Chapter 5
New Meaning

Martin's mouth dropped open upon seeing his son, his much older son. Finn appeared to be in a similar state of shock. The two simply gawked at one another for several moments, long enough for both of them to sort through their thoughts.

"Finn?" Martin muttered, just loud enough for the brothers to hear. He blinked several times to make sure the boy wasn't a hallucination of sorts, but even he knew his head injuries had healed beyond that point. This wasn't a figment of his imagination; it was real. It had to be.

Without thinking, Finn responded, "Martin?" His inflection was confused, hopeful… scared? It made Martin's heart grow heavy.

Martin repeated his name quieter to himself, feeling a bit uneasy. Why did his son just call him by his first name? He furrowed his brow. …What happened in the fifteen years he just warped through?

At that moment, Bonnie coughed loudly, looking pointedly at the probably-mutated dog. "We'll give you two some space," she said, not-so-subtly gesturing the dog towards her.

"Oh! Yeah! Space…," the dog said awkwardly, quickly hopping off of the bench. He pointed two fingers at Martin, mouthing the words "I'm watching you" as he walked around Finn and over to Bonnie. The princess too eyed Martin cautiously.

Slowly, Martin shuffled his way over to Finn, awkwardly sitting down next to him. An uncomfortable quietude followed, as neither of them were quite sure how to start the conversation the princess so desperately wanted them to have. The sound of chirping birds and chattering candy people seemed to drown out their thoughts.

Martin took this chance to look at his son. Scratches and scars from the picture were much more noticeable up close in broad daylight, and the boy held a rather complex, uneasy stare that was affixed to the ground. (A type of stare that, in Martin's opinion, the boy was entirely too young to hold.) He also had brilliant, bright blonde hair that had been hidden under his hat, and a shiny prosthetic arm that Martin surprisingly missed upon first glance.

Martin's eyes widened. "Hey, hold on a second, why on Earth do you have a mechanical arm?!" he said in alarm, completely breaking the semi-awkward-semi-serene atmosphere. Finn jumped.

The teenager sat in stunned, confused silence, unsure of how to properly answer the question. "It's… complicated," Finn eventually said, looking back down at the ground.

Martin slowly nodded. "Well, we've got time. I want to know what's gonna happen to you, or what's already happened, I guess."

'I want to know what's gonna happen to you.' Hearing those words spoken in the same voice that constantly undermined his feelings was so foreign to Finn. It made his stomach churn at the thought of telling this man he had a huge part to play in all of it. After all, this wasn't really the person who tore his arm off, right? Not yet, at least…

Finn started to anxiously rub the back of his neck. "Uh, well, I met… you, for the first time," he awkwardly said, averting his gaze from Martin's.

Martin furrowed his brow. Did I do that to him? he thought. Did I hurt him? He sat in stunned silence; though, the more he mused on the subject, the less surprised he grew, especially as his mind wandered back to the princess's words from earlier.

"Do you have any idea what he's been through? How much your actions have affected him?"

"Do you know how important it is that Finn hears that he wasn't left? From you?"

"Do you even care about your son?!"

In spite of Martin's intrusive thoughts, Finn continued, "You were in a cosmic prison called the Citadel, and… you tried to escape. You used me to escape…" He paused momentarily, for a reason that Martin couldn't quite decipher. Though, almost as fast as Finn stopped, he carried on with his thought,

"...I was pretty worked up about that-" An understatement, Martin thought bitterly. "-so I tried to stop you from leaving by holding onto part of your ship, and then… my arm got torn off. It regrew after a bit because of an eternal bond to this grass sword I had, but then I lost it again, so Princess Bubblegum gave me this prosthetic."

Finn inhaled sharply, thinking about his words carefully. "It's just… you never really cared about anyone but yourself, not even your own son. And now I'm confused, because PB's telling me that you actually cared about me in the past… Past you cares about me now… What happened?"

Emotions weighed heavily on the boy's words, tears threatening to fall from his eyes. He was past anger. He was past hatred. All he had left was the lingering trauma of a child who had been abandoned, the hurt of being unwanted, used.

Martin was left in silence again. The last thing he ever wanted to do was hurt Finn. At least, that was the case right now. Did his antics really get to the point where he didn't even care about his own son? He could hardly even fathom doing that.

Martin sighed. "Look, I don't know what happened," he readily admitted. "I'm from too far back to know that stuff, but…" He took a deep breath to think of his wording. "When we got separated, we were in the ocean, and it was storming like crazy. I was pretty sure you went sailing off in the opposite direction. I wanted to go back to get you, but I couldn't… There was no way I was gonna find you, even if I wasn't drowning, and especially not after that storm. You could've went anywhere over the horizon and I would have no way to track you down. And I couldn't go back to the island… I'd be dead if I showed up without you, so I probably just, didn't. When that stuff happens you just… forget and move on. Find happiness somewhere else, push the bad things back, because who likes writhing in their own guilt and sorrow, you know?

"...You see, before I met your mom, I was a full-time conman, and I got some pretty neat gadgets out of it, too. It was the only other thing I really knew to survive… so when I lost you and your mom and my entire life in one night… Well, you burn enough bridges, the only way to move is forward. By the sounds of it, I probably went back to conning, blocked out the bad memories, and just went on with life." Martin looked out at the garden with an unfocused stare.

"You lost me at sea?" Finn said to himself quietly, furrowing his brow. Lost at sea, lost at sea, he kept repeating in his mind. Not abandoned. He looked up at Martin with a hopeful look in his eyes. "So, you didn't abandon me when I was a baby?"

"'Course not!" Martin responded as if it was obvious, turning to look at his son. "I was trying to save you that night! I don't know what I went through that made me abandon you and tear off your arm, but when you were born, you were one of the best things I had goin' for me. You and your mom both… I loved her, and I loved you…" He looked down at Finn and smiled. "...and that's true."

Finn smiled back, if slightly, only for it to fade again. His eyes darted away from Martin's as he thought. "...What happened on that night? Why did you lose me?" he asked.

Martin licked his lips. Somehow, this felt easier to explain to the princess, but Finn deserved to know what really happened. "Well, I goes a bit further back than that night, I'm afraid…"

Finn listened patiently as Martin recounted the events of that fate-changing night. All of it seemed too good to be true, and he couldn't help but feel a sense of paranoia. What if Jake right about this situation? What if Martin was doing this as an elaborate way to try and get him to do something for him? Martin was practically a professional liar, after all. His newfound happiness could be taken from him in an instant.

But his trust and loyalty to Bonnie was almost unwavering. He trusted her, so he should trust Martin. Besides, why would his father from the present go out of his way to do all of this get something he needed? Surely in a "higher plane of existence" he wouldn't need to piggyback off his son anymore.

So Finn simply sat in stunned silence, trying to process everything in his mind. It was all so bizarre to hear after years of coping with the thought that his parents left him. Maybe none of this would have even happened if Martin wasn't such a crummy person from the beginning.

…Would he even be alive if Martin wasn't such a crummy person?

That thought immediately got pushed into his mind vault.

However, new thoughts quickly arose in Finn's mind, new questions. After a few moments, Finn cut through the silence. "Can you… tell me what was Mom like? A-And the Island?" he asked, looking back up at Martin. Even if he didn't feel a connection to his current father, it was nice to have this bonding moment now.

At the mention of his mother, Martin appeared to grow visibly stressed. However, he quickly covered it up with a smile. "Your mom? Well, she was the best Helper on Hub Island! She was charismatic, caring, funny… Had a desire to help that went beyond morals, considering otherwise she wouldn't have anything to do with me. Heh..." Martin trailed off, his face faltering ever so slightly. He went silent, staring blankly at the hedge in front of him.

Finn furrowed his brows, wanting to open his mouth to ask what was wrong. However, Martin continued before he had the chance, "As far as Hub Island goes, well… The Founders certainly made a comfortable place for humans after being almost wiped out. Some people had assigned roles, like Seekers and Helpers, and some didn't, like yours truly. The Guardian was made to protect us from the dangers, keeping them from entering and keeping us from leaving. I never meant to leave the Island, you know. I didn't want to! It was a pretty nice. For what it was worth, I bet you would've liked it. It would've been a good little place to grow up in."

Finn nodded, trying his best to ignore the stark change of topic off of his mother. Next question. "Can you tell me anything about… humans? Human history? Anything?" he asked sheepishly, his face heating up.

Martin thought for a moment, his face scrunching up. "I can only really tell you the history of the Island, bud. I was never really interested in that sorta stuff," he responded. "The Founders came to Hub Island by boat about nine-hundred-something years ago from some apocalyptic event. They built a society from the ground up, and they tell us we're the only humans left. I assume it's still going strong today. No reason for it not to.

"But hey, Hub Island's kinda boring. What about this place, huh? What's your place in this strange world?" He paused for a moment to think, his expression dropping slightly. "Who raised you here?"

Finn licked his lips awkwardly. How exactly do you explain to your biological human father who knows nothing about magic that you were raised by talking dogs? After a moment of hesitation, he slowly pointed towards his brother, the yellow dog, who was sitting on the steps with the princess. "See him? That's Jake. His parents found me in the woods on a leaf and adopted me. I grew up with them until they died when I was about ten or so. That's when Jake and I started to go adventuring, eventually finding this sweet treehouse, which is where we live now. We venture out a lot and fight off evil punks who try to mess up Ooo, like the Lich, Magic Man, Orgalorg, Ice King… Well, I guess Ice King isn't that much of a threat anymore," he listed, counting the evil-doers on his fingers.

Martin nodded in understanding, turning his gaze out towards the garden. That would explain the scars. "So this magic mumbo jumbo is… natural to you?" he asked, his gaze fixated on the garden's candy vegetation.

Finn simply shrugged in response. "I guess. I mean, I grew up with a magical shapeshifting dog as my brother, so it's kinda all I've ever known."

"Hey, I can hear you, you know!" Jake shouted from the castle steps.

"Everyone here's kinda magical, I guess. I'm really one of the only humans here," Finn continued, his more serious tone somewhat contradicting the smile on his face from his brother's outburst.

"Yeah, the Princess told me that," Martin responded.

Finn shrugged once more. "That doesn't really matter, though. Everyone here's different from one another, and that's cool. Ooo is just a really big place that's fun to explore! There's always something new. I like it here," Finn passionately explained. He beamed at Martin, who returned the gesture.

That was the strange thing to Finn, though. It wasn't a smirk or a disingenuous smile, like he was used to. It was authentic. It was real. It was new, and Finn couldn't be happier with it.

Bonnibel looked at the two family members with a sizable grin on her face. All of her hard work with those tests had finally paid off, and both the humans could sleep a little better at night because of it. She looked over at Jake, who was watching the scene uneasily. "This is going well, don't you think, Jake?" she asked quietly as the father and son continued to talk.

"Yeah, I guess…" Jake answered without averting his gaze. His face continued to narrow as he grew more and more uncomfortable. Finally, he anxiously blurted out, "PB, isn't this like, a paradox or somethin'? With Finn's young dad knowing future stuff about him?"

Bonnie stared blankly at Jake. This situation, a paradox…? After a few moments, she facepalmed and let out a frustrated groan. "I can't believe I didn't that through! I didn't even notice the detrimental qualities this could have… I just knew Finn's relationship with Martin was strained, and I thought that this could help him!" She squeezed her eyes shut, clutching her hair in her fist. "Now… Now our timeline might be royally messed up, and…" She paused, slowly opening her eyes and looking over at Jake. "Finn might not come to Ooo!" she whispered.

"What?!" Jake exclaimed, though Bonnie shushed him immediately. "You mean if Martin stays here, Finn's just gonna disappear?!" he added quieter.

"Not completely, but depending on how this plays out, he might disappear from Ooo, and every small influence he's had here might, too. And I don't know how to fix it!" Bonnie frustratingly said, pulling at her gummy hair. She was close to being on the verge of tears.

Jake, ever the rational, started to panic. "There has to be a way; there has to be a way…" he muttered to himself, starting to pace up and down the castle steps. What in the cosmos would be able to fix this?! Who in the cosmos would be able to save Finn?!

…

…

Then it dawned on him.

He stretched his body to form a pocket of sorts right above his tail. From that pocket, he grabbed a card. He quickly opened it. In large handwriting it read, "If you want to come back and hang out sometime, call me. -P." The initial signature glowed pink.

Hastily, Jake wrapped his free arm around Bonnie, stretching it so he could grab Finn and Martin as well. Before they even had time to react, Jake pressed the initial, causing them all to be beamed away in the midst of colorful rays, leaving the garden vacant and quiet.

The four were quickly transported to a large secluded yellow room that existed outside of existence. A giant pink shadow with no source was cast upon the room. Suddenly, it sprang to life when it noticed there were people in the room.

"Prismo!" Jake greeted frantically.

"Hey, Jake! Nice to see you, man," the shadow, the wish master Prismo responded.