TW: Depression, mental health.

The following takes place a few minutes after "Wheels."

Finn the Human was having a weirder morning than usual.

He was no stranger to waking up in odd situations while still wearing his jammies. One time he'd awoken to find Ice King had paralyzed him with a freezing potion. Another time he'd found himself the prisoner of an underground league of gnomes.

In light of that, what he had maybe-dreamed didn't seem too off. But man, was he having a hard time waking all the way up. He'd been playing his flute at a skate park, and there had been some kind of drama with Jake, Kim Kil Whan, and Jake's granddaughter, who Finn had never met before but who seemed cool. And then Jake and Lady had gone off somewhere, and Finn had decided he'd walk home, he could find the way.

Well. He'd definitely been dreaming if he'd thought that. He hadn't been this lost when he was going everywhere blindfolded.

Finn decided the best thing he could do right now would be to take a few minutes' rest to wake up. Then he could climb a tree and look for the grasslands. In the next clearing, he found a dry log, and sat down blearily.

The log changed. Suddenly Finn was sitting on something soft and warm. He yelped, and rolled backward, then leapt to his feet, fully awake now.

The log had turned into a girl, who, except for the shapeshift, didn't seem to have noticed him. This was new, as far as Finn's knowledge of logs went.

Then he noticed two other things. First, he knew that girl. Leaves for hair, antlers, a tunic that blended in with the undergrowth. Huntress Wizard?

Second, she was crying.

In the months since they'd said goodbye in the forest, Finn had imagined this reunion dozens of times. Their eyes meeting across a secluded woodland pool as the birds sang love songs. Her riding up to the treehouse astride a bear and confessing that she'd never stopped thinking about him. Him composing a majestic woodwind concerto inspired by their time together, premiering it at the Candy Kingdom Symphony Hall, and having Huntress Wizard show up unexpectedly on opening night. Prismo himself descending from the Time Room and declaring that it was a violation of multiversal law for them not to be together.

Et cetera. Point was, finding her weeping in a forest clearing hadn't cracked the top 20 fantasies. He had no idea what to do here.

Huntress Wizard didn't seem to have noticed him. Her tears were quiet, but relentless, as she fought to stop crying and couldn't. She needed...something. Probably not Finn. But he was the one who was here.

Think, he thought. Imagine you got emotional intelligence, like Jake, or Marcy. Remember what everyone did for you back when Finn sword got broke.

"Hey, Huntress Wizard?" he ventured. "You OK?"

She didn't move.

"Sorry for sitting on you."

Still nothing.

"Do you want me to stay here with you? Just until it gets light?"

And from somewhere in the midst of grief, Huntress Wizard nodded.

Finn sat down on a broken washing machine embedded in the dirt on the other side of the clearing. For the first few minutes, he just watched the trees, to make sure nothing else disturbed HW. He didn't make a sound, hoping that whatever HW was going through, she could draw strength from another person's presence.

But as the sky lightened to pink and HW kept crying, Finn wished hardcore he could do more for her.

He had his flute with him. Maybe that would help: in the past she'd been able to express her feelings through music. He lifted the wooden pipe to his lips and blew a few tentative notes.

Huntress Wizard sat bolt upright. "Don't."

Finn got his first good look in months at the face that lived near the center of his imaginings. The lower green half was streaked with dirt, the upper black half puffy and raw, but the tears weren't there-as though she'd cried them out hours ago.

He dropped the flute hurriedly into the grass. "OK. That's cool."

"Music counts as magic, Finn. I can't be near magic right now. It'll make this worse."

And suddenly Finn remembered the key to this whole scene: a woman's voice, speaking sentences half-heard through ears made of bread. Magic, madness, and sadness. All magic users swim in the loomy gloom.

How could he have imagined Huntress Wizard would be different?

"Is it your magic that's doing this?" he asked.

"This is normal." HW waved a hand. "It's fine. I expected-"

She folded in on herself before she could finish. Finn ran to her, caught her before she hit the dirt. He kept holding her, but had to get out of his awkward catching stance to sit on the ground, and so, somehow, her head ended up in his lap.

He scrambled to let her go, but she shook her head, rustling her leaves. "You said you'd stay."

"I will," he promised. "What do you need me to do?"

"Talk."

"About what?"

"Anything. I don't care. I need your voice, not your words."

So Finn talked.

At first he told the story of how he'd come to be there, of Bronwyn and the skateboard race. He'd run through what he'd been doing the last few months, mentioned his new arm and that there was a clone of him running around now. He talked about the things he knew she liked: animals and plants and the alone-places he'd found in the forest. He talked about the weather in the Fire Kingdom. Quoted random lines from Marceline's songs-taking care not to sing-and recited BMO cheat codes. At some point in the middle he confessed that he hadn't been able to stop thinking about her. As the blue dawn lightened into golden morning, then into clear day, Finn talked to Huntress Wizard about space, dimensions, the bottom of the sea, the past, the future, where his father was now, a world made of pillows he sometimes saw in his dreams, distant galaxies, death, and the time he talked to Glob.

On the other side of it all, Huntress sat up, dried her eyes, and blew her nose on a fern.

She met Finn's gaze. Something had passed through her, and passed between them before escaping out into the world.

"You did get a new arm," HW said, appraising it. "I like it."

"You do?" For the first time since he'd seen her, Finn felt himself color. "It's not too technological or nothin'?"

"Nah. It wasn't the grass arm I liked. It was the person attached to it."

"Heh. Well. You'd like Fern if you met him."

Her gaze traveled up and down him where he sat across from her. "And the rest of your outfit...?"

Finn's eyes shot open as he remembered he was in his PJs. "It's, uh, a tactical hero suit. For stealth. And camo."

"Mm." Huntress smiled. "With that and your blushing, you'll be totally invisible in the Forest of Everything is Red."

"Hey!" Finn replied. "I would never go to the Forest of Everything is Red. It's too red there."

Some birds tweeted. A deer rooted around in the undergrowth beyond the washing machine. Finn became aware that neither of them had spoken for a while.

"So." Huntress Wizard broke the silence. "Thanks for being here."

"Sure. I mean, it was no trouble...do you wanna talk about it?"

HW sighed. "That's going to require a confession from me, first. Finn, I was coming to see you."

"You, uh..." Since he'd heard her crying, Finn had tried not to think too hard about his still-powerful crush. It was very clearly not the time for that. But now that she'd brought it up... "You were?"

"Yeah. I felt bad about the way I said goodbye. Have you ever been running away from something, and not been certain exactly what it was? And then one day you realize that if you'd only stop running, that thing would stop chasing you?"

"I guess maybe?" He'd have to think about that.

"I still don't know what I was running from." She sniffed. "I know I was out on patrol when I heard your flute from the concrete wastes, and thought maybe you'd want to duet again. That was when it hit."

"The sadness?"

"The sadness." HW folded her hands in her lap and studied them closely. "When it first started, I thought it was happening because I was too soft. I was looking for an answer to it in Wizard City until I learned I wasn't going to find it there. Since I've been out here, I've been able to avoid the worst effects of MMS by synchronizing myself with the forest's natural cycles. I can hold it off for months at a time. But sometimes, when something really throws off my rhythm..."

Finn swallowed. He couldn't help feeling responsible.

"...well, you saw. I have these moments when I feel like nothing will ever be saved. Like I'll be soft forever, never good enough, never worthy. The forest will die and it's my fault. The world will die, again, and I could've stopped it if I'd been better. I know it's the magic talking. But I also don't know that at all."

She trailed off, and stared out into the morning. It was then that Finn made one of the harder decisions of his life, softened a little by having made it once before.

"Huntress Wizard, I...I think we shouldn't do what you came here to do."

"Sorry?"

"We shouldn't talk right now. About. You know. Us."

A short pause where the wind in her leaves was the only sound.

Then: "I agree," she said. "I haven't finished working on me yet. Not that you ever do. But there's an acceptable threshold I'd like to reach."

"Can I do anything until then?"

She squeezed his hand briefly. "I'd prefer if you didn't mention this the next time we meet. Yes," she noted his expression, "I hope there will be a next time. But...coming here was a mistake. I can't keep seeking you out only to run away right after." Huntress leaned in and kissed him on the cheek. "Goodbye, Finn. You won't see me again until..."

"When?" he asked, when she stopped mid-sentence.

Huntress Wizard caught his eye. "Until I'm ready for that talk. You'll know when."

She jumped up into the forest canopy. A moment later, a tree branch shaking above his head was the only clue that she'd ever been there.

Finn sat back down, heavily, on the washing machine, and took up his flute again. He had no idea what he was supposed to feel now: strong arguments could be made for happiness, grief, frustration, confusion, or several other options. It might well have been the thing Prubs had told him was called "ambiguity." She'd said it was a pretty common symptom of being sixteen.

Yet it was nothing compared to what HW had to deal with. In a clearing that was now under full sunlight, to the music of his flute, Finn resolved once again that as hard as it was, he wouldn't go looking for her. There was nothing heroic about saving somebody against their will.

Author's note: I didn't expect this to be the longest chapter so far, but I really wanted to explore Huntress Wizard's experiences with MMS, and how Finn might relate to those. I wanted to quickly say that I'm not intending this to be a realistic representation of depression or panic attacks-I've imagined HW sometimes suffering these debilitating episodes of bleakness that don't map onto any specific mental condition in real life. I apologize and would be happy to talk if I've upset anybody with this.