A/N: My apologies for the haphazard posting schedule! Unfortunately, writing has to take a backseat to getting the ol' PhD, so delays like this will happen from time to time. Don't worry, though: I'm 100% committed to seeing this story through! As always, I cannot thank those of you who take the time to read this enough. Writing isn't nearly as much fun without an audience.
I make no claims of ownership over Adventure Time or any of the characters.
Making your way in the world today takes everything you've got…
The lyrics were becoming nothing but a distant memory, but for some reason Marceline had never forgotten them. Maybe it was because memories were the only thing that remained of Simon, or maybe it was simply because the line could not have been more applicable to her life.
Everything I've got and then some, she sighed as she walked along the lifeless streets of the city.
The broken cities held nothing but the promise of danger and the pain of bitter memories for the girl, but she had to eat somehow. She had tried her hand at hunting in the forests that still remained, with some success, but the war that had wiped out, to her knowledge, everyone else on the planet had not been much more kind to the wildlife. It wasn't a chore she was fond of doing, but she needed supplies from the remnants of the cities if she wanted to survive. Hunger always won out against fear.
Fortunately, fear was a continually decreasing factor for Marceline. In the years since Simon, or whatever he called himself now, had left her to fend for herself, she had begun to discover that she possessed strange abilities; the more the situations called for it, the more Marceline discovered that she was stronger, faster, and possessed a much stronger will to survive than anything else she met in the ruins. The shape-shifting was also convenient, in a pinch. She didn't know much about her father, but she knew he was a demon, which made her half-demon. Since Simon's powers came from the crown, and not being a human, she reasoned that her demon blood was to thank for her own talents.
Marceline stopped as she came to an intersection in the road she was following to scan the way ahead. She hadn't come across anything that looked like it had any supplies left yet, but she was sure that food couldn't be far. A rusting stop sign snapped in two pointed towards a long row of rubble to her right, and the scene to her left was more of the same. Both directions seemed to lead away from the heart of the city, and neither had anything more than piles of brick and cement with the occasional iron girder still standing.
Frowning, Marceline looked at the sky, which was the same hopeless shade of black that it almost always was. Nuclear winter, she seemed to remember Simon calling it. The name had always seemed stupid to her; winter was supposed to be cold, and she had never felt the need to wear anything more than a t-shirt. Still, the cities seemed to be almost perpetually dark, as if a clear sky would be an invitation for more bombs to drop.
Not that there was anyone left to drop them.
Besides, Simon's word was the only one she had at the time, and that made it as good as gospel. Her gaze lingered at the ominous clouds for a moment longer, as it sometimes did, but she eventually quit her stare and continued along her way.
"You should know he's not coming back by now," she chided herself.
Normally, she would make as little noise as possible when in the city, but her own voice was the only one she was sure to hear on a daily basis. At that point, she would have almost welcomed the mutants; at the very least, killing a few of them would break up the monotony. Marceline walked past a few more city blocks, and eventually found a building that looked promising. The only letters still visible on its fading sign were an "R," a "T", and an "A", but the general shape of the building told Marceline everything she knew. She had finally found a supermarket, and that meant she wouldn't have to go hungry that night.
Abandoning her usual caution, Marceline leapt through a broken window onto a disintegrating tile floor. There was a pervasive stench in the building, but at this point it was more likely from dead rats that had run out of spoiled food to eat than from the spoiled food itself. She looked around for signs of foods that would still be preserved, and thought she spotted some promising packaging a few aisles down. Licking her lips, she made her way towards what she hoped would be her meal for the next few days.
As she headed towards her dinner, however, something outside the storefront caught Marceline's attention. Her natural instincts now returning, she quickly ducked behind a counter and peeked out to see what it was. She had to stop herself from audibly gasping as she found what had distracted her: It was another girl.
The girl wore a long dress, that Marceline thought was oddly clean, and some sort of thin hat with a blue jewel in it. The strangest thing about her, though, was her color; the stranger was pink from head to toe. Then again, thought Marceline, it's not like I remember what other people are supposed to look like. Simon was blue and I'm mostly grey, so I guess a pink person isn't that weird. Marceline toyed with the notion of moving closer, but that's when she realized that the girl was in an oddly similar position to herself, crouched behind a slab of cement.
What is she hiding from? She scanned the ground directly in front of this newcomer, but she couldn't see anything else. In all likelihood, the girl was hiding from the mutants, in which case Marceline had nothing to worry about; if this pink person was afraid of the mutants, then she couldn't possibly pose a threat to a half-demon. Or maybe she saw a rat and is worried about getting her clothes messy, Marceline grinned. Gaining confidence, she made to get up from behind her cover, but was stopped by a sudden chill throughout her body. A mild shift in temperature wouldn't usually give her pause, but something felt different about this. More than a little bit of wind, Marceline felt as if something was actively trying to draw all the heat out of her.
That's when she saw it.
Floating in the air just a few feet away from the other girl was a creature unlike anything she had ever seen. This time, Marceline froze, struggling to stifle her pounding heartbeat. Whether out of surprise or fear, Marceline didn't have the wits to make out much of the figure's details; most of the thing seemed to be nothing more than a floating shade, but its scent was a dead giveaway to its intentions.
Marceline had smelled plenty of death in her travels, and that thing reeked of it.
Every fiber of her being was screaming to run, to get as far away from the thing as possible and never, ever look back, but for some reason Marceline remained transfixed by the floating entity ahead of her. A cold sweat began to form on her forehead, and the only motion she was capable of was trembling from head to toe. She would have given all the food she had hoped to find to regain control of her body, but this time the fear was winning.
Suddenly, as if sensing her gaze, the creature stopped what it was doing and snapped its head right in her direction. Its piercing green eyes shone with malicious intent, and the monster began a slow advance. As it made its way towards her, it seemed to emanate a darkness that consumed everything. Marceline tried to scream, but whatever voice she thought she had was swallowed by the void spreading toward her. Still without control of her body, she could only look on in horror as the creature moved toward her, the darkness making her its prisoner. The world around her faded to black, and the last thing Marceline saw were two green eyes that shone like flame, rhythmically advancing to bring about her final cadence.
The vampire queen woke up like a bolt, her breathing rapid and heavy.
Looking around, Marceline noticed that the sun had almost finished setting. She peeked outside her tent; the rest of the group, which was still having trouble adjusting to a more nocturnal mode of operations, was already up and getting ready to set out. She took a deep breath, and silently exhaled, her breathing returning to normal. Wiping the sweat from her forehead, she scoffed at herself. What sort of demon has nightmares? It's not even night!
Ridiculous as it seemed, it was her current reality. They had started on the first day after they entered the badlands, right after their unfortunate run-in with the mutants. Marceline shuddered at the thought. Out of all the creatures she had encountered in her travels, they were the ones that Marceline had least hoped to see ever again. Of course, she had long passed the point where they posed a physical threat to her. Unfortunately, they apparently retained a knack for bringing up memories that were best left 1000 years ago where they belonged. The princess of the Nightosphere had plenty of experience with ghosts, but her own were proving difficult to handle.
Taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot.
Marceline shrugged off her blanket and started working to forget the restless day she had just finished. As the sun cast its last ray of light across the desert, Marceline emerged from her tent. Finn and Jake had already packed all their supplies, and Bonnie's six creations were standing at attention, apparently waiting for an order. The vampire cracked a slight smile; the things were kind of off-putting, but she always appreciated henchmen who would follow her orders without question.
Speaking of henchmen… Marceline glanced over towards Finn. She could no longer smell any blood on the bandages under his shirt, which was a good sign. Though she had never doubted Finn would recover, being around that much blood made her uncomfortable, and a slowly healing injury would make the trip take even longer than she had anticipated. Still, she could tell that the kid wasn't all there, and one glance at Jake told her that the dog could notice, too. Ever since that run-in with the giant monster, Finn had been acting like more of a zombie than anyone in the group. From the way he was yelling at it, Marceline had guessed that it was someone he knew; or, at any rate, somebody he used to know. Despite the fact that a subdued Finn was about as rare a sight as anyone could hope for, his constant moping was staring to bring her down, so she decided to take matters into her own hands.
"How'd you sleep, hero?" she asked as she casually floated over to join the dog and human.
Finn shrugged. "Ok, I guess…I'm still not so great at sleeping during the day."
"You'll get used to it," Marceline chuckled. "Besides, if we kept travelling during the day, I'd have to leave all the monsters to you guys. Where's the fun in that for me?" she winked.
The boy's only response was to sigh and stare at the ground.
Marceline frowned. "Ok, seriously Finn, what's eating you? I haven't seen you this depressed since I told you that balloon music wasn't a real thing."
Finn continued to stare at the ground.
"It's just been a rough time for him," Jake answered in his stead. "You know that guy we killed, James?"
"Well, he was kind of hard to miss," Marceline replied, "though I wasn't aware you two were in the habit of naming your monsters."
"Yeah, well…we actually used to know him, before he became a giant oozing monster. He…" now Jake was looking at the ground, as well, "he saved our lives once. Not too far from here."
"So what?" Marceline folded her arms, not at all impressed by the morose display going on in front of her.
"So what?" Finn had apparently been momentarily pulled from his stupor by the vampire's callous response. "He saved us, Marceline! He saved our lives, and we killed him!" He looked at his hands, as if they were still gripping the sword that sliced through the monster. "How am I even supposed to live with myself after doing something like that?"
"You can start by actually staying alive," Marceline responded, her voice beginning to rise. "Look, I don't know what that guy did for you, and I don't really care. When you're out here, it's kill or be killed. It doesn't matter if someone helped you out, or was there for you once, or anything like that. Once you're on your own, you have to start making the tough decisions. That means not thinking twice about killing something that wants you dead. Trust me, if it's living out here, it's not your friend."
It was in that moment that Marceline finally realized why Princess Bubblegum had tried so hard to get her to go on this trip. If these two knuckleheads have any chance at all of surviving out here, she reflected, they need someone who knows what they're doing…someone who's done this before. It was difficult for her to say if she was more accepting of Bonnie's coercion after this revelation, or if it just pissed her off that the princess hadn't trusted her enough to just level with her.
Leaving her thoughts on the matter momentarily, Marceline shifted her attention towards the two adventurers. Suddenly a wave of pity washed over her as they silently considered her advice.
This place really is hell if you're trying to go it alone.
"Hey, don't let it get you down," she said in a more reassuring tone, "at the end of the day, what matters most is you're on a mission from PB. You two can't just go back on your word to protect these guys, right?"
"Yeah, you're right." Finn replied resolutely, finally shaking off his slump. "It sucks that we had to kill James but…the real James wouldn't have attacked us in the first place, right?"
"I guess that's true," Jake agreed. "Sorry we were bein' such downers, Marceline."
Marceline flashed a fanged smile. "Don't worry about it. Let's just get going while there's still moonlight."
"Right!" Finn and Jake responded in unison.
The combination of a cloudless evening sky and a bright, waxing moon made for easy travel across the desert. Finn was more energetic than he had been in days, and his optimism, which always had a strange way of spreading, even had Marceline in higher spirits than she had been. The terrain was mostly flat, although that tended to be a non-issue for someone who could float, and they hadn't encountered any more creatures since the first time. For the moment, Marceline was content to assume that they had run into the last few that had managed to survive, but the hand kept close to the neck of her axe was proof her subconscious knew that was a lie.
"Yo Marcy, how long 'til we get there?" Finn asked as he trotted across the sand.
"What makes you think I know?" Marceline retorted.
"I dunno, it just seemed like you knew where we were going when Prubs showed us that map earlier."
Marceline stopped momentarily. It had looked like it might be…she looked at their current surroundings, possibly appearing more frantic than she had intended. To her relief, all she could see in any direction was sand.
No, there's no way, she thought silently.
"I don't know what gave you that impression, but I'm just as in the dark as you guys are." Marcline glanced ahead at the colony crew, which continued its noiseless march towards their unknown destination, and added, "Besides, it still looks like they know exactly where they're going."
"Yeah, I guess you're right," Finn replied, and continued to walk alongside their charges.
After a few hours had passed, the group decided to stop for a meal. Finn pulled a few sandwiches out of his backpack for he and Jake, and he also tossed Marceline the bottle of ketchup she had asked him to hold. As her dinner hit her hands, though, she almost dropped it.
I've been eating out of this for days…why is it still heavy? She shrugged and popped the cap. The weight of the bottle wouldn't be the first thing to be a figment of her imagination in the wasteland.
"So Marceline, I've been thinking," Finn said between bites, "these monsters we fought, and those things you told us about running into with Simon that one time, are they the same?"
Sighing, Marceline looked off to the right. "Yeah, they're the same all right; it's hard to mistake them. Though," she added, "I had never seen one quite as big as the one that you managed to take down."
"Huh," Finn replied. "So do you have any idea what they are?"
Evil, was her immediate thought. And not the same kind of evil as my dad. Evil that doesn't think, doesn't feel, doesn't see. Evil whose sole purpose is to continue wreaking the same kind of mindless violence that spawned it in the first place.
She looked back at Finn, who had stopped eating in anticipation of her answer. If evil was all she thought they were, she would have just told him; the kid got seriously jazzed up about "slaying evil" or whatever. But there was something else, too, a suspicion that had grown in the back of her mind while she wandered alone through the post-apocalyptic world. Marceline didn't remember much from before the Mushroom War, but she knew that there were people, human people. After the bombs dropped, she always found the mutants in places where a bunch of these people were supposed to have lived.
Evil, and probably formerly human.
Finn hadn't taken her eyes off the vampire as she considered her response. She hated to keep all this from him - he got enough of that from Bonnie – but she couldn't have him moping for days like the last time.
"I'm not really sure," she shrugged, this time staring off in the opposite direction. "They just showed up from time to time, groaning and oozing and trying to kill anything they didn't like, which was pretty much everything. All I ever needed to know was that when I saw one, I had two options: run or kill it."
"I guess that makes sense," Finn said, resuming his meal. "Did you have a name for them?"
"Mutants," she responded.
"Really?" Finn sounded incredulous this time. "I found some comic books about mutants once, and they were definitely way more rad than these guys."
"I'm pretty sure those are a different kind of mutant," Marceline couldn't help but smile in spite of herself. "All right, finish up the sandwiches, guys, we've got ground to cover."
A short hike later, the faint purple line that foretold the coming of dawn was coming into view on the horizon; Marceline figured they had about an hour or so more to travel before the sun came out. She frowned. While she was certainly no stranger to wandering this wasteland, she couldn't help but wonder how long it would actually take them to reach their destination. They had been walking for days, just trusting that Bubblegum's latest freakish experiment had a good enough sense of direction to get them where they were going. The map was all but useless; almost all the physical landmarks Marceline had thought to use had long-since been eroded by time. Then again, when she had last been here, she had never really wandered towards anything in particular; maybe her sense of direction was just a bit off.
Still gazing at the horizon, Marceline came to a sudden halt as she floated into Finn's back.
"Hey, what gives?" she grunted while recovering. Looking down beside her, she saw that the six mutes had also stopped marching. Surprisingly, this time they had actually taken off their packs, and were taking out what looked like supplies for building a very large tent. I guess they knew where they were going after all, she thought to herself.
"Looks like we finally made it," Marceline remarked, "though you could have at least warned me before you stopped, Finn."
"Uh…Marceline?" Jake's voice drew her attention away from the candy people, "I think you ought to see this."
Scanning what was apparently their destination, Marceline immediately saw what had caused Finn to come to so abrupt a halt: Barely visible in the distance were the outlines of a line of mutants, slowly making their advance towards the group.
It figures this would be the kind of place Bonnie would pick for her new digs. The vampire hissed, and readied her fangs. At least it won't be boring, she thought as she continued to size up the enemy. By her guess, there were about twenty of them, and none of them appeared to be giant. She readied herself to charge, but then something else caught her eye.
"Looks like we've got company," Finn tossed his backpack on the ground as he readied his sword. "This should be a piece of cake this time, though, right Marceline?"
The vampire didn't respond. As they approached their current location, she had been too busy scanning the sky for signs of dawn to notice the sizable valley nearby. The depression in the sand revealed what lay beneath: The ruins of a city long-forgotten by all but a few. A fork in the road, a broken, twisted sign post, and a few crumbled buildings had inexplicably been preserved over the years, remaining as a testament to what had once covered the entirety of the badlands.
A chill ran up the Marceline's spine.
"Marceline?" Finn repeated, but his voice was barely audible. Marceline stood entranced, focusing all her senses on the valley beneath them; for her, time was standing still…or perhaps was being reversed. The place exuded a dark energy that seemed to wash over and separate her from the current reality.
Wouldn't you like to get away?
It was as if centuries of dark memories were now staring her in the face. She was alone again…lost, afraid, and powerless. There could be no doubting it now: This was the place she had thought they were going from the start, the same place that was haunting her in her nightmares. It was the place she had met Princess Bubblegum.
It was also the first place where she had seen the Lich.
A/N: I have to confess, Marceline is by far my favorite character to write for, and I hope it showed! Feel free to leave a review if you've got the time, and I sincerely hope you enjoyed the chapter half as much as I like writing it!