll never be able to synthesize more fuel. Not with the tuffbone on the move."
"I'll miss those guys. I hope their freedom has the leaflan miffed!"
"Oh, I guarantee they've written some very rude star-words about it." She begins lowering herself to the eyepiece, but she catches Marceline's look of apprehension out of the corner of her eye and stops. "Y'know…" She rolls her chair over to the Vampire Queen as she strums her guitar. "Who cares what they think?"
Both women gaze affectionately into one-another's eyes, blushing slightly. Marceline, not pausing in her playing, asks, "Does this mean we're…?"
Bonnibel's smile grows, and she leans forward to give the woman in front of her a peck on the lips. "Yeah, it does"
"Good." Marceline places the guitar on the ground next to her. "Because it's been way too long since I've been able to do this." She brings her hands forward and clasps them behind the princess' neck, pulling them together. Their lips lock and Bonnibel climbs out of her chair. She sits atop the Vampire Queen's lap, straddling her and increasing the fervor .
After a solid minute, they break, both of them smiling from ear to ear. "I really missed this," Bubblegum sighs. She runs her hands through
Marceline smiles joyously and embraces the princess. She holds her in her arms, running her hands through her pink hair. As she holds her now-girlfriend in her arms, a feeling of guilt pangs her heart. "I'm sorry, Bonnie," she whispers, tears forming in her eyes.
"For what?"
"For… everything. I've been keeping a lot of pain inside, and I was too afraid to talk about it." She sees Bonnibel open her mouth, but cuts her off before she can say anything. "I was scared to talk to you about it, especially. But you're the only person I felt I could take to about it, so it just fed into this vicious cycle." Standing up, she begins pacing around the room, PB anxiously listening. "When we first met, I'd lost everyone close to me; my mom, Simon, Tom and the other humans. But with you, I was finally with somebody that I thought I'd never lose… but I lost you, too, and I was alone again.
"I vilified you in my mind and tried to hate you, but I just couldn't, no matter how hard I tried. When we finally started hanging out again, I was terrified to do anything because I didn't wanna risk losing you a second time."
Bonnibel rises and takes a step towards her. "Marcy…"
"Please, just let me finish. I want to get this off my chest; I've ignored it long enough."
Slowly nodding, the princess allows her to continue.
"Thanks. Anyways, I didn't want our second chance to end like the first, so I tried to stay out of your way, and I tried to ignore my feelings. I thought that just playing it safe and staying friends would mean we wouldn't get as serious as we did last time, and if things went bad, it wouldn't hurt either of us like it did last time. Things didn't go according to plan, though; you were so nice to me, and you were even willing to put off your job just to hang out that I couldn't help but fall for you all over again.
"I hated that I had feelings for you again even after trying so hard not to, but more than that, I was afraid that you wouldn't feel the same way about me. And the more you did for me, the more hope I had, but the more hopeful I was, the more afraid I was, too." Her tears begin rolling down her cheeks. "When Pim turned Ooo all crazy, I did everything I could to help you, and I came so close. I managed to bring the real you back from your crazy elemental thing, and…" she chokes on her words, "...and we kissed, but just when I thought we could have something, you got pulled back in. After everything was back to normal, you couldn't remember any of it."
She pauses and glances at Bonnibel, seeing a look of shock and compassion on her face, then continues her monologue. "This hurt me more than anything, and I could barely look at you without remembering how close we came. When you threw me into space, it was just too much for me, and I freaked out. I poured out all of the frustration I've been building since the beginning, even though you didn't deserve any of it. Not even for sending me to the stars, since you did it to protect your people and had no other real solution. I'm sorry, Peebs. I really am, for all of this."
Just as she finishes, she finally breaks. Her tears get heavier, and sobs replace her words. Bonnibel slowly makes her way over to her and pulls the taller woman into an embrace, stroking her hair to soothe her as Marceline cries into her shoulder. "Hey, come here. You don't have anything to be sorry for," she consoles. "I've never stopped loving you Marcy—not really—and nothing is going to change that. Besides, I was just as afraid to do anything as you were." She puts a finger under her girlfriend's chin and uses her thumb to wipe away the tears from one eye. "No matter what, I won't leave you alone."
Marceline sniffles and smiles. "Thanks," she whispers.
"No problem." Bonnibel leans in for another kiss, but a knock comes at the door. With a sigh, she lets go of her new girlfriend and shouts, "Who is it?"
"Just us," Finn's voice calls through.
Marceline sits back down on the beanbag as Bubblegum lowers into her swivel chair. "Alright, come in."
Finn and Jake walk through the door, and the former says, "It's good to see you all back. Stuff really went crazy while you two were gone."
"So we heard," the princess responds, pretending to organize her notes. "I'm going to need to decide what we're gonna do with Clone-CB and that con who stole Marceline's demos."
Jake leans against the wall and pretends to check his nails. "Well, if you need anything, we're gonna be free for a while. Just got a guy to do our chores, so that's cleared up a lot of our time."
"We'll call if we need anything. Now, if you'll excuse us, we've got some… private matters to discuss."
"Oh, alright." Finn opens up the door and begins stepping out, his brother close behind him. "Well, seeya later, I guess."
Marceline waves, then as the door closes, she asks, "I'm guessing you don't plan on telling anyone about us?"
"No, not yet," the princess responds. "You know how people can be; I want some time before we make this public. You know, to make sure people don't go too crazy over it."
"Well… alright. I can see where you're coming from." She floats over to her new girlfriend, wrapping an arm around her shoulders. "You do know what this means, right?" Bonnibel shakes her head. With a sultry tone in her voice, she leans in close and whispers, "It means I'm gonna hafta be twice as crazy with you when we're alone."
Bubblegum blushes and smiles. "Well, we've got a lot of missed time to make up, so you can be as crazy as you want." She flashes Marceline a mischievous grin. "And you can bet I'm going to match you."
"You can try," the Vampire Queen jokes as she descends into Bonnibel's lap. They lean into another deep, passionate kiss, their lips locking in an ardent embrace. As she leans more into her girlfriend, clasping her hands behind her head, she feels the princess' hands on her back, pulling them even closer.
"Oh Glob, Marcy," Bonnibel sighs, breathing heavily as they break the kiss. "I never want this to end."
"Well, it doesn't need to."