"Stop scratching your head." Princess Bubblegum smacked Marceline's hand away from the strange wires taped to her head and neck.
The two of them were in what Bonnie had been calling the 'music room', which it probably used to be. There was messy handwriting all over the wall, and instruments stacked in the corner, but Bubblegum had turned it into her own personal science lab, complete with something that looked like a giant fridge. Machines clicked and whirred all around them, including the large square box to which Marceline was basically attached by the brain.
"I'm trying. It really itches." Marceline sat on her hands and squeezed her eyes shut, as if that would make it stop.
"I know, but you'll corrupt the data if you keep doing that, and then you'll have to keep them on even longer." Bonnie situated her glasses on her face, then typed something into her computer. "It's just logic, Marcy."
Marceline's eyes snapped open, then narrowed. "I'm not stupid you know."
The large machine that had been letting out steady, intermittent beeps on the floor near Marceline's feet suddenly let out a series of furious noises, much to the surprise of both of them. Bonnie's face disappeared behind the screen of her overlarge computer, and when she again appeared she was frowning, a deep line between her brows. "The machine is picking up an anomaly in your brain waves, but I'm not sure why…" Her expression only grew more troubled as her eyes scanned the screen.
"What's wrong?" Marceline craned her neck in an attempt to view the screen herself, but Bonnie was shaking her head.
"It's fading." She said. Indeed, the machine's frenzied beeps were growing quiet once again, and Bubblegum was staring at her with squinted eyes. She tapped her chin. "There's no need for you to look at the screen anyway, Marcy. I doubt you'd be able to understand what any of it means."
Marceline's eyes widened. Bonnie was probably right; in the few days since Marceline had found herself in the company of the princess she hadn't found herself to be particularly scientifically inclined, but still… that tone…
"You were never really smart enough to understand my work," Bonnie continued, seemingly oblivious to Marceline's feelings. "I'm honestly surprised anyone ever even had the patience to teach you to read."
Marceline couldn't help it; she snapped. "I may have lost my memory, and I don't know who I was before, but I know I am not. Stupid!"
The machine began beeping again, this time even more incessantly than before. "I knew it!" Bonnie whooped, adjusting her glasses and staring at her screen. "The sensor reacts when you're in a state of heightened emotion." Bonnie leaned forward to study the words on the computer a bit closer. "Which means your brain does too."
"You made me angry on purpose?" Marceline was shocked, although she didn't know why. For all she knew this Bonnie person had always been like this. She suddenly realized, there in that tiny room with all those strange machines that she really did not know this woman at all. She had seen photos of them together throughout the house, but they all looked awfully old.
With mounting anxiety, Marceline realized that she had no way of knowing whether or not this woman had malicious intentions toward her or not. Sure she had been kind enough so far, but when it came to this science mumbo whatnot, she almost seemed like a different person than the one with which Marceline had been sharing her food and personal space.
Marceline watched Bonnie gleefully adjust some knobs on her machines and told herself that this was all for her. It was all to get her memory back so she could get her life back, return to normal—whatever that was. But an insistent itch started at the back of her mind, worse even than the itch caused by the stupid wires on her head: what if her old life wasn't what she imagined it to be? She didn't feel particularly sad to have lost her memories. No sense of loss tugged at her mind when she looked upon the people who were supposed to be her friends or the music she was supposed to have created in the house which she had supposedly lived in for years. And she had remembered that crushing sensation of loneliness when she had first awoken. It was fuzzy and fading, a blurred remnant of emotions the old Marceline was feeling. But it was there all the same, and it terrified her.
She wasn't lonely now. She had Bonnie, whatever her intentions. And she was supposed to be going to visit that human and his dog-brother soon—what were their names?—Finn and Jake! They had been so nice to her when they found her, and she had a feeling they would get along pretty well. What if all of this was a mistake? What if it was better to start over? Make new memories instead of desperately trying to recall old ones?
Marceline wrung her hands together in her lap. "Bonnie, I don't know about this."
"About what?" Bonnie replied absently, still toying with her machines.
"What if… what if this is a mistake?"
Bonnie looked at the machine on the floor which had started to make noise again, then looked at Marceline, really looked at her for the first time since she had surrounded her with all this science stuff. Took in her nervous countenance and the uncertainty written on her face. "What do you mean?"
"What if I'm happier this way?" Marceline twisted one of the wires that hung in front of her. "Maybe losing my memory was for the best."
Bonnie didn't say anything for a long time. When Marceline looked up she almost expected her to be angry, but the princess only looked thoughtful. "I suppose I get where you're coming from," she finally said. "If you don't want to go through with this of course I'll respect your wishes. But I'm going to keep working on it, at least until the Candy Kingdom needs me again. That way, in the end, it's available, whatever you decide to do."
Marceline bit her lip, contemplative, then grinned. "That's fine, Bonnie. As long as we can keep hanging out."
Bonnie gave her a strange look, something between kindness and distress. "Of course we can hang out, Marcy."
"Good." Marceline settled back into the chair, somehow more comfortable now. "Take it away, Princess. Make me feel things."
Bonnie laughed. "That's the plan."
It turned out that nothing else Bonnie said made Marceline angry now that she knew that was the goal. Sadness didn't come, either. Everything Bonnie said to make her sad went right over Marceline's head; she had nothing to compare it to. Eventually it was decided that Marceline didn't have to be hooked up to all those wires anymore, for which she was immensely grateful. Instead, Bonnie instructed her to tape some similar wires—connected to a small box that fit snugly in her pocket—to her chest to monitor her heart rate before leaving the room to give her some privacy. Those were irritating too, but they were preferable to the alternative.
As soon as Marceline taped the final wire to her chest and pulled her shirt back on, her stomach growled noisily. How long had they been in there?
"I'm ready for some grub, Bonnie!" she yelled as she floated down the stairs.
"It's your house Marceline. Get it yourself!" Bonnie's words were harsh, but there was laughter in her voice. She was seated on the living room floor, munching on a package of crackers and going over her notes on Marceline's brain. The fact that her brain was being analyzed in such detail made her a bit uncomfortable.
Marceline grabbed a red shoe from the fridge then sat herself on the ground beside Bonnie, wincing in discomfort. Maybe she should re-carpet this floor.
"You really need some groceries," Bonnie said without glancing up from her notes. "For those of us that actually eat," she amended, looking up. "I found some emergency crackers in my pack but I can't keep going like this."
Marceline nodded, watching Bonnie's lips as she chewed. She sucked a bit of red from the shoe thoughtfully. Pink wasn't too far off from red, and in the dim light of the living room Bonnie looked… very tasty.
Marceline pushed the thought from her mind even as she scooted closer to that inviting pink.
"Soo, what did we used to do for fun?"
Bonnie looked up from her notebook and blinked, surprised to see Marceline so close. "Fun?" she said.
"What? Did we never have fun?"
Bonnie looked at the ceiling. "Well. We used to run away from responsibilities a lot, but I don't know how fun that would be now. Uhhh." Bonnie put her notebook on the floor and pulled her knees to her chest, thinking hard now. "We used to have these long conversations, long like neither of us would get any sleep. We used to stargaze. Sometimes you would sneak me out of the castle and we would go up to the roof and stay there until Peppermint Butler found me, which he always did. We used to dance" Bubblegum laughed. "We were both terrible at it." Her smile faded as she picked imaginary bits of lint off her pink pants.
Marceline rose to her knees to peer over Bonnie's knees. "Those all sound like good things, so why do you look so sad?"
Bonnie looked up and tried to smile. "It just seems like it happened to a different person, in a different lifetime, you know?"
Before she even really knew what she was doing, Marceline was on her feet and pulling Bonnie to hers.
"Woah, Marcy, what are you doing?"
"Having fun." Marceline gripped Bonnie's hand in hers. "Is this okay?"
Bonnie's cheeks were turning a lovely color now, slightly darker than normal, almost red. "We don't even have any music…"
Marceline grinned. "I'm not hearing a 'no'."
Bonnie laughed as Marceline twirled her about the room, pulled her in close. Pretty soon both of them were laughing so hard tears were streaming out of their eyes and they stopped moving altogether because to move would have caused them both to fall. Marceline just held Bonnie tight to her chest as they rocked with laughter.
"Jeez, Marcy." Bonnie pulled one hand away and wiped at her eyes. "We haven't done that in so long."
Marceline looked at the princess and had an abrupt heated, intrusive and unexpected urge to get her old life back. She wanted to remember Bonnie when they were both young, when they had done this for the first time. She wanted to remember…
Bonnie stopped laughing when she saw the expression on Marceline's face, leaned forward at the same time Marceline, struck with sudden inspiration, did the same.
A moment after their lips met, Marceline gasped as she was slammed with the weight of a hundred memories hitting her at once: she and Bonnie eating ice cream on a bench on a sunny day; the two of them running barefoot through the sand on a beach in the dark; Bonnie pointing up at the midnight sky, announcing the name of some constellation or another; Marceline, alone, heading away from the Candy Kingdom.
The memories were strong and they were rapid, but just as quickly they began to fade. Some lingered and she was able to hold on to them, but others left nothing but the echo of a feeling, a single sentiment and nothing more.
Marceline snapped back to the present at the sound of an incredibly annoying high-pitched beeeeep coming from her pocket. She was on the floor, though she couldn't remember falling.
Bonnie was hovering over her with a hand on her mouth.
"Oh my," She said.
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I just want to take a sec to thank everyone who reviewed for the kind words, they have really made my day and my life. I'm sorry I'm taking forever to write, I didn't realize how much work school would be this year. Hopefully once everything settles down, I will be able to post more frequently. and as always, thank you so much for reading!
