"What do you mean you're taking a break?"
Princess Bubblegum finished tying one pink combat boot into a neat pink knot, then moved to the other. "I mean I'm taking a break," she said. "It'll be incredibly short, and if everything goes according to plan nobody will even know I'm gone. I've built a remote-controlled body double that's exactly like me in every way, physically." She stood, reaching for her coat and backpack that hung ready for her on the wall. "I left a manual for her operation with Finn and Jake."
"But—"
Bubblegum knelt and patted her increasingly worried butler on his small peppermint head. "Everything is going to be just fine, Peps. I promise."
Peppermint Butler muttered something about fragile candy hearts and explosions, but Bubblegum ignored him and instead glanced out one of the numerous throne room windows. The sun had finally begun to set, thank Glob, casting light through the glass to paint the palace floor with vibrant swatches of orange and scarlet and pink. As if the sky had been waiting for an audience, darkness began to creep into the colors of the sun, the shadows of the city elongating until finally dissolving into the blue-velvet shimmer of night.
"I suppose I'll fetch the vampire." Peppermint Butler drawled, clearly still unhappy, leaving the room before Bubblegum had a chance to answer.
The princess sighed, eyes still fixed on the sky. She wasn't entirely sure what to do about Marcy, but she had several tentative ideas she was going to test. The main problem was the fact that she didn't know how Marcy's memory had been altered, nor did she know how deep the loss went. She could still speak, she still understood certain words and actions. She knew a dog, a human, a candy person when she saw one. It was just her personal history, it seemed, that had been taken from her.
Bubblegum had experimented with mind erasure before, of course. But that was the easy part: the taking. Bubblegum had long ago learned that breaking something down was often easier; deconstructing machines, substances—even people—to find out just what those things are made of, their methods of operation. It was putting things back together that was tough, and it almost always required the knowledge of how something worked, why it was set up the way it was, how it could be taken apart.
And to her utter dismay, she hadn't a clue how Marcy had been taken apart.
If she had that knowledge, fixing Marceline would have been a snap, but that was the entire problem: Bubblegum didn't know where to start.
When Marceline and Peppermint Butler showed up several minutes later, Bubblegum was frowning, arms crossed, still staring out the window. Her expression softened when she turned, and she offered Marceline a red apple from her pack, which the vampire sucked on greedily.
"Thanks, Bonnie. I was starving."
Bubblegum nodded, pulling out a small notebook and a pencil. "So you remember what—how you eat?"
Marceline nodded as the two of them headed for the door. "It was something that seemed really obvious," she said, sinking her teeth back into the apple for another small taste. "Like, I need red or I die. There was no uncertainty about it, even though I'm confused about almost everything else."
"Survival Instinct." Bubblegum scribbled in her notebook before returning it to her pack and opening the front door for Marceline. "After you, Marcy."
The walk to Marceline's house took twice as long as it should have. She kept stopping to look at the sky like she had never seen it before, to marvel at mundane things such as bugs and puddles and grass. On one occasion she even teared up at the sight of a particularly smooth rock.
Bubblegum didn't comment but merely observed, pulling out her notebook every so often to jot down a few notes. Even though she knew the situation was dire and she wanted Marceline back and she was fairly certain Finn and Jake would find a way to destroy her robot body double before the month's end, Princess Bubblegum actually felt… content. This break from her duties was the first thing she had done for herself in probably a hundred years, and seeing Marceline like this, although it was sad—of course it was sad—it was also sort of… interesting.
It was fascinating, really, seeing Marceline with such enthusiasm for life, reacting to the things around her with such innocent wonder. The worst part about being Marceline's friend had been watching her life stagnate while Bubblegum's had begun to flourish. The princess had created a living, thriving kingdom full of candy people for her to protect, had given herself responsibilities and duties that she couldn't ignore for the sake of creation, of building something greater than herself.
Marceline, though, was different. She did not have the desire to build or to create or to even make much of herself at all. Bubblegum wasn't even sure Marceline had the capacity to change even if she had wanted to. Marcy was the last living vampire, which meant Bubblegum had no way of knowing whether or not that bite had altered her ability for emotional or mental growth. Sometimes she wondered if that was why the two of them hadn't worked out, because deep down Bubblegum knew that while she was growing and changing, Marceline was stuck being exactly who she was when she received that bite.
"We're here." Bubblegum said at last. The moon had risen but it was barely a sliver, and all she could see clearly was Marceline's pale skin, the darkness around them causing her to appear paler still. The mouth of the cave yawned before them, blacker than the night sky above.
Marceline raised her eyebrows. "I live in a cave?"
"Yep. Follow me." Bubblegum ignored the buzz of uneasiness she felt heading alone into that inky darkness and took a step forward, just to have Marceline grip her hand and pull her back out.
"I'm sorry," Marceline said, biting her lip. "It's so dark. Do you mind?"
Bubblegum had to clear her throat several times before she could get any words out. Even then, a strangled "not at all" was all she could manage.
It wasn't just holding Marceline's hand that had her so flustered—although that was enough to make Bubblegum glad of the darkness that hid the faint flush of her cheeks. It was the tremble in Marceline's voice. The fear. Bubblegum couldn't remember the last time she had seen Marceline scared; in fact, she didn't think she had ever seen the emotion on her face like that, flickering through her eyes like a ripple in a pool of quicksilver. Bubblegum reminded herself to add that to her notes, later.
The darkness lasted only a moment, then the two girls were stumbling toward a single light that had been left on somewhere inside the Vampire Queen's house.
"Thank Glob you're forgetful," Bubblegum laughed, glad for the excuse to release Marceline's hand.
Marceline didn't answer. She floated up to the front door, then around to the side. Glancing through windows, examining the chipped paint on the wooden exterior. Around to the porch she flew, circling the house until she finally landed softly next to Bubblegum back on the front steps.
"Well?" Bubblegum prodded. "Do you remember it?"
"Not really. But it feels… familiar." Marceline tapped her chin thoughtfully, stepping back to take in what she could see of the enormous cavern by the light of that one window. "It feels right."
Bubblegum stayed in the front room while Marceline explored her own house like it was brand new. She lowered herself down to the floor and pulled out a sleeping bag and her favorite travel pillow from her pack, then she pulled out her notebook. She proceeded to jot down a few more lines in her neat script, then began to doodle while she waited for Marceline to come back.
She was just finishing up an absentminded sketch of Marcy, rough and plainly unlearned, when the vampire appeared right next to her, startling her to the point of flinging her notebook across the room.
"Hey Bonnie, did you know I could turn invisible?" Marceline frowned, looking from Bubblegum to the couch and then back again. "Why are you on the floor?"
Bubblegum tried to keep the irritation out of her voice while she retrieved her notebook and pencil, remembering that blowing up on Marceline was what started this whole mess in the first place. "Your couch is uncomfortable and hard as a rock. It's like sleeping on concrete."
Marceline looked thoughtful as she drifted over to the couch, hovering just above the cushions. "That makes sense," she said. Then: "How do you know that?"
"I've slept over a couple times," Bubblegum said, dismissive, as she shoved her notebook back into her pack.
"I see." Marceline lowered herself down to the couch, winced in confirmation, then floated back up. "Did we have many sleepovers?"
Tense laughter bubbled out of the Princess's throat. "Um, yeah. More than a few."
Marceline looked taken aback. "And I made you sleep on the floor?"
"Well, no..." Bubblegum's face began to heat again. "Actually—"
The princess was interrupted by the ringing of her phone from within her backpack. "Again with this?" She mumbled. "What now Peps?"
Marceline watched her, eyes narrowed, probably wondering what she had been about to say.
"They already broke the robot." Bubblegum rubbed her brows with a thumb and forefinger. "How?"
She glanced up to see Marceline float smoothly toward the kitchen, grab a bag of cherries from the fridge, sniff them, pop one into her mouth.
"Well did you try turning it off and on again?"
Marceline drifted back to the front room, to a rack holding dozens of tapes, looked through them, sucked the red out of another cherry.
"The button on the neck, Peps. Underneath the hair. Read the manual."
Marceline pulled a tape off the rack, turned it over, pulled out another.
"It worked? Excellent." Bubblegum hung up the phone without bothering to say goodbye, then she turned it off altogether. She didn't want any more distractions, not until someone over there figured out the real definition of the word 'emergency'.
"Hey, Bonnie. How do you work this thing?" Marceline asked, attempting to slot a tape into the television upside-down.
"Hold on, I'll do it." She grabbed the tape from Marceline and shoved it into the machine before settling back on the floor. "What are we watching?"
"Heat Signature 5," Marceline answered, offering Bubblegum a cherry. "It sounded interesting."
Bubblegum pulled out her notebook again, popping the cherry into her mouth. "So you can still read?"
"Apparently."
Princess Bubblegum set her notebook to the side and made herself comfortable inside her sleeping bag. It was weird sitting here next to Marcy, watching one of her favorite movies, eating cherries by the light of the television. It was familiar yet odd, like she had stumbled into a version of her past self that she had never thought she would lose. They hadn't hung out like this in so long, it almost felt like they were kids again. It felt good. Normal. So normal, in fact, that Bubblegum almost forgot their earlier conversation, what she had been about to confess.
Almost.
