AN: Chapter contains themes of suicide, but not ACTUAL suicide. Just a disclaimer.

Chapter 7:

"Marshall?" Inquired Fionna. "I'm sick of not being able to see junk. Can we go outside, now?" Marshall took a deep sigh. Perhaps it was time to leave his hidey hole… but it still gave him the heebie jeebies. After all he had come here not planning to come out.

"It's daytime right now, Fionna. Go if you like, but I'm still a vampire. I'd rather wait for night."

She kissed him on the cheek. So casually, so simply. Was Fionna his, now? Were they a thing? His heart fluttered at the thought, and he denied his inner mind the luxury of analyzing the flaws in the situation.

Not today… He told himself. Not now.

"I'll wait. We can go together."

Marshall squeezed her to him, coyly breathing her in. He was still in shock that this had even happened.

Fionna closed her eyes, and listened to the little heart beats inside of Marshall's chest. All of their years of friendship… when had feelings come into play, she wondered. Marshall had always just teased the crap out of her. Claiming that she was in love with him, or that she wanted to kiss him. She groaned at her stupidity. Of course, he had liked her… and he had tried so hard to make her like him too.

"Sorry it took so long… to give you a chance." She started. Marshall chuckled.

"No worries, I knew you were in love with me. I wasn't going to let you get away that easily!" He joked. Despite that he had. Marshall had completely given up for a while.

The rest of the day was the happiest Marshall had for a long while. Despite his short bursts of negative feelings, Fionna was always there to pull him out of it.

They played music; something which he hadn't done in a very long time. His ax guitar felt strange in his arms, and his fingers were dumb when he tried to pick out the cool solos he could rip back in the day. Usually this would totally bum him out, but Fionna punched him in the arm and cheered him on, telling him he would get back to being the Guitar King in no time.

She beat boxed, or banged drums to his clumsy playing since it was the only thing to play when completely blind, and Marshall started to feel a bit more like himself.

When night time came, he became nervous as Fionna grew more excited at seeing her friend face to face. He dreaded the thought of what he looked like, but it was only fair.

"We'll get snacks while we're out." She said bouncing. It had always been her little fantasy to go on snack runs with someone special. Cozying up on the couch, making up nonsense games… those were much more intimate to her than spaghetti dinners!

"Yeah, okay." He said, feeding off of her excitable nature. Marshall tucked his arm under her armpits and floated her up to the surface. Ah, it had been a long time since he had even let his feet leave the ground. It felt strangely freeing.

As the moonlight penetrated the entrance to the dungeon, Fionna blinked in the pale brightness of it. Even this seemed too bright for her right now. Marshall put her down on the grass by the tree and awaited the unavoidable moment.

Finally, after more than two years she could see Marshall Lee. His hair had grown almost to his shoulders, and he looked towards the moon with skin of equal pallor. He turned nervously towards her, fearing her reaction to him. She laughed and ran her hands through his hair, his now blackened eyes watching her with a small smile.

"Your hair got long." She said.

"Yeah, it does that." He responded. Still, there was enough darkness for the silver in his eyes to shimmer and Fionna was enraptured. Was this guy created to make her weak at the knees? And how in the world had she not noticed these things about him before?

She kissed him softly, keeping her eyes half open to watch his slowly shut as they both fell further into the kiss. How strange, to be able to watch him, butterflies erupted in her guts.

When the kiss broke, Fionna saw something new and different about him. She traced a small scar on his cheek.

"What's this?" She said.

"Oh." Marshall replied, slapping a hand against the offending mark. It only revealed several more tracings on his arm from his wrist to his elbow.

"What are those?" She cried with rising alarm.

"Things have been off with me, Fionna. You should know that… with the thing I turned into…" He avoided her eyes, hating that they were even touching on the subject.

"Some of these… don't look…" She began, horrified.

"Well this one was unintentional." He said poking his face with growing unease. "You wouldn't understand!" He growled, seeing the judgement and that fucking look of pity in her eyes. Anyone in their right mind would have backed off of the Vampire King, but Fionna was not so easily spooked.

"Well, at least try to explain, because I care a whole lot about you right now, Marshall."

He watched her cautiously through slanted eyes.

"I don't know…" He began, up in arms. "I've been trying to kill myself lately? Haven't succeeded. Sometimes I just get sad and it makes me feel something. Glob! I don't want to talk about this to you!" He screamed, eyeing the safety of the entrance to the dungeon. Fionna's big blue eyes shimmered with tears.

"Don't look at me like that!" He warned her. "Just stop it! You don't understand. You're mortal. You have like, what, 80 years? Then you know it's all over and it's been a life well lived. My life is indefinite, Fionna. Do you know how that feels? There is no end for the suffering. I've no reprieve." He grasped at the air, begging her to back off. He felt it bubbling below the surface again… the darkness within him. She nodded slowly, trying her best to understand. He grew desperate, feeling panic sinking in his gut.

I won't let it build up… I can't let it… he lectured himself.

He pulled her into an embrace.

"Please, Fionna. I've been so, so happy today. Let's get snacks, and fly around Aaa. Let's visit old places and pull pranks of folks."

She squeezed him and breathed in deeply, burying the tears that had brimmed earlier.

"That sounds like a really good time." She watched as his hands came to cup her face, and for the first time she saw his whole expression as he scanned her features. His eyes darted from her eyes to her lips. His inner turmoil waned, and he bent to take her mouth with his.

He was going to have a good time, dammit. They were going to have fun and he was going to turn over a new leaf, a happy leaf.

"Let's go…" He said, and picked her up to launch into the sky. Holding onto her, they flew towards the local Squeez-E-Mart, snack stop for Aaa residents great and small.

At the Squeez-E-Mart Fionna and Marshall had fun mixing and matching different Slurp flavors to the chagrin of the disgruntled employee. Marshall was keen on trying all the red colors like watermelon, cherry, and fruit punch.

Fionna squirted herself a rainbow of colors, but was quickly disappointed when she mixed them all together on impulse and it turned a brown shade of poo.

Marshall would randomly dip down to kiss her on the cheek. Sometimes she felt him suck the color from her, but not always.

Mostly he just wanted to remind himself that she was there, and he would whisper things like:

"I keep feeling I'm going to wake up from this amazing dream." Or "I am so amazed that this is happening."

It made her heart flutter every time he said something like that.

In the end, Fionna convinced Marshall to visit his old house by the lake. He had refused at first, telling her he had left the place a mess, but she couldn't be deterred. He had struck a deal with her, that if they visited his old place, they would have to visit her old place (which was coincidentally also his).

Setting on their new destination, Marshall flew Fionna towards the lake in the cave. He hadn't been there since… well since his mother had died. From the front, it looked the same. Quaint, cute, and so nostalgic. He longed to relive his days in that house. But turning to the side, a huge gaping hole could be seen tearing through two entire walls, as if a boulder had careened through the back door, and into the kitchen. When they landed by the basketball court, Fionna ran to inspect it.

"Oh my glob…" Fionna said, gaping at the state of the house. Marshall crossed his arms and assessed the damage he had caused in one of his fits. "Marshall… someone destroyed your house!" She cried.

He burst out laughing. She sure was dense!

"Fionna, come on! Use your thinking brain. I did this. This was the thing that made me run… well kind of."

"Oh." She said in stunned silence. "Well, we can rebuild. It's only a couple of walls."

"Nah." He said flatly. "I'll just find somewhere new." Fionna glowered at him. It was amazing how she had known him for all of those years, yet had barely scratched the surface of his true being. He was a runner, an avoider. When trouble came by, Marshall dodged, or scrammed. This concept was completely foreign and nonsensical to her, being so stubborn and confrontational.

"Let's go in." She said, earning a groan from him. Marshall was quite happy letting the past be past, or so he thought. When they stepped into his disheveled kitchen, his hand reached out to touch things like spice racks and fridge magnets, each one offering a little happy memory. They wandered silently room by room. Fionna watched him, a wan smile crossing his features every once in a while. When finally they reached the stairs to his old room, he showed true hesitation, but forged ahead anyways. As he peeked his head inside, he saw his stuff just as he had left it. Stripy shirt halfway in the laundry hamper, his bed wasn't made, and his recording junk was all over the floor. He picked up the tape player and pressed the play button, only to press stop quickly when he realized which song was playing.

He turned to Fionna to see if she had noticed, but she was too distracted with pictures on the wall. Thank glob. He had forgotten that he had even written that song! With the tape recorder in his hand he felt himself rebuilding an attachment to his little lakeside home.

"Okay." He said. "I'll fix the wall. Someday."

Now it was Fionna's turn to hold up her end of the bargain. It didn't seem to make a difference to her whether they came back to the treehouse, but that had been the deal. At least she could take advantage of grabbing more stuff from her room, and maybe she would see her sister. She missed Cake, and she wondered how her sister had reacted to the goodbye letter she had left before taking off on her journey.

It wasn't too dramatic. Just something like… 'Setting off on a solo adventure to find myself. See you whenever! Love, Fionna.'

On the kitchen table, Fionna found in reply: 'Okay girl, proud of you! Call on me at Mono's when you find yourself! This place gives me the creeps on my own… Kisses!'

Fionna smiled at the response. She thought that Cake would have been sitting in the dark waiting for her to come home, worried sick. But instead her sister had wished her luck and kissed her off.

"What are you smirking about?" Marshall asked, reading the note over her shoulder.

"Nothing really… I'm just happy that Cake doesn't feel that she needs to take care of me anymore."

"I think she's known you don't need to be taken care of for a while, Fionna."

"What do you mean?" She asked.

"If I tell you, don't get mad." He warned. "It's just a hunch." Fionna glowered at him, offering him no promises.

"What is it?"

"I think that she's been sticking around because you weren't ready to go off on your own… not the other way around."

Fionna's eyes widened. "You think I wanted to be taken care of?" She responded defensively. "Like a kid?"

"There's nothing wrong with wanting to be taken care of. It doesn't make you a kid." He pressed his forehead to hers and gazed down into the globe of her eyes. They were so blue, so bright in the light. "I want to be taken care of, too." He whispered. Fionna didn't know that vampires could blush like that. What a shame that she couldn't suck the red from his face, too. She bent to kiss him on the cheek. Oh well, at least she could still do that.

"Let's go home." He said.

"But, I am home." Fionna responded. "You don't want to stay here?"

"And sleep in your tiny ass bed? No thanks! You may not be a kid anymore, but you sure sleep in a bed for one. I'm a big boy. I sleep in a double." He joked, holding up two fingers and winking suggestively at her.

"Pshh, I would have made you sleep on the couch anyways…" She said, blushing and turning away. He cackled and grabbed her around the waist.

"Oh, I couldn't stand for that. You can't deny me anything anymore after kissing me the way you did earlier." He teased, slithering his tongue against her ear. She gasped and gave him a coy smack on his shoulder.

"Marshall!"

He laughed, and it was the most honest laugh he had experienced in nearly two years. Fionna laughed with him. Rejoiced in seeing Marshall becoming more and more like the wacko she knew him to be.

Fionna sighed when they returned to the suffocating blackness of Marshall's refuge. Even Marshall had some complaints about the situation after seeing the beauty of the stars, and the comfort of his old home once again. He would really have to fix those walls… This place was feeling cramped.

They unpacked their snacks, and munched in bed while Marshall read a book out loud to her and lay against the headboard of the bed. Fionna curled into the crook of his arm as his fingers aimlessly played with the tendrils of her braid. It was a strange book called 'The Hunger Games', and he had chosen it because the main character reminded him of her. Every time the heroine would do anything cool or kick ass, he would bend his head down to her and whisper, 'See? That's you'. She listened to the rumbling of his chest as he read the words poetically out to her, and then rudely fell asleep on him, again. She couldn't help it. There was something about him that soothed her. He didn't mind, after all it was way past her bedtime and he had kept her out all night.

Marshall didn't sleep. Instead he stared at the ceiling of the room to which he had become so accustomed. Automatically, his mind tried to walk that familiar, tired path that he had paced over and over again for the past couple of years. He reached for that darkness within him, as it always was a strange comfort to wallow in. But Marshall found that tonight, he couldn't reach for it that easily, and he felt for once having to make an effort to feel sorry for himself. He felt no pressure to dive into it. For once, he had a choice.

No, he thought. I won't do it!

He pulled away from the darkness within him, and instead thought of the beauty of the stars, and of Fionna. He felt another urge overcome him. Marshall wanted to play guitar.