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byuneebuns · 4 years

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Calluna

Minhyuk x Reader Supernatural AU

Tags: Fluff, Oneshot, Witch AU, Supernatural AU

Author’s Note: I wrote this in July of 2018, right before I saw Monsta X in SF, and it has been sitting in my drafts since then. I just re-worked it a little and I think it’s finally ready to let it see the light of day. I hope someone out there enjoys it. ♡

A large plume of dense magenta smoke was billowing from your cauldron, smelling strongly of pine needles. You fanned at it eagerly, trying to ignore the dread creeping into the pit of your stomach as you recoiled from the pungent odor.

‘Pine needles? Isn’t it supposed to smell like flowers....?’ You thought to yourself as you glanced at the open spellbook by your side for confirmation.

The jewel-tone clouds finally started to dissipate and you chewed on your lower lip as you peered nervously into the depths of your cauldron, silently praying your hard work hadn’t been been for naught.

In the bottom of the large metal bowl was a substance reminiscent of tar in both consistency and color, bubbling ominously.

“No, no. This isn’t right at all.” You muttered darkly to yourself, your fingernails digging grooves into your palms from how tightly your fists were clenched with frustration.

This was your third attempt at a particularly complex potion to mimic feelings of love and you were at your wit’s end trying to figure out what exactly you were doing wrong.

This wasn’t a love potion in the sense that it made someone else fall in love with you: It was a potion that made you feel all of the warmth, the fullness, the contentedness of loving and being loved in return. It was happiness in a bottle, so to speak, and much like the feeling was difficult to describe so was it to replicate.

You squinted at the narrow, cramped cursive text that covered the pages of your spellbook, wishing for the thousandth time that your late Aunt hadn’t been so hasty when recording her creations. Her handwriting was illegible at best, and most of her homegrown spell instructions were riddled with scribbles and footnotes that contradicted each other.

“It must be nice to be a genius.” You sighed to yourself, closing the textbook and staring wistfully at the ceiling. A small wreath, only about three inches in diameter, of smooth wood and white heather swayed from a long string attached to the low ceiling beams of your small cabin, almost playfully teasing you. It was her last parting gift to you before she left you alone in the world. It had been a year since she passed away but the heather had never yet wilted, something you were certain she’d accomplished with her powerful magic. You’d never gotten to ask the meaning behind the wreath but you could sense that it was important in some way you’d yet to comprehend.

Your parents had died from illness when you were too young to know them, leaving you alone with your mother’s much, much older sister. She’d raised you as her own and although you knew she was no spring chicken you were still extremely unprepared when she told you that the end was coming. She went peacefully in her sleep but it never felt like she’d truly left you, so you managed to avoid feeling too lonely.

“Auntie, couldn’t you have bought a typewriter? I can’t read this, and what I can read doesn’t make sense. Now I have to go out again.” You whined at the charm, receiving only taunting silence in reply.

You groaned again, pulling on your boots and cloak and trudging out of the cabin with a final sigh.

Your feet carried you towards the tree line of the forest you called home. Your cabin sat in a wide field that was dotted with wildflowers and surrounded by trees that seemed tall enough to touch the clouds in the bright blue sky above them. Your Auntie had always told you that a witch belonged in nature, but that it should be revered and respected. Nothing more than was needed should be taken, partly because wastefulness is considered evil, but mostly for fear of angering the protective spirits of the wood. They never showed themselves to others but you could feel their presence all around you, watching your every move from somewhere just out of sight, as soon as you stepped in their territory.

Your caretaker had been much more well-acquainted with the wood than you were. You had spent plenty of time playing there as a child, but she often ventured into them alone when you were young, leaving for hours at a time without explanation. You suspected that she was practicing advanced magic in private that she didn’t want you trying to copy. You never dared to follow her, knowing that she would catch you immediately and not wanting to suffer the consequences of your curiosity, but you’d always hoped that someday she would deem you worthy to accompany her. She’d kept so many secrets from you until her last breath, which you routinely tried not to let eat a hole in your heart. She had her reasons and they were her’s alone.

Your feet slowly made their way along the soft, mossy earth, your arms swinging freely at your sides, a small smile playing on your full lips. You felt so blessed to get to live somewhere so breathtakingly beautiful. The trees were so thick that only small, green-tinged rays of the sun were freckling the forest floor. You were so relaxed in the silent woods that you failed to notice the pair of eyes following you closely as you journeyed on.

You finally reached your destination, a tiny clearing in the woods with herbs and berries of differing varieties as far as the eye could see. You’d been fortunate enough to locate the little sanctuary not long after your Aunt passed and it had since become a beloved destination for you to find peace in solitude, ingredients for meals, and supplies for spells. It was, needless to say, an important place for you both in terms of your survival but also your spirit.

You knelt down, carefully picking stalks of herbs and collecting berries in your basket. You left a small cloth bundle, tied tight with a ribbon, on the ground nearby. This was almost certainly a garden being cultivated with the magic of forest spirits, so it was only polite to leave an offering as payment.

“I don’t like cucumbers.” A disparaging voice suddenly called over your shoulder.

You spun around and stumbled backwards in shock, tripping over an exposed root and crawling backwards on your hands, ignoring the stinging pain in your ankle.

A tall, thin man towered over you, watching you with thinly veiled amusement. He took a step towards you and you gasped, scrambling backwards into a bush as you desperately tried to put more distance between the two of you.

The stranger bent down on one knee and plucked your offering from the ground, untying the ribbon with nimble fingers, and pulled a sour face at the contents.

“It always has cucumber, why can’t they just be normal?” He grumbled, pinching the tiny sandwich between his forefinger and his thumb, a pout blooming spectacularly on his mouth and marring his elegant features.

Now that his attention was directed elsewhere you were able to get a proper look at him. He looked to be about your age, maybe a few years older, had a thin frame with broad shoulders and otherwise even proportions and was deceptively muscular. He had delicate cat-like features with high cheekbones, his face promising mischief. Straight brows hovered over almond-shaped eyes with glittering black irises, and a small, straight nose with thin lips and a sharp jaw. His hair was the color of fresh snow, messy and sticking up oddly in places, and upon closer inspection seemed to have some small leaves and twigs tangled in it.

In fact, the closer you looked at him the more wild he appeared. There were smears of dirt on his arms and face and his shirt was torn in strange places, like he’d fist fought with a thorn bush and lost badly. His pants were worn and had large grass stains at the knees. He looked like he hadn’t seen a proper bed or bath in ages.

Despite his forlorn appearance, he was truly stunning.

He turned to you with a scowl.

“Don’t you know how to make anything else?”

Your initial shock having subsided, you felt yourself practically swelling with indignation.

“I can, thank you very much. And those aren’t for you anyways, they’re an offering for the forest spirits.” You huffed, crawling forward gingerly on scuffed hands and knees to snatch the container from his ungrateful hands.

He looked at you incredulously before tipping his head back and laughing, earning another look of apprehension from you.

“Well the forest rejects your offering. Come back with something tastier.” He said, taking your basket from your unsuspecting grip.

“H-hey!”

Your mouth fell open in disbelief as you watched the man replacing everything you’d carefully collected in its original place.

A lunatic.

There was no other explanation. He was a lunatic.

“Excuse me, but what gives you the right to decide my offering isn’t good enough?” You spat, trying and failing to get past him to retrieve your belongings.

“No one needs to give me the right to decide what I will and won’t accept.” He replied haughtily, tossing your now-empty basket in your lap.

You glowered at each other for a few terse moments before you burst into hollow laughter.

“What is so funny?” The man’s arms were folded across his chest now, his pout returning in full force.

You stopped laughing when you saw how serious your companion was.

“Are you really trying to tell me that you’re some kind of forest spirit?” You said, your voice deadpan to emphasize your disbelief.

“I prefer nymph since I have a physical form, and my name is Minhyuk.” He said matter-of-factly, watching you with tense, wary eyes.

You blinked once, twice, three times before speaking.

“You’re really...a nymph?” You asked, feeling every bit as stupid as you doubtlessly sounded.

Minhyuk rolled his eyes.

“No, I’m an elk.”

Your cheeks colored with humorless embarrassment. You’d always imagined forest nymphs to be more...fairly-like? Small and playful, happy creatures, perhaps with little translucent wings. Not like this...sassy man that was eating the berries you’d planned on taking with you, his expression surly.

“So...you really won’t let me take anything unless I bring you something else?” You asked, your disbelief evident in your tone.

“Oh, you’re still here? I hadn’t noticed. A blueberry pie sounds nice. The old lady used to bring them every so often, so I’m sure that you have a recipe somewhere.” He said in between mouthfuls, ignoring your visible annoyance.

“Until then I guess you’ll have to find somewhere else to forage seeing as this is my house you’re in.”

“Wait, what about an old lady?” You asked, brow furrowing with confusion.

“Don’t you have a pie to bake?” Minhyuk stood, clearly signaling that your conversation was over.

“I’m not making you a pie, you brat!”

“Then I guess you won’t be making much else, either.”

The sight of his parting smirk would haunt you for days to come.

***

“Stupid nymph.” You hissed before you stuck your thumb in your mouth to nurse the bead of your cherry-red blood that was forming on the fingertip. You glared at the bush you’d been foraging through, unsure if your irritation was from your finger being pricked or from your lack of success.

You’d been desperately trying to find high quality ingredients elsewhere for nearly a week but suddenly it was as if they were scarce, or worse, ceased to exist. The tiny garden, however, remained a treasure trove of wildlife, mocking you and your inability to access it without being accosted by an overly large child. You had no trouble finding an abundance of blueberries wherever you looked, though.

You had every reason to suspect that this was Minhyuk’s doing. Of course you couldn’t really confirm it was anything more than bad luck but you could have sworn that you heard him snickering each time you found nothing and grew more frustrated.

“I’m losing my mind.” You sighed, tugging your hair at the root.

“You’ll go bald if that’s how you cope with stress.” A smug voice from over your shoulder commented.

“You-” You spun around, tripping over your feet in your haste. You tottered forward, swinging your arms to try and break your fall. Minhyuk’s surprised face was the last thing you saw before you fell into something solid, something that was very obviously not dirt.

Minhyuk’s firm hands gripped your shoulders and pushed you back into a standing position an arm’s length away, his dirty cheeks flushed a dusty rose.

“Ugh, its you. Why am I always falling when you’re around?” You grumbled, your former ire returning after the shock of his sudden appearance faded.

“I can’t help it if you’re falling for me.” He replied with a self-assured smirk and a shrug.

“Would literally rather dive naked into a pit of poison ivy.”

“That can be arranged. Why are you wasting time here anyway? Shouldn’t you be baking?”

“I already told you, I’m not making anything for a brat like you.” You snapped, crossing your arms with finality.

“Guess you’ll have to give up whatever experiment you’re working on then. You won’t harvest anything here without my blessing.”

So he was behind this after all. True to his word, you hadn’t been able to forage anything at all since your last meeting.

You fumed, turning over your options in your head. As much as you couldn’t stand Minhyuk it surely would be less effort to bake for him than it would be to try and find a new place to gather, wouldn’t it? Every fiber of your being was revolting against you as you considered this, screaming that it was the principle of the matter and you shouldn’t submit to such an arbitrary demand, but logic slowly won out.

“Fine. But you’re helping me.”

***

“I do hope that you’re better at magic than you are at baking.”

“I would be done already if you just let me use my magic to begin with!” You practically shouted. Your appearance mirrored your companion’s, your faces and clothing speckled with flour. Your hands were stained blue and your failed attempt at crafting a blueberry pie by hand sat ominously on the windowsill where it was cooling.

“It tastes funny if you don’t make it by hand. Nymphs can’t tell lies, you know, so trust me on this. It isn’t the same.” Minhyuk grumbled, his nose wrinkling with the depth of his pout.

“How many people are honestly bringing you pies for you to claim to know the difference?” You whined, but you were met with silence instead of the snarky reply you’d come to expect. You couldn’t help recalling having a similar argument with your Aunt in your youth. She, too, had always insisted that food tasted better when made with powers of the heart rather than with magic.

You turned your back on the oven and found Minhyuk eyeing your ceiling with a somber expression on his face.

“Um...are you okay?”

His snapped towards at an alarming rate, his features carefully rearranging into their default expression of haughtiness.

“I’m fine. Just wondering if you’re polite enough to make sure that thing isn’t poisonous before you try to feed it to me.”

You stuck your tongue out in response but your eyes wandered to where his had been fixed moments before, and you felt a curious sensation in the pit of your stomach when they found the white heather wreath swaying peacefully exactly where Minhyuk had been staring so intently.

“You were looking at that.” Your finger pointed at the wreath, your voice questioning even though you’d made a statement.

Minhyuk watched at you, momentarily stricken silent, his eyes searching yours for something unknown.

“So what if I was?” He challenged, narrowing his eyes.

“Do you know something about it? Its a token my Aunt left me.” You asked tentatively, watching Minhyuk’s face closely.

“So what if I do?” He countered with a stony voice, his shoulders squared.

“Can you please tell me more about it?” You could feel your hands starting to shake with emotion.

“Do you know what white heather symbolizes?” He asked slowly, after some consideration.

You shook your head in reply.

“Protection and the granting of wishes. One of her final living acts was to make that for you. It takes an incredible amount of power to craft an undying flower for someone not innately attuned to nature. She was very talented. She loved you very much.” He explained, his voice soft, his eyes seeking out the wreath again rather than you.

“How do you know that?” You breathed, your voice quietly shaking from the tears you were trying to swallow.

“I helped her make it. Did you never wonder what she spent so much time doing alone in the woods? I met your Aunt when I was still small. I still remember the day that she brought you home. She was so enamored with you. She tried many times to get me to leave the forest and meet you, but I refused.”

You watched a small, sad smile curl Minhyuk’s lips upwards ever so slightly, bringing a pang to your heart as you quietly waited for him to continue.

“She still made time to visit me even though she was busy with you. It was hard at first and I was jealous, it gets lonely in the forest, but I managed. She would come and talk to me for hours, show me spells of her own design, bring me all kinds of food, ask me how the plants were doing, and I would show her some magic of my own. Nymphs are not very different from witches, you know. We both use magic, just of a different variety. We commune directly with the spirit of nature and create, where as you create based on things that we’ve already made. Yeah, your aunt didn’t much care for that observation either.” Minhyuk laughed loudly at your disgruntled expression, but his eyes were soft and kind as he reminisced on his past, making him even more beautiful to behold. His laughter slowly died out, giving way for the sadness to creep back into his eyes as he looked to the ceiling again.

“When she knew that she was dying...she came to me and asked how to create life. I refused at first, afraid that it was too ambitious for her frail form, afraid it would harm her, afraid of what she wanted to accomplish...but she was relentless. She came every single day and begged. When I finally asked her why, her answer was simple: for you. She wanted to show you that she was always with you. So I showed her, and of course she was eventually successful. She asked me to watch over you but...I still couldn’t bring myself to meet you. So instead I made that garden and I’ve been maintaining it ever since.”

Minhyuk ended his story with a deep sigh, sounding as if a great weight had been lifted from him, and finally returned his gaze to you. Your breath caught when he took a step forward and extended a hand towards you, using the tips of his fingers to brush away the tears that had been streaming down your cheeks unbeknownst to you.

“Why did you wait until now to reveal yourself to me? You’ve really been watching me all this time?” You whispered, your voice cracking.

“I had no choice when you started only leaving offerings with cucumber in them. I can’t eat cucumbers, they’re too disgusting. And because...because she always wanted me to be your friend. You such were an ugly, loud, mud-covered brat when you were young but you’re...different now. So I thought I should grant her wish after all.” A deep crimson blush, made even more vibrant in contrast to his snowy hair, blossomed across his cheeks. It must have been contagious, because you could feel heat rising on your face as well.

“W-what do you mean I was an ugly brat?! I was a normal child.” You blurted out with indignation.

“No, you were gross, just like that poor excuse for a pie.” He answered, his sassy attitude returning despite the lingering pink tinge of his cheeks.

You took the insult in stride, choosing to ignore it rather than start another battle of wits that you were sure to lose.

“You said that you were lonely. Where are the other nymphs?”

“They’re all spirits now. When a nymph comes of age they can choose to keep their corporeal form or they can become spirits. Most choose to become spirits because, I mean, you’re becoming one with nature and what more could you want than that? We aren’t born very often so it makes for a lonely childhood, which is another compelling argument for choosing a spirit form- you’re never technically alone again. I chose to stay in this body.” He finished matter-of-factly.

“Why?”

“I loved the old lady. I didn’t want to leave her. She asked me to watch over you for her and I wouldn’t want to leave you either. Even if you were a snot-nosed brat.”

“Well, you know they say that the ugliest ducklings are destined to become the most beautiful swans, so I’ll thank you for thinking so highly of me.” You teased, tapping Minhyuk’s nose with your finger playfully.

To your general astonishment his saturated blush from before returned.

“I never called you beautiful.” He stammered, looking away from you.

“But, do you think I’m beautiful? Nymphs can’t lie, right?” You asked, smirking as you peered at him, trying to get a better look at his face.

“No, nymphs can’t lie. And yes, I do think you’re very, very beautiful.” He whispered, still refusing to meet your eyes.

It was your turn for your face to glow like a sunset. You’d asked, expecting a snarky answer, not fully believing what he’d said previously about nymphs being bound to their honesty. Your lips formed a small, wordless “oh” as you stared at him, awestruck.

“You’re still a terrible baker though, so don’t let it go to your head.”

***

You pulled the oven door open with apprehension, bracing yourself for another failure, and gasped loudly when instead your eyes fell on what appeared to be a flawless blueberry pie.

You bounced on the balls of your heels excitedly before carefully extracting the dessert from the oven and placing it on the windowsill to cool where you could admire it safely from afar.

“Ahh, I can’t wait to show Minhyuk!” You squealed, clapping your hands together.

“Can’t wait to show me what?”

You whirled around, more shocked than you perhaps should have been to find Minhyuk leaning against your doorframe.

In the weeks that had passed since he shared his stories about your Aunt with you he had been a near constant presence in your home, always making stupid excuses for why he’s there like “I’m just making sure you aren’t hiding any cucumber in my pie”. You had offered to let him stay over since you felt a little bad for him sleeping in the outdoors alone, but he always shyly declined.

“Come, look!” You were already dragging him by the hand to the window to show him your handiwork.

“Wow, that doesn’t look half bad.” He whistled, eyeing it with great interest, eyes sparkling. He took a step towards it, arm outstretched, earning a whack on the shoulder from you.

“It isn’t ready yet! It still has to cool or you’ll burn yourself.” You chastised, moving protectively in front of your masterpiece, hands on your hips.

“Okay, fine, fine.” Minhyuk said, massaging his shoulder with one hand and stifling a yawn with the other.

“Sleepy?”

He nodded, swallowing another yawn behind his large palm.

“Its getting harder to sleep outside at night these days. Getting cold. I heard that long ago, when humans were less prevalent on Earth, it was more common for nymphs to choose to keep their physical forms. I always wonder what they did to keep warm.”

“Why don’t you take a nap while the pie cools? After you eat maybe we can think of some solutions for that.”

Minhyuk nodded, too exhausted to argue. He refused to be led to the bed though, insisting instead to sit next to you on the couch and sleep sitting up.

His resistance didn’t last. Before long he slumped to his side, his head tumbling into your lap. You caught your gasp in your hand, stifling it and carefully setting down the spellbook you’d been perusing while he napped so your movements wouldn’t disturb him while he slumbered.

You watched him sleep, oddly comfortable despite the slight awkwardness of his face pressed into your bare thighs. Without thinking your hand found his hair, smoothing it gently, relishing in how impossibly silken it was, your fingers gliding through the soft strands like they were water.

Minhyuk’s eyes shot open and you went to pull your hand away, embarrassed, but he caught it in his, holding you firmly in place as he adjusted himself so he was facing you. He stared up at you, blinking the sleep from his eyes, not speaking or removing his head from your legs.

“I-I think the pie should be ready by now,” You supplied after several long moments of silence, hoping to diffuse the tension in the air. “Why don’t we go get some?”

Minhyuk didn’t move immediately and something in his expression was making you feel like you were frozen in place, like he was seeing right through you and counting each of your racing heart beats in slow motion.

He finally lifted himself from your lap and quietly made his way to the kitchen and sat at the dinner table, waiting expectantly. You retrieved the pie, regretting that you hadn’t tried it yourself first as you cut a generous piece for him and slid it on a plate. You were silently praying to anyone that would listen that it would taste as good as it looked.

To your surprise Minhyuk didn’t hesitate to pile his fork with the pastry and bring it to his waiting mouth. You had expected him to make some catty remark about you trying the first bite, or taking a tiny bite “just in case”.

‘He must really be exhausted if he’s being so docile.’ You thought to yourself as you watched him chew with bated breath.

When he swallowed you swallowed with him out of nerves. The seconds of silence seemed like they stretched into hours as you waited for his reaction, but it never came. Instead he simply loaded up his fork again and took another bite, closing his eyes while he chewed. He continued like this until his plate was as clean as when you’d taken it out of the cabinet.

“Well? How was it?” You finally inquired, unable to contain yourself any longer, your nervousness making your voice come out in a higher pitch than normal.

Minhyuk stood, the sound of the chair scraping the floor making you jump, and moved towards you as if in a daze.

When his lips met yours, they tasted strongly of blueberry and sugar. You were too surprised to move at first but the ice around you slowly melted as he held you and your arms slowly circled his waist as your lips molded to his, your eyes fluttering closed.

His hands crept down your waist, gripping your hips firmly as he deepened the kiss. You felt your legs starting to wobble while he explored your mouth, the sweet taste of sugar and fruit on his tongue overwhelming your senses. His hold on you was all that was keeping you upright and you were starting to wonder if this was going to be the way you died, in the arms of a beautiful man without a breath of air left in your lungs, when he pulled away at last, chest heaving while you both struggled to catch your breath.

Minhyuk leaned forward, kissing your forehead softly in stark contrast to the heated one he’d pressed to your lips moments ago.

“It was wonderful.” He whispered, his lips moving against your forehead as they formed his words. He took a step back, his eyes overflowing with affection, and moved past you and out of the room. You followed him as he stumbled into your room, his exhaustion evidently taking over as he collapsed into your bed face first.

The deep breaths he was taking were confirmation enough that he had fallen asleep. You smiled tenderly as you looked down at his sleeping form fondly. Warmth bubbled up from the very tips of your toes, spreading throughout your body in a wave, making you feel impossibly at peace. You sighed through your nose, contented. Seeing him sleeping in your bed just felt so...right.

You padded back to the kitchen as slowly and silently as you could muster so as not to disturb your slumbering guest. You moved to cover the remaining pie and put it in the refrigerator for later, but stilled as something odd caught your attention from the corner of your eye.

Your cauldron, which you’d abandoned with your last failed experiment still stuck like cement to the bottom of it, was bubbling merrily. You rushed over, panic-stricken, and gasped when your nose was assaulted with the scent of fresh florals. The failed potion from before had sprung to life, it’s contents now a color that reminded you of Minhyuk’s hair, a comparison that made your cheeks flush involuntarily.

Then, as if you were struck by lighting, you were rooted to where you stood with the gears in your mind turning faster than you could comprehend. You glanced back at the sleeping nymph, realization finally dawning on you. A soft gasp slipped through your lips and the rosy color on your face deepened to a blazing scarlet.

You tentatively dipped a ladle into the concoction, sniffing its contents gingerly before taking a hesitant sip. Your eyes squeezed shut, a smile winding its way through your lips. You’d finally done it. You laughed to yourself at the irony of the situation, your eyes settling on the heather wreath swaying delicately in the breeze from the open window.

You’d been trying to all this time to create something that you were lacking when the ingredient you needed was what you were missing all along.

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officially-a-bee · 4 years

Text

Part 1

The most bloodthirsty, vicious, powerful, and rarest form of fae, the Blood Fae is largely agreed to be a myth. One has not been seen for centuries, so they assume that it has gone extinct, or perhaps it never existed in the first place; perhaps it was just a different fae, or a different monster entirely, just pretending. But I know the truth. I’ve seen one. I’ve seen my brother become one - and he still lives today. Where, he’s never felt compelled to tell me. But I know he hasn’t died. I’m positive of it. I’m writing this now so others can be warned of his presence, and how he came to be.

The two of us, my brother and I, were out in the fields, harvesting the last of our apples as our family and friends celebrated the Harvest Moon. We were banned from joining them, as we were guilty of putting off our duties in favor of getting completely smashed with the village drunk the week before, and our parents were sticklers for everyone doing their fair share. So now, we made up for lost time. Alone. At night. On the blood moon, the one night a year everyone knows is the most auspicious for the fae to show. But we knew they wouldn’t venture beyond the forest; we were safe in these fields, so long as we stayed in our space while they stayed in theirs.

Our mistake. . . was that we didn’t.

I was seventeen, but my brother was only fifteen. We were both young, and foolish, but he even more so than I. He pushed us to the limit; I mellowed us so we didn’t go over the cliff. It was my responsibility, as the eldest.

When he thought it would be humorous if he ran into the woods, I tried to talk him down. But I failed. The only concession he would make was the agreement that he would take the family scythe. The one we used for cutting wheat. Newly sharpened.

Now, I wish I’d just let him go with nothing.

He left me there in the fields, promising he’d be back within five minutes. I waited for five minutes. Then for five more. Then I dropped my bag of apples and ran in after him.

He wasn’t hard to find. Not fifty meters in, I found him, kneeling over the bleeding body of a dead faerie. It was small, not five feet in length, and he held it in his arms. I called his name, scared, and he looked up at me, his cheeks stained with tears.

“I didn’t mean to hurt it. I was going back. It scared me.”

“It’s okay,” I reassured him, edging steadily closer. “It’s done. The important thing is that you’re safe. Just leave it, so we can go home.”

He wiped his bloody hand across his mouth as a fresh wave of tears overtook him. “No. . . I don’t think I am, actually. . .”

“What do you mean?”

“I gave it my name. I didn’t even think.”

“No. Are you serious?”

“I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. Please forgive me.”

I knelt before my brother then, a foot away from the dead fae’s still body. No - was it dead? It looked like it was shaking. I asked my brother.

“No, it’s not dead yet,” he told me miserably. “It’s suffering. And it won’t let me do anything to make it go faster.”

My brother was so kind, then. So empathetic. He never used his head, but he loved with his whole heart. What happened to him?

I know what happened to him.

But still, somehow, I don’t.

The fae reaches up with its own bloodstained hand, then, brushing its fingers against my brother’s lips. Only then do I notice that the blood on my brother’s hand and the blood on the fae’s are different. My brother’s hand sports normal blood - scarlet red, bold and brilliant against his pale skin in the moonlight. The substance the fae’s is coated in, is metallic, almost magenta in hue, and slower to drip down across its wrist. My mouth falls open slightly.

“Are you hurt?” I ask my brother, fearfully.

“Not terribly,” he whispers, then shushes me. “I think it’s trying to speak.”

My brother, not wanting to miss a single word, always so trusting, leans down to catch what the fae says. I don’t hear, but it does seem to be just that - a single word, and not in Basic. Then the fae lets out a small gasp, and collapses, its hand falling to rest on its chest. My brother runs his tongue over his lips, unnerved beyond my own comprehension, and then - it starts.

His back arches. His eyes seal shut. His hands clamp around the fae’s slight body, and his entire body is taut as a strung bowstring. The blood on the fae looks as if it is boiling, then it moves, rolling toward my brother in waves, covering his hands and twisting over his forearms like vines. His head falls back in a wordless scream as the blood, turning black, continues upward, covering his upper arms, then his chest and torso, then his face, creating an intricate swirling pattern as it goes. The last thing I want to do is touch the fae at this moment - I worry that whatever it’s doing now will be transferred to me as well - but I know I need to save my brother. So I grab its arm, the one closest to me, and pull as hard as I can, to no avail. They’re both stuck to each other, and although it does not spread to me, I know with a horrible, sickening feeling that nothing I do can stop this from happening to my brother.

This does not stop me from trying, though. I pull and pull, try to wipe the bloody black gunk away from his mouth and eyes, anything, but nothing works, and all that happens is my hands feel as if they are covered in acid, like I’ve just stuck them into a nest of fire ants and every single one of them turned to bite me. I ignore it for too long, until the pain is so much that I can no longer move my arms below the shoulders, so I must jump back and simply watch it happen. Watch as the metallically scarlet black blood overtakes my brother, once and for all.

I don’t sit silently. I remember screaming and sobbing, til my voice went hoarse, even though I could hear nothing over the ringing in my ears. I kept crying without making a sound even after all the dark fell away, and my brother emerged a changed man. A new being.

He was curled in on himself, trembling and in pain, but I know he was taller, older, eternally more graceful, and his features were so fine, as if the most skilled sculptor in the land had shaped them by hand out of spun glass. Intricate lines still wound up his arms, looking black as night, though I’m sure they would have a scarlet sheen if I saw them in the daytime. A pair of enormous scarlet wings arched from his shoulder blades, but they were Other, as if they belonged on another plane of existence. When he looked up toward me, his eyes were pure red, cold and unfeeling. If he recognized me, it certainly didn’t show.

And then, he attacked.

It was so fast, I didn’t even have time to comprehend what was happening til he was holding me down, and there was a stinging pain at my shoulder. I pushed at him weakly, but it was as useless as trying to stop the transformation earlier, He was stronger than any man, and probably most supernatural entities as well. For the third time that night, I could do nothing.

I should probably have hoped he didn’t drain me dry, but honestly, I just wanted the pain to end. At that moment, I didn’t much care what happened. It’s hard to care when you can barely even think.

But after who knows how long, the thing that was by brother released me. He - it - stared down at me from its knees, blood staining its front. My blood. It rested my brother’s hand on my forehead, and looked almost mournful through those hellishly red eyes.

“Don’t follow me,” it said, sounding almost like my brother but not quite. “Don’t mourn for me. Don’t blame yourself. I’m sorry.”

#my writing #plz be nice #pt 1 #sry i gotta split it up #it wont let me go any further #please comment!#this is the first thing ive ever posted #im a lil nervous #storytime with bee

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theeternalspace · 5 years

Text

In Memoriam 4

Summary: The metal tree had always fascinated the Prince.

Only, it wasn’t a tree.

And, as it turned out, he wasn’t really a Prince. Instead he was… a side of someone’s personality? He doesn’t remember Thomas, or the other sides, those who call themselves his friends. He doesn’t really remember anything, not even his own name, no matter the efforts of Patton, Logan or Virgil. He must venture back into the Wardrobe door, back to the metal tree in an attempt to recover his missing memories and regain everything he has lost.

But perhaps some doors are best left closed for a reason. And perhaps some personas should remain in the ground where they have been buried.

Story Warnings: Sympathetic/Grey Deceit Sanders. He is trying his best you guys. Anxiety. Self doubt and self loathing. Fantasy fighting. Verbal fighting. Threatening behaviour. Blood and injury. Memory loss. Drowning. Near death.

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Hwin leapt to the side with a whinny of pure panic as Bree took Roman in the opposite direction. The beast crashed harmlessly through empty space to headbutt the trees directly behind where they had been standing only seconds before. The horse spun, trying to keep the manticore-chiminea in its line of sight as best she could.

Virgil felt himself lose balance a split second before it happened, Hwin turning further to the right and his body just continued to slide to the left, off her and away from everyone else. He reached out to try and steady himself, knowing as he did that it was too late and there was nothing to be done. Thoughts passed through his mind in a fraction of a second, shifting from fear to acceptance as he slipped from Hwin’s back. He landed heavily on the ground, his shoulder connecting harshly against compacted snow.

“Virgil!” Roman called out, the prince completely obscured by the bulky body of the monster. There was no way to be completely sure as to if he was hurt or not but at least he was alive and uninjured enough to be able to shout without sounding hurt. He was alive and that was enough to start with. “Virgil are you okay?”

Instead of focusing its attention on where the sound had come from, like he might have guessed, the beast turned, malice filled gaze from all heads fixing themselves squarely on Virgil instead. There was an intelligence burning within those sharp little eyes, an anger and hunger that zeroed in on him and it didn’t take a genius to realise it was rearing round with the intention to attack him.

“Oh, you have got to be kidding me,” Virgil whispered, pushing himself into a crouching position and trying to avoid reacting to the pain that shot up his arm when he put pressure on it. Sharp and hot were the words that came to mind despite his best efforts not to think as Virgil bit down on his lip to swallow the shout of pain. At least he could still move it, but he couldn’t spare even a second to examine his arm and see how badly it was hurt.

Not with the beast lunging forward, its scorpion stinger tail lashing out and swinging towards him, poisonous barb striking out at him. Adrenaline pumped through his blood, enabling him to roll to the side, thoughts of his injured arm completely lost under the rising tide that was the panic born out of just trying to survive. Stinger plunged deep into the snow where he had been crouched only seconds before, the beast howling with fury at missing.

Virgil didn’t stick around to wait for it to try again. He needed some cover, he needed a way to defend himself, maybe even a way to go on the offensive but most of all he needed to get it away from Roman. While the regal side might be a magnificent sword fighter, that was the Roman with all his memories intact. There was no way to know how much of that training his subconscious mind remembered, no way of knowing if he could hold his own against an enemy besides actually pitting him against it and Virgil wasn’t willing to test that. The chance that Roman might not remember was just too much of a risk for him to bear.

Weapon, weapon, weapon, he needed some kind of weapon, thoughts looping around in his mind as he raced through the trees, feet crunching heavily against the snow. There was no way to be stealthy when running through such a substance and even if by some miracle he could have found a way to be quiet, the footprints he was leaving in his wake were more than enough to make sure it could track him.

Virgil didn’t dare look behind him to see how close the beast was - he could hear its cries as it chased him through the trees, hot on his tail. It was closer than he would have liked but far enough away that it hadn’t managed to hit him yet and if nothing else, the trees seemed to be hindering its progress enough. As if in reply to his silent thoughts, the beast roared again, a heavy thud sounding as it collided with one of the larger trees, the force sending the whole trunk crashing to the ground somewhere to the side of him. The smack as the whole tree hit the forest floor seemed to echo for miles, filling his ears so for a moment he couldn’t even hear his own heartbeat.

Oh God, he was going to die. It was growing more angry by the second, and more likely to take that anger out on him as a result. He was going to die running away from an insane beast that had no business being here in the first place because even without his memories, Roman couldn’t keep his own damn imagination under control.

At least when it was following him, it wasn’t attacking Roman.

A small mercy and he knew this wasn’t Roman’s fault, not really. Which was less of a small mercy since it didn’t actually change anything about what was happening. He couldn’t understand how Roman could have conjured up such a malicious beast. If Logan was here - and Virgil was so thankful that he wasn’t - he would have probably questioned that line of thought, the image bringing a small, barely there smile to his face. He knew of course, that Roman had the power and so functionally could create such a monster, but then not every thought and question was a literal one.

How could he create something that was such a threat when he had no desire to? When he was better than this? When he claimed to not have been thinking anything negative in the first place? Not that it mattered because the beast was here and it was not going away anytime soon. Not unless they could somehow manage to defeat that beast, in which case Virgil needed a weapon.

Virgil dived behind a particularly large snow drift, hand lifting to press against his chest, as though he could physically keep his heart from bursting out, it was beating so fast. It was a terrible hiding place because his footprints would lead the beast right to him but Virgil couldn’t run any further, not this second. His heart felt as though it was about to explode, his lungs burning harshly as he breathed, each lungful a battle to get in and then out of his body. His back was freezing, pressed tight against the snow, the white flakes no doubt mixing with his hair to chill his head even further.

He glanced around wildly, hoping against hope that there might be something here, something he could use to defend himself. Stopping had been the only possible choice but stopping meant that the beast was going to catch up to him. The second Virgil moved from behind this snow drift he was dead, and remaining here would merely give him an extra few seconds before more death.

The only thing within arm’s reach was a tree branch, about as long as his arm. As tempting as it was to imagine himself swinging it at the manticore-chimera, Virgil was a pessimist more than anything. He knew it would just connect against the hide of the beast and then bounce off, probably breaking apart in his hand as it went. This is really not how he wanted this day to go, his eyes closing for a moment in frustration. A few feet away from him, the lion head of the beast gave another howl, the noise making him flinch, eyes snapping back open.

A whisper of... something, in the air around him made him look down, the hairs on the back of his neck standing up as he did.

Pale gold, barely there smoke curled around the loose branch at his feet, the wood shifting, elongating as it changed it shape. It stretched out, curling a little at the edges as it both flattened and sharpened. Where moments ago there had been a simple wooden stick, there now lay a sword. It had a few purple stones set into the hilt of the blade, all of inlaid with elegant gold patterns picked out against the darker metal of the rest of the blade. Not even Virgil could mistake this sign, it was clearly meant for him.

Finally.

“Thank you Roman,” Virgil mumbled, lifting the sword cautiously and testing the weight. It fit perfectly in his hand, as if it had been made for him. Which clearly, it had and at least Roman had worked out how to do that if nothing else. Maybe there could be a way out of this after all and while he wouldn’t be able to take the beast head on, he might not need to. A few blows might be enough to destabilise it enough for it to vanish again, and Virgil doubted Roman had the knowledge needed to create something that can stand up to an actual attack. Assuming Virgil didn’t die trying to attack it.

Okay. He could do this. Virgil took a deep breath, trying to centre himself, both hands wrapped tightly around the handle of the blade. The heavy footsteps of the beast grew closer and closer, the creature moving in for the kill. He could do this. On the count of three. One. Two. Th-

“Halt, foul beast!”

Virgil felt the red in his face from the running drain away once more, leaving him pale. No. Roman. He shouldn’t be here, he couldn’t be here. Virgil ran into the woods in order to lure the beast away from his friend, not have the reckless idiot chase after them both. That was just like him.

Wings flapped, Virgil tilting his head up a little, peering up through the snow towards the sky. Not that he could make out much of the sky with how thick the canopy was. Or the giant feathered wings which towered over his little hiding spot, and the beast had to be on literally the other side of the snow now. It wouldn’t even have needed to move around to attack him, it could have stabbed him right through the snow drift.

If it hadn’t been for Roman distracting it, Virgil would probably be dead right now. Or at dead as a Side could be, which wasn’t permanent but was incredibly painful and not something Virgil wasn’t keen on going through again any time soon. That didn’t mean he wanted to let Roman experience it either however and he was not going to let the creative side suffer that kind of pain, not today, not ever.

The wings spun, letting him know that the beast was turning, Virgil unable to do anything but stare upward in horror as first a snake and scorpion tail swung across his little snowy hideout, just to ram the point home. Not that it was looking at attacking him anymore. No, it had decided to target Roman instead, Virgil forcing his frozen feeling limbs to move. He turned slowly, shifting along the snow to be able to watch the scene in front of him.

The manticore-chimera focused on Roman, lion head snapping and snarling. It lashed out, claws raking in thin air as it tried to cut deep, the prince avoiding the wickedly sharp blades in the nick of time. The beast reared back, whole body tense as it attempted to attack once more.

“Roman, look out!” Virgil screamed, the scorpion tail thudding into a tree directly beside the prince, missing his head by mere inches. He couldn’t just stand there while Roman was being attacked, the other side needed some help. Virgil moved without thinking, darting out from behind the snow, sword held high. With a strength that Virgil hadn’t even realised he possessed, he lashed out, stabbing deep into the flank of the beast.

Pain filled screams rang out, shrieks of agony as the beast tried to turn, narrow eyes trying to search out Virgil once more. He dived back behind the nearest tree, his heart thudding painfully in his chest as the beast lashed out. Branches crumbled under the onslaught of claws raking across it, bark and leaves snapping away and fluttering down to the ground. Virgil didn’t want to think what sort of damage the claws could do if it was a person they were slashing. So of course, his mind started to instantly fill with the sounds and scents of such a thing, how bright and horrific the blood would be against the white of the snow. Virgil didn’t want to die here, the anxious side swallowing down a whimper of fear as the tree he was hiding behind started to creak and groan under the brutal attack.

Roman took advantage of the distraction to stab deep with his own sword, blade slicing in from bind. It screamed again, maddened by the scent of its own blood, body thrashing wildly.

He moved, half stumbling against the snow banks as he found a new tree to hide behind. The one he had originally used was almost completely cut through near the base of the trunk, wild and deep gashes a lasting reminder of what the manticore-chimera could do to either of them if it managed to get them in its grasp.

Sword felt heavy in his hands, wanting to drag him down, to just stop. Virgil couldn’t allow himself to stop though, couldn’t just stand there, not now the beast was focused once more on his friend. It’s scream sounded even shriller than before, the beast lashing out without any apparent thought or plan. All it seemed to want to do now was cause damage, the scent of its blood rank and almost overpowering. With so much spilt, he wouldn’t be able to tell if Roman got hurt.

That fear focused his mind, gave him the strength he needed to step back into the fight, sword this time slicing along the scorpion tail. The manticore-chimera threw back all its heads to howl in pain at attack, Roman choosing that moment to strike. He darted forward, ignoring Virgil’s cry of panic, blade sinking all the way down to its hilt as he plunged it deep into the base of the throat of the goat head. The manticore-chimera finally collapsed to the ground in a flurry of screams and feathers, its body contorting harshly.

There were a few moments of nothing but twitching from the form before it simply dissolved, melting away as though made of snow and back to the snow it had gone. Leaving them alone with only an empty space and memories of what had just happened.

Virgil panted heavily, his heart racing as he tried to convince his body that the threat was over and that they were all safe. It helped to see Roman come closer, almost bouncing over the snow, looking completely unharmed.

“I’ve got it,” Roman announced, a brilliant grin on his face, looking completely unphased by the battle they had just survived. “You must be Thomas’ Protection.”

“Nice,” Virgil snorted, pushing away the twinge of pain, of hurt and he was doing this all wrong. He should have been upfront with Roman in the first place, should have just told him what he was and faced the fact that the other side might hate him for it. At least he wouldn’t have him guessing such ridiculous things and Roman’s first guess was so wrong. Virgil couldn’t understand how he could look at him and see such a good trait, such an amazing positive light trait.

If anyone was Thomas’ Protection, it had to be Roman. Sure, Virgil had always tried to protect but he knew it had rarely been in the right way and despite his very best intentions, it rarely come out right. He shook his head, trying to will thoughts away.

“I’m not that Princey. Not even close.”

“Ah well... I’ll get it right next time... Virgil.”

“You can use nicknames you know,” Virgil blurted out, unable to stop himself. Empty hand lifted, slapping it over his mouth but it was too late and the dreaded words had been said, floating in the air around them.

“What?” Roman looked confused more than anything else, although Virgil wasn’t sure if that was because of his words or because of the way his hand appeared to act of its own accord and try and cover his mouth up.

Virgil shrugged a little, trying to act casual and not slink away in embarrassment as he forced his hand away from his mouth.

“It’s just... sorry forget it.”

“No, tell me. Please.” Roman looked so endearingly pleading as he asked, stepping closer and really that just wasn’t fair. How was Virgil supposed to say no to him when he looked like that? “I want to learn who I was and who you are to me.”

“I... it’s just you don’t really use my name all that much?” It came out sounding far more like a question than Virgil had intended, as though even he didn’t really know what was being said. He cringed a little and forced himself to continue, words spilling over themselves in their haste to be said.

“You use nicknames a lot instead, it is sort of our thing? So it... I mean. You keep coming up with new nicknames for me, sometimes you reuse them but you tend to call me nicknames instead of my name.”

“Nicknames? Oh we must have been close friends then.” Roman looked delighted by his assumption, as though he could imagine no better past for himself than to have been friends with Virgil. Another cut into his heart, another wound laced against it because for some strange reason Roman seemed to want to be friends with him and Virgil was too afraid to even admit what trait he represented in Thomas’ mind. What sort of friend kept something as huge and as important as that from another?

“Yeah... sure... let’s go with that.” It wasn’t completely wrong, and they had certainly been close. Bound together by their shared antagonistic view of each other and as much as Virgil would like to pretend otherwise he knew he was as much at fault as to the state of their relationship growing up as Roman had been. Probably more at fault really because he could have made more of an effort.

He liked to hope they were friends now and that was close enough right? In the days leading up to Roman’s memory loss Virgil would have considered them friends and they had hung out together outside of working without actually bickering too much. Admittedly, Virgil had spent most of that time on edge, terrified he might say or do the wrong thing and destroy this peace they had created but still, they had done things friends were supposed to do.

Friends. He and Roman were friends.

That was the truth, although it was far more complicated and there wasn’t any time to really go into it. Virgil gave a soft little cough, looking around helplessly for something to change the subject with. Hwin softly moved over to them, the horse having wisely avoided most of the battle. That was his sort of horse, someone who wasn’t reckless.

“Nice sword,” Roman commented after a long moment, nodding his head towards the blade held loosely by his side. Virgil had almost forgotten he was still holding the blade, and thank goodness he hadn’t tried to cover his mouth with that hand instead. That would have been unpleasant to say the least.

“Needs a little... something though.”

He clicked his fingers, Virgil feeling a new weight settle around his hips as Roman tested his powers, letting himself learn more of what he was capable of. Looking down, he could see a dark leather belt around him, a black and purple sheath at his side for his weapon. It was a little more basic than the sword itself as if Roman had tired himself out by making that and now he didn't have the energy to match it perfectly. The sheath was still beautiful though, and so much more than anything he might have been able to conjure up.

Virgil couldn’t help but roll his eyes and it seemed as though some things were constants in all versions of Roman. His need for praise being one of them but Virgil could hardly deny him a few words of encouragement, not after everything that had happened. After all, the sword had saved them both.

“You’re getting pretty good at this,” Virgil admitted, carefully slotting the weapon into the new sheath, the weight feeling a little odd on his right hip but he was sure he would get used to it. “Thanks.”

Roman looked strangely bashful, a hint of a blush colouring his cheeks and Virgil realised that this was probably the first time that he remembered anyone complimenting or thanking him. The first time someone said something really nice and he had the misfortune for it to come from Virgil.

“It’s just a sheath, it's nothing really,” Roman said after a moment, still looking uncharacteristically embarrassed by the praise. “Come on, Bree says we still have a bit of a ride ahead of us.”

“You got it Princey.” Virgil offered him a mock salute as he swing back onto Hwin’s back, giving Roman a genuine smile as the prince nudged Bree on, letting him lead the way.

A sudden chill swept over him, a cold that had nothing to do with the freezing cold temperatures and everything to do with his own anxiety, his own nerves, screaming at him to turn around. Head whipped round, watching the trees behind them, the messed up snow from where they had fought and the large mark from where the beast had fallen before dissolving back into the Imagination.

There was nothing there, nothing out of the ordinary that he could see and yet still his anxiety was hissing for him to look harder, longer. For him to focus on what wasn’t there because something important wasn’t there. With a sigh, Virgil started to turn away, to focus back on the task at hand. A blink and snow moved, a shift out of the corner of his eye that had his nerves yelling once more.

Virgil squinted, staring back into the treeline, trying to make out the shape once more and for a second, he could have sworn that he had seen... something. Someone. White against white, a barely there outline but an outline nevertheless. He stared and stared but nothing else moved, a stillness that only made him more ill at ease. It was unnatural how still everything was and yet without anything for him to zero in on, there was nothing he could do and no way to calm his nerves.

“Hey my Shadow Knight, you coming?” Roman called from further along the trail. Not one of his best but it was an attempt at a nickname nevertheless and Virgil could appreciate that.

“Coming,” he called back, giving a soft sigh as he set off. The itch of being watched continued as they travelled but no matter how hard Virgil looked he could never actually spot someone. In fact, he couldn't spot any other signs of life, that unnatural stillness continuing, as if the four of them were the only beings alive in this world. It was as though Narnia itself was holding its breath, waiting for the next blow to land.

“Here we are,” Bree announced suddenly, head jerking up and down, long mane flowing gracefully with the movement. Virgil looked around, taking in the large, ornate sledge that was just abandoned in the snow. It was a good hundred or so feet away from the treeline they had been following, standing out against the white snow. Gold, black and red were painted all over it, the rich tones somehow surviving the endless snow.

As Virgil watched, white flakes landed on the sledge only to instantly melt away as though the item was hot to the touch. Imagination magic at its finest, ensuring that objects of importance survived as they were meant to be seen, laws of reality be damned. There were no footprints leading away from it but then with the constant falling snow that was perhaps to be expected. What was strange was the fact that it had been abandoned at all, that whoever had been using it had gone to the effort of releasing the creatures instead of just riding away. As if that person had wanted it to be found like this.

Virgil had a very bad feeling about this.

They approached it cautiously, Virgil constantly glancing around as they did, half expecting some kind of trap to swing down on them. Nothing happened however, nothing leapt out at them, no ropes and netting fell on them. Instead, they simply stopped beside the large sledge that seemed all the world to be exactly what it first seemed. Utterly abandoned.

Both swung down from Bree and Hwin, crossing the final few paces on foot, the two horses murmuring quietly to each other.

Inside laid a thick black fur blanket, the sort the looked super soft and then somehow managed to be even more comfortable than you expected. Virgil’s fingers itched to touch it, to wrap it around himself and just forget about everything else. Just hide under the covers until the sun went away, the temptation growing stronger by the moment. With a soft grunt, he pushed the thought away, moving further down the sledge to look at the back seats.

Attention narrowed to the small jar nestled innocently enough at the back of the sledge, on its side and open, the lid a few meters away. Carefully, he reached out scooping up first the jar and then the lid, screwing it shut. Virgil had an even worse feeling about this as he turned the jar around, reading the label.

Royal Jelly.

Oh, Roman. For a moment, Virgil was silent, thumb lightly brushing over the small, chibi like drawing of Roman on the label who was grinning so brightly out of the image at him. For a moment, he simply read the description of Pomegranate and Elderberry, fit for a price. For a moment Virgil allowed himself to imagine what Roman had to be feeling, that he had been tricked by such a device.

For a moment he let himself wonder what had been going through his mind, why he had been so... distracted? So... ill at ease that he had allowed himself this weakness? Why had he fallen for the charms of the White Wizard, when he must have known that it was dangerous. Some part of him must have known that it would be a trap. For a moment he wondered all this in silence, before Roman came up beside him, expression curious and open. Roman looked at the jar in his hand with interest, but without recognition, memory of his moment with the jelly as lost as every other memory he had.

Then the moment was over and only Virgil’s anger was left.

“You idiot!” Virgil snarled, waving the jar around accusingly, the jelly inside bouncing a little with the movement. “You ate the White Wizard's treats!”

“I... I did? I'm guessing that's bad?”

“Very bad! Come on Roman, you would have known the story, you must have known that the White Wizard was the villain and not to eat anything he offered because it was magical and dangerous. And yet you did and it took your memories and that...” Virgil tailed off, eyes widening as a far worse thought occurred to him, something that struck him to the core.

“What?” Roman asked, hand lifting as though to comfort Virgil before pausing, awkwardly hovering in the air, unsure if his touch would be welcome or not. They were lost, the pair of them, with no understanding of how to get back to the connections they had once shared. “What is it?”

Virgil blinked rapidly, looking away from the hands, unable to stare at them any longer, unable to stare at Roman any longer, at the man who was and was not his friend. His family. He exhaled, something heavy and tired, feeling himself shrink a little under the weight of his own thoughts and knowledge.

“That means that whoever did this is more than just a character in a story you originally dreamt up Princey. See... in the story, the treat just made the character more... susceptible I suppose. It was so the baddie could get information, could start to poison the mind of the person against the rest.” Virgil stared down broodingly at the jar, as though it could somehow come to life and answer his questions, could explain what exactly had happened to Roman and how to fix it.

It wasn’t fair, it wasn’t right that Roman was the one who was paying for his mistakes because this had clearly been set up for Virgil and then modified when only Roman had entered the world on his own. Which proved even further that this was the work of a character that had somehow broken out of the confines Roman had originally placed around it, that it had become capable of acting independently so that it could do such a thing.

This was supposed to be his story. He was Edmund, he was meant to eat the treat and use it as an excuse to become the enemy. He was meant to be lost and have Roman save him. Virgil didn’t know how to play the role the other way around. He didn’t know how to drag someone back from the brink, how to keep them getting lost. He didn’t know how to be the hero because it wasn’t a role he was ever supposed to play. Just as Roman wasn’t supposed to be the bad guy.

Only... the magic hadn't done that to Roman.

It hadn't turned him against them, it had taken him, taken all the years, all the memories and left an empty cut out in its place. It had drained Roman of everything that he was but he was still Roman in his most basic form, was still good and honest and brave. He still had the same basic starting point but it left him a shell.

Was that better or worse than the mental image of a scowling Roman with a sword against his throat, fully prepared to attack them all?

Memories made a person. Made a side. Memories, for good and for bad made you who you were. This Roman was all wrong. Too soft, too eager to please, to unwilling to push back. He hadn't been forged in the fire of their fights and while Virgil might have often wished that their past was different, better, he had accepted that it was what it was. He couldn’t rewrite what had happened, no matter how painful some things had been. To ignore their shared past would be to ignore so much of what made up not just them, but Thomas as well and Virgil couldn’t do that.

“Did I tell them things?” Roman’s voice broke into his brooding, so small and pain filled, yet still worried about what he might have done, how it could have hurt the others. He didn’t even remember them beyond a few stilted, awkward meetings and yet his main concern was to know if he had protected them or not.

It reminded Virgil yet again that while this Roman wasn’t his friend as he knew him, he was still Roman. He was still his friend in some form. Memories made a person true, and this version of Roman set his anxiety flaring into high alert but he couldn’t act as if he was a stranger because the core remained intact, remained the side he knew. He couldn’t push him away as his anxiety wanted to, because Roman didn’t deserve to be treated that way. Even if he was wrong. Virgil swallowed heavily, considering the question for a moment before shaking his head.

“I don’t think so... the treats were designed for one purpose. If I’m right and the jelly made you lose your memory then it was designed to make you lose your memory... which means this was done to you on purpose... which means we’re dealing with a far more dangerous White Wizard. Its... it's possible he even knows this is the Imagination.”

The Dragon Witch was the only being Virgil knew that was aware of a world outside the realm Roman had created for her. Was this the Dragon Witch? Possible and yet Virgil didn’t think so, there was a flavour to the actions that reminded him of something beside her malice, something he couldn’t quite put his finger on. A half remembered memory itching in the back of his mind where he couldn’t reach but was aware enough of it for it to be incredibly annoying.

“So what does that mean?” Roman asked after a moment, his words prodding Virgil back to focus on the conversation at hand. Virgil gave another shrug before carefully placing the half eaten jelly into a conjured up side bag for Hwin. Perhaps Logan would be able to make some sense of it if they couldn’t find any further clues as to how to fix this. If anyone would be able to get anything from it, it would be the logical side.

Assuming of course, that he could convince Logan not to test the jelly himself and it was still labelled as Crofters which would only tempt him. Not to mention his belief in his superior attitude could easily convince him that he could test it without falling prey to its powers. It might be a bad idea to actually tell him then, but there was time to think about it, to consider his next step and if they were luck for once, perhaps they would be able to restore Roman’s memory and then Virgil wouldn’t need to make the choice one way or the other.

Part of Virgil wanted to just destroy the jar, to hide it from Logan because then Logan would never know how deeply Roman clearly felt the lack of his own flavoured jelly. He wanted to protect him from everything, even himself. Virgil couldn’t protect him from this however.

“It means we’re in trouble.”

#sanders sides #in memoriam #aca writes #long post

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shoeandseok · 5 years

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ATEEZ as Bodyguards Fic: The Element Part 1

Synopsis: You get invited to a nightclub for the first time, but nothing is easy when you need personal security 24/7.

This is part of a Bodyguard AU series, which I recommend you read first for context (if you haven’t already). Thanks!

Part 2, Part 3 (Final)

You were anxious as you made your way to Hongjoong’s office. For being the head of your security detail, he was remarkably accommodating when you wanted to go somewhere. But you were worried that this time he’d refuse. You understood the necessity of having a bodyguard whenever you went out in public, but that made it hard to do normal things like seeing a movie in theaters, visiting a public beach, or going clubbing.

You looked at your phone again, at the message from Nina Sikora. Because of who you were and the work you did, you had few friends, but you were hoping she might become one of them. Nina was a rising pop singer who you met weeks ago at a charity event. You had been charmed by her down to earth friendliness, and now she was asking you to join her and her friends for a girls night at a club that weekend. You practically squealed when you read it. You immediately wanted to say yes, but your thumb had hovered above the screen. You couldn’t yet, not until you got permission from Hongjoong.

You knew as you walked to his office that this was going to be a hard sell. Nightclubs were crowded, full of strangers and substances that were regarded as high risk by security teams. You reached Hongjoong’s office door, knocked, and opened it when he gave permission.

“Oh- Miss (Name). What can I do for you?”

Hongjoong probably hadn’t expected to see you at this late hour. He was busy reviewing information on a businessman you were working with, making sure his background checked out.

“Do you remember Nina Sikora?” you asked. “Well she just invited me on a girls night out this weekend, and I really want to go...”

“Where to?”

“The Element. It’s a nightclub.”

Your words hung in the air. Then your security head released a sigh. “Miss (Name)-”

“-I know,” you cut him off. “There’s a lot of variables you can’t control.”

“There’s a lot of people I can’t control,” he said seriously. He leaned back and ran a hand through his long hair. “Do you know what types of people go to clubs? There’s pickpockets, con artists, drunks- all sorts of predatory behavior.”

“Yes, but there’s also people like me who just want to go dancing,” you pointed out. “And the guard will be around to protect me.”

He locked eyes with you and you stood your ground, letting him know you were serious. Something in your face made him soften. “Do you really want to go?” he asked, searching your eyes.

“Yes. I’ve never had the chance to do this before and I might not again. Please, Hongjoong.”

He held you in anticipation for a moment, then leaned back in his chair. “Well, you’ve made up your mind.” He smiled, shaking his head. “I can’t stop you now.” You smiled back.

“However,” he held up a hand. “I have some rules. You are going to be disguised, and you can only have one drink.”

“Deal.” You didn’t get to drink much anyways, at least not in public. “I’m sorry I’m giving you so much work.”

“Just repay me by being careful, Miss (Name). You said this weekend, right?”

You spent the next few minutes going through details with your head of security. You thanked him before you left.

After you left Hongjoong made himself a to do list. He needed to do a background check on Sikora, every friend she was bringing, and the club itself. Since this was going to be undercover he couldn’t ask for floor plans, so he’d have to send a pair of guards this week to investigate the layout, memorize faces of the staff, and evaluate the behavior of patrons. He also wanted to acquire several types of drug testing strips for drinks. He wasn’t taking any chances.

The next day, after a night of little sleep, Hongjoong addressed the bodyguards at their morning meeting. They reviewed the day’s itinerary and received the next day assignments, which included a recon task for Jongho and San, listed at the odd time of 10pm. When Hongjoong was asked about it, he braced himself and took a breath.

“This weekend Miss (Name) wants to go to a nightclub with some friends.”

“A nightclub?” Wooyoung gasped.

“You’re lying, boss doesn’t have friends.”

“Jongho!” Seonghwa snapped at his junior.

“What? We’re like friends,” Jongho grumbled back.

Yunho shared a glance with Yeosang “A nightclub sounds pretty dangerous,” he voiced.

“I agree.” Yeosang said. “Sir, there are too many variables.”

“And creeps,” Mingi added.

“Just tell her no.” San calmly spoke up, still resting his chin on his hand.

At that everyone went quiet, looking to their captain for a response. San’s words gave Hongjoong pause. Why didn’t he tell her no? Then he remembered a promise he made to himself when he first became a security head. He would never make his client feel unable to requesting something. Bodyguards have certain stories they tell, and one of those stories is the tale of clients who escaped from their security detail to do something they didn’t think they’d get permission for. Something like visiting a club.

Hongjoong opened his mouth, the thought forming as he spoke, remembering your conversation from the previous night. “I haven’t seen her want something this much in a while.” The room was silent at that.

“Well, captain?” Seonghwa broke the silence. “What’s the plan?”

Two days later you, Wooyoung, Yunho, Mingi, and Yeosang were listening to Jongho talk about his visit to The Element. You were in the car (Mingi was driving) as you headed to a meeting.

“It’s pretty classy, they don’t let just anyone in,” Jongho bragged. “Honestly they let San and I in because we looked the part and we weren’t being obnoxious.”

“Was San wearing that purple cheetah print shirt?” Mingi spoke up from the front.

“The what?” you asked, intrigued.

Wooyoung turned around in the passenger seat, grinning. “San has a button down shirt with cheetah print on it. Yeosang, you’ve seen it in his closet, right?”

“And it’s purple?” you turned to your quiet bodyguard.

“Yes. He rarely wears it.”

“Yeosang, what are you wearing to the nightclub?” Yunho asked, grinning.

His brows furrowed. “I assumed I could just wear my regular suit..”

“No, you’d look too boring,” Jongho shook his head. “You wouldn’t be let in, and then where would we be?”

Hongjoong determined having bodyguards with you at the club would draw too much attention, so you had to be disguised. Your security would have to go in disguised as regular patrons as well. Yeosang looked distressed. “I don’t think I have anything.”

“Why don’t you just buy something?” Mingi asked.

You lit up. “Can I take you shopping?”

Yeosang looked taken aback. “I don’t want to inconvenience you..”

“Nonsense, I want to. I think it’d be fun, right?”

He felt the pressure of everyone looking at him. “Yes, Miss (Name).”

You easily got permission to take Yeosang to the mall you frequented. You brought along Seonghwa, since he was the closest thing you had to a style expert (and he could help you with men’s sizing). San was your guard on duty. This mall was a fairly safe place, but you always needed someone to keep an eye out.

You figured out early that Yeosang was a man who didn’t think much about style. His suits and shoes were always well kept, but looking back you realized that his off duty clothing mainly consisted of athletic wear in neutral colors. Comfort and functionality were his priorities, so he looked out of his depth as you and Seongwha began hunting in the upscale store.

“Do you like the blue or the stripes?” You held up two options before him.

He looked vaguely stressed. “Which is less expensive?”

“Nonsense, Miss (Name) said she will be paying for it,” Seonghwa assured him, checking the fabric labels of the shirts. “Ooh, silk.”

“It’s my treat, Yeosang. Which do you like better?” you asked again.

“Uh-” He looked between the two, worrying that whatever he chose would be the wrong choice somehow. He wasn’t used to being pampered, especially by his boss, who was still waiting for him to answer. “Um..”

“I’d say the stripes are a bit too much,” San commented cheerily, still surveying your surroundings.

You took a second look at the stripes. “You’re right, I think it’s too loud. San, what did you see guys wearing in The Element?”

Yeosang breathed a sigh of relief as you talked with San. Seonghwa and you made the decision that he’d wear his regular black suit, just with a different shirt and no tie. He endured trying on several things for you two until you reached a white dress shirt with a pattern of little blue diamond shapes. When you encouraged him to look in the mirror, he found he actually didn’t mind it. He balked at the price, but money was no object to the boss. He thanked you for your generosity. To his surprise you thanked him for the fun excursion.

On Friday, Hongjoong called a meeting with you and your away guard. Your security was made up of two teams: the home guard, who kept your residence secure, and your seven person away guard, who went with you when you ventured out.

Though in charge of both, Hongjoong usually had more prep work to do for the away guard. You were much closer with your away guard anyhow, since they spent most of the day with you and were off duty once you got home in the evenings.

You joined all eight of them in the meeting room, and once everyone was assembled, Hongjoong began detailing the plan for Saturday night.

“I have secured a place on the guest list for all of you, so there shouldn’t be too much trouble getting in. However, since we’re undercover, you will enter staggered in pairs or small groups. Yunho and Mingi, you’re the exception to this. You will be joining Miss (Name) and her friends for the night. We can’t go entirely undercover because Nina Sikora has seen several of you in a bodyguard capacity, so Miss (Name) has informed Miss Sikora that her guard will be present but disguised.”

You nodded. Nina was on board with the idea. In fact, she thought it was exciting to be in on the secret.

“Yunho and Mingi will be posing as friends of Miss (Name), while Seonghwa, Yeosang, Wooyoung, San, and Jongho will be posing as patrons. As “friends” you two will be with the boss. I don’t expect you to be as focused as normal, since you have to act like friends, but don’t lose sight of what’s happening around you. Think of yourselves as a deterrent.”

They nodded. The unspoken part of that was they’d be a deterrent for anyone trying to bother you. Having bodyguards had it’s perks.

“Miss (Name) will only have one alcoholic drink for the night. Yeosang, I’d like you to offer to buy her one, then covertly test it for drugs once you receive it. You’ll have to memorize the charts that come with them.”

You wondered if any of your guard thought this was too much. If they did, they didn’t voice their opinion.

“For the rest of you as patrons, you can order things, but no drinking on the job. You will get in the club before the girls arrive with Yunho and Mingi, so take that time to get familiar with the staff and other patrons. Take note of anyone who looks suspicious or like trouble, and always keep yourselves spread out. Once Miss (Name) is ready to leave, Mingi will get the car and Yunho will escort her out. The rest of you will filter out to your separate cars.”

He paused for the ones who were taking notes, then set down his papers. “Throughout the night I expect all of you to show careful judgement. We don’t want to prematurely remove Miss (Name) from the evening because of an incident that doesn’t affect her. If things are safe for her, then there’s no reason to leave, regardless of what might be going on elsewhere in the club.”

He let that sink in for a moment, then straightened up. “Yeosang, your turn.”

You learned that since the bodyguard were going undercover, they couldn’t have their regular earpieces to communicate, and Hongjoong recruited Yeosang to solve that problem. The device Yeosang introduced was a set of watches he had found and modified. They each had a concealed button, and when it was pressed a little red LED light would flash on the faces of all the watches. Your seven bodyguards tried them out, and were told to only use it if there was a definite emergency.

You regarded Hongjoong for a moment as they tried out the watches. He wasn’t going to The Element with you and the away team. He looked tired, and you felt a bit guilty for all the extra work you put him through. You made a mental note to thank him again later.

The away guard was still busy with the watches, learning how to deactivate the light. Looking at them, a strange mix of emotion came over you. All of them had to put in so much effort, so much planning, just for you to safely enjoy a night out at a club.

Saturday night you spent extra time getting ready. The short, fun dress you never got to wear came out of your closet. You had a few wigs for disguises. Most of them were picked to look average and help you blend in. There was one fantastical wig, however, that was an ombre mix of vivid color. This seemed like an occasion to wear it.

Your maid helped you get it on securely, and the two of you determined what makeup would compliment the look. Last was a few careful accessories and a clutch. The final person in the mirror seemed like an alternate universe version of you, from a world of glamorous partying. You felt awesome.

That feeling dropped once you stepped out of the safety of your bedroom. Suddenly your heels felt to high, your dress felt too short, and your hair looked too wild. As you reached the staircase of your front hall, you saw the figures of Hongjoong, Mingi, and Yunho gathered near your front door. You prayed they wouldn’t see you yet, and focused on making your way down the stairs. Unfortunately for you, when you reached the bottom and looked up you saw all three staring. You immediately looked away, hands tightening around your clutch.

Mingi was the first to speak. “Woah. You look amazing.”

Yunho was nodding. Hongjoong looked like he was about to reprimand his subordinate, but decided against it.

Mingi was still looking at you, awed. “Your eyeshadow matches your dress and your hair!”

“Mingi, the car,” Hongjoong reminded him.

As Mingi hurried out your maid began helping you into a long coat. You repressed a smile, secretly grateful for his honest reaction.

“Remember you can end the night whenever you wish,” your security captain reminded you.

“I remember,” you answered, allowing yourself to be ushered outside. Excitement and dread blossomed inside you.

#ateez #ateez imagines #ateez fanfic #bodyguard!ateez #bodyguard au #ateez fanfiction #hongjoong #seonghwa #yunho #yeosang #san #mingi #wooyoung #jongho #ateez writing #my work

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raggedyblue · 5 years

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WILLIAM, Sherlock,Scott, OF BASKERVILLE

Accepting the fact that Sherlock BBC is, among other things, a summa and reworking of all (let's say many because all would be honestly impossible) the previous adaptations of Doyle's creature, we cannot ignore THE NAME OF THE ROSE. Defined here (x) brilliantly a medieval AU because in other way it really couldn’t be done, considering that being a novel it is indeed a work of fiction (fiction). Furthermore, we can’t ignore how Eco was a fan of the sleuth, he wrote also essays about him and also edited a collection of pieces by various authors about the deductive method of Sherlock Holmes. The book is THE SIGN OF THREE, and this should already get our attention and I think that the Moffits have paid some attention to the Italian scholar (the book is about logic and semiotics and that are not exactly my cup of tea, so I will avoid talking about it further so as not making me more ridiculous than it normally does, but you have to know that it exists). This is to say that probably Eco himself wouldn’t be too offended by being placed among fan fiction writers. But even this in the end is totally irrelevant, because as he himself says, once a book is complete, the author disappears, and the relationship that is created is between the reader and the work. The reader is free and obliged to draw his interpretations.

Obviously THE NAME OF THE ROSE is much more than a medieval transposition of Sherlock Holmes, it is a treatise on theology, philosophy and semiotics. A compendium of medieval history and an allegory of Italy in the 1970s, a set of puzzles. The readings that can be made of the book are many and this was precisely the intention of the author.

But obviously what interests us is Sherlock Holmes (always).

The protagonist of the book is called Guglielmo/William of Baskerville. The names are important, and this is a lesson that the Moffits have learned well. Stat rosa pristina nomina, nomina nuda tenemus. We may never come to know the true essence of things, the truth maybe is unknowable, but at least we have the names and possess their knowledge. William (don’t ring a bell?) as William of Ockham . There's a lot of Ockham in Holmes's method. Occam's Razor for which for the solution of a problem the simplest solution must be applied among the existing ones, it is easily applicable to the Holmesian method. Once the impossible has been eliminated (cut off like a razor) the improbable (the complicated, implausible and unlikely solutions), even if unlikely, what remains, must be the truth. And the search of truth is a constant throughout the book, the truth about the crimes of the Abbey, but above all about the Truth as an absolute concept. A truth that, as William says, is liberty (THOB), but which escapes to the point at the end we/Adso/William are doubting its existence as an absolute concept. The William in the book is blatantly Sherlockian. English in the first place, higher than the norm, but which appears even higher as he’s very thin. He has a sharp and slightly hooked nose, his face is elongated with an expression that is both acute and alert. Very agile, endowed with inexhaustible energy in moments of activity, which alternated with others of complete immobility. We see him several times completely lost in his thoughts, with his eyes closed and his mouth following inaudible speeches. He is described as being able to remain completely still on his bed, with vacant and silent eyes for long periods. Who describes him to us wonders if by chance it was not possible that this state was induced by mysterious substances, and at least once we see Guglielmo chewing mysterious leaves that help him to think. Easily inclined to give up sleep and food if the case dictates.

He has an extraordinary delicacy of touch if necessary. He is a man capable of fantasizing about a future in which boats will be faster and will go without the strength of men or sailing, a world in which flying and submarine vehicles will exist, because the things that are not there yet are not said not there will be. I would venture, not even that much, and call him a man out of his time.

A normally mild man, he can become brusque and often, to bring an interrogation to a successful end, he takes advantage of a moment of weakness for the interrogated. This is one of those traits that I don't remember being canonical but that we certainly see in Sherlock BBC.

At talking about him is his young disciple, his blogger scribe. All we know of William and the affairs of the Abbey we know thanks to a manuscript that speaks of a manuscript which is then the manuscript of William's disciple. How many holmesian pastiche use the expedient of the rediscovered manuscript? I lost the calculation. This young disciple is called wADSOn, he looks to his teacher with affection and unspeakable wonder, and with his observations that seem irrelevant leads Guglielmo on the way to solution (light conductor). He admits that once his master gives an explanation of his deductions, everything seems so clear that he regrets not having understud it alone. The function of Aso from the poetic point of view is to put a distance between the author and what is narrated. It is not the author who writes the story, but a young Benedictine from the 1300s. The narrator is young and still unaware and amazed at the things of the world, so when he tells about them he doesn't do it in a didactic tone, but as if it were something new for he as it is for us. Adso records events without completely understanding them, and this helps the less educated reader (I believe 98%) to navigate between these complex pages. If there is something he doesn't understand, it is probably something that Adso did not understud before him. This kind of trick is the same one used by Doyle that through Watson allows us to understand how the mind of Holmes works, step by step. This does not mean that wADSOn is stupid, on the contrary, only that he is learning. It doesn't even seem a coincidence that William is a monk. A man who has chosen to dedicate himself to the intellect, repressing and suppressing everything that is carnal. Adso is young, still impulsive and inexperienced, and will yield to the temptations of the flesh (once only).

A curious feature of Guglielmo is that, having now at least fifty years and presumably being presbyopic, he uses glasses, an unusual object for the time. It could be nothing but I like to read it a reference to Doyle as an ophtalmologist. And in a narrative space the glasses are lost and the monk finds himself unable to read. We can say that this is a moment in which he sees, but can't observe. William reads the signs of reality to look for possible truths. In the first moment when we meet him he deduces the existence of a horse from simple signs left in the woods, he is actually a detective. But in his life he was also an Inquisitor, a position he left. We see him in the book confronting an inquisitor Bernardo Gui and we see the difference in attitude. The inquisitor is more interested in punishing the defendants, while Guglielmo wants to discover the culprits, "unraveling a beautiful and tangled skein". The same attitude that we see in Holmes that always looks a little beyond what the police do and absolute justice does has more value than secular justice. In his search for truth, Guglielmo says that no hypothesis, even if extraordinary, should be overlooked. He himself tells that he aligns many elements that apparently have no connection and makes assumptions about them. But to arrive at a solution, he has to pretend many hypotheses, some so absurd that he is ashamed to tell them. The elimination of the impossible by staging. This sounds a lot like MInd Theater, doesn't it? Among the other references to the Canon, the most obvious is the use of a burned plant that creates visions. There is also a moment in which Guglielmo states that God must be good if he generated nature. Holmes will instead say that nature, its beauty (a rose!) Is proof of the existence of God (BRUC). The story of the novel unfolds inside an Abbey on the top of a hill. Inside the walls, barely contained, overlooking the rocks there is a construction called the Aedificium. It is divided into three parts. There is the Kitchen, the Scriptorium and the Library. An absolutely symbolic place. The kitchen is the body, it satisfies the needs, it prepares food but it is also the place where a carnal congress is consumed (food / sex metaphor). The Scriptorium is the space of intellect, of knowledge. The Library instead is conceived as a labyrinth, a place where knowledge is kept, but at the same time it is made inaccessible. Something very similar to the unconscious, which in the BBC Sherlock we see buried under the ground, while here it stands out against the sky (like a plane maybe). The curious thing is the shape of the building, built on a rigid symbolic and mathematical basis, it looks like this:

We find a similar shape both in the Mind Palace (Moriarty's cell and probably operating theater) and in Baskerville.

In the Library the books that are the sum of human, licit and illicit knowledge are jealously guarded, in fact the librarian reserves the right to keep some of them hidden. A structure that seems very similar to the human psyche, to the eternal struggle between conscious and unconscious thought, between memories and removed that in BBC Sherlock seems to be recurrent. The relationship between master and disciple is among the most platonic and there seems to be no doubt in this regard. Adso loves Guglielmo, loves his intellect but also his features, he argues in the purest way (not that the admiration imbued with sexuality cannot be pure, this is a heavy Catholic heritage from which we have not yet freed ourselves, but it is a meta for another time), but also he need to clarify unnecessarily the concept and in later life he will confess to let the gaze linger longer on the young novices.

Guglielmo on his part is never if not paternal regard to Adso. Their relationship, however, seems weaker than that between the two original characters that inspired them, but that was probably not the point of the novel. This doesn't mean that the issue of homosexuality is not treated. If we want we can also say that all the dead involved had had homosexual relations and all had somehow had had to do with a forbidden book. The story takes place inside a convent, the characters involved are all men, apart from an external exception, feminine, which will seduce Adso, even if this fact is susceptible to interpretative doubts. Being a faithful chronicle of the times, homosexual relations are doomed, but after all even heterosexual ones it's just condoned. We are talking about friars. But if heterosexual relations are tolerated, they are part of heterodoxy, homosexual ones are decidedly condemned, like heretics. It is no wonder that in so many heresies sodomy is an integral part. It falls within the fear and condemnation of the different, the different is a heretic, the homosexual is different, homosexuality is heresy. An easy syllogism. In the name of the Rose the feminine is ephemeral. There is this unique beautiful girl with whom Adso will be joining the same night he had previously had an apparently innocent encounter with a friar. We see she only for a fleeting moment. The feminine seems to be an allegory of all that is seductive. Devilishly seductive because we are among men for whom the pleasures of the flesh are a weakness.

Friar Ubertino, the one with whom Adso meets before giving in to the girl's flattery, speaks with desire of the forms of the virgin Mary, but he does so by holding the young Adso to himself. Every time a friar, which will then be indulged in homosexual pleasures, is described to us, a feminine characteristic is added to him. The feminine is not something that exists in this context, but desire, love, jealousy, in its best and worst aspects, yes. And all this is represented, but only allegorically by the feminine. Besides, Adso will tell about the girl that he didn't even know her name. One wonders if he didn't know it or maybe he just didn't dare to name it. The debate between orthodoxy and heresy runs through the whole book. It is a mainstay. And if under a pure textual meaning we can read an other, political, one (the Italian Brigate Rosse as heretics) a further level of reading is possible, halfway between the subtext and the surface. Then again the relationship between homosexuality and heresy. And heretics were burned. Adso tells that he experienced a state similar to ecstasy in witnessing the burning of an heretic, an ecstasy that reminds him the fleshly one that he will then experience firsthand. A connection that amazes the friar himself, but that tells us a lot about the real nature of what he lived.

Guglielmo's antagonist is an old blind man who will eventually lead to the destruction of the Library. Their relationship is love and hate, admiration and repulsion. Difficult not to see the Moriaty / Holmes relationship. Towards the end we see the same old man in the middle of the Library which is actually a labyrinth, a labyrinth that is described as a web. Throughout the book the two tease, provoke themselves, do a dance that has a lot of seduction. All caused by a book that the old man wanted to keep secret and when this was no longer possible the Library ended up on fire before the water managed to extinguish its flames. "Guglielmo wept". (water/emotions). The theme of the book is the laughter. It refers to a hypothetical lost Aristotle's book concerning the Comedy. In short the meaning of the book is that laughter has its own dignity, its cognitive value. Comedy, the comedian, saying things differently, ridiculing them, forces us to look at them more carefully, and we end up seeing the hidden truth. At the same time, even the most fearful things, when turned into comedy, lose their terrifying power. Laughter free from fear (and it is the main reason why it is feared) The thought is immediately at every moment when John and Sherlock are represented as homosexuals in BBC Sherlock. These are always jokes, ridiculous moments. But as we are told in the fictitious book in The Name of the Rose, laughter conceals the truth. A book in a book that talks about books, because, it is repeated several times, all books speak of other books, each book is a reference to a previous book and from obvious books it is possible to arrive at occult books. As if to say that to understand a book it is enough to have another one. London AZ for Sherlock and our still unknown book. Unknown probably because not unique. A set of books (code booKs), but just because Sherlock Holmes has left the sphere of books and has expanded himself into other media. The Name of the Rose is a book about books, a complex labyrinth of intertextual quotations, but also a use manual of books. The books are something that involves the author and the text in the first place, but once it's finished, the relationship is the one that is established between the reader and the text. And the texts are meant to be interpreted. "Books are not meant to be believed but to be subjected to investigation. In front of a book we must not ask ourselves what it says, but what it means ... the letter must be discussed even if the supersense remains good. " *I humbly apologize but I don't have a reference text in English, so this is a horrid, as usual for me, translation of the perfect Eco's Italian (sooner or later I will learn English .... maybe when I won't lose so much time on a certain author ;-P) A licence for those like us who want to go beyond the visible, the admission that a text is more of what appears, which is susceptible to generate always different readings without ever running itself out completely. And this is true for some books more than for others, because in some the subtext presses towards the surface, barely contained by metaphors, mirrors and allegories. Since ancient times methods for expressing truth. Metaphors, puzzles, word games, which sometimes seem put in a text out of pure delight, often hide truths that want to be kept silent, for various reasons, to most people. A book on books that talk about books hidden in books, books that hide the truth under layers of words. A book about a medieval Sherlock Holmes and rarely the universe is so lazy.

@sarahthecoat @possiblyimbiassed @gosherlocked @ebaeschnbliah @sagestreet

#the name of the rose #sherlock reference #code books

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occultexperience-blog · 5 years

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Marbas made a handicap man walked again. My true story with a Goetic Demon.

I used to be a very fit man. When I was younger, I played varsity soccer and hockey. A few years ago, I was diagnosed with an auto immune disorder, it is a genetic condition, where my body attack itself causing extreme pain. It is chronic and incurable. The pain would elapse in episodes, someday I would be perfectly fine, some days I can't even get out of bed. The pain will keep me from venturing outside, and when I do, I will need clutches. My doctors pretty much given up on me, they write me prescription of pain killers, then hurry me out the door.

My pride won't let me say I am a handicapped person, but the fact remain I am unable to walk.

Not dramatizing my medical condition here, just giving you a background understanding.

I learn to work from home, so I am doing rather well financially. As well as it can get without actually getting a real job.

Last winter was especially harsh. From mid December until may, I didn't have a day I can walk without my clutches. Even standing up is an exercise of will power. My daily routine really consist of waking up, taking pain killers, falling back asleep. It is really depressing, my life was falling apart.

At the same time, I was learning black magic. Particularly, summoning entities to full fill my wishes. I didn't have a lot of luck evoking spirits. I can't see them, I can't hear them, but from time to time, I can feel wave of heavy energy coming to me. I learn to download and decode those energy as a mean to communicating with spirits.

I was mostly focusing on financial magic. Not being able to work and without a stable source of income, I am looking at a realistic chance of medical bankruptcy. So all my magical efforts have been toward creating financial abundance

While going through the Ars Goetia. I came across President Marbas. According to his Wikipedia page. In demonology, Marbas or Barbas is a demon described in the Ars Goetia. He is described as the Great President of Hell governing thirty-six legions of demons. He answers truly on hidden or secret things, causes and heals diseases, teaches medical arts, and changes men into other shapes. He is depicted as a great lion that, under the conjurer's request, changes shape into a man.

While surfing through youtube, I came across recommendation of his healing properties. So I thought I would invoke Marbas for my legs. I was also rather depressed at the time, so I thought Marbas can help me feel better as well.

So I invoked him. I was learning magic at the time, well, I am still learning, but back then my ritual was really primitive. My ritual consist of lighting a few candles, grab a hold of some crystal, and focus really hard on connecting to Marbas's energy.

And Poof!

Nothing happened

Just like many summoning before and after this ritual, I didn't feel any different. No voices, no visuals, no earth quakes.

I might have invoked Marbas again a few times in general rituals, but I can't remember. Soon after, I forgot about invoking Marbas all together. After all, I was focusing on manifesting money.

Sometime after, I was shopping on E. Bay for supplements. Like vitamins and herbal remedies and stuff like that. I came across a vendor selling bulk supplements in powder form. It look rather sketchy, but one of the item caught my attention.

It is natural peperine. What is that, you ask?

It is a purified pepper. It has natural properties that help alleviate inflammation, it is a natural anti depressin, it also lowers your body's tolerance towards pharmaceuticals. That means it would make the drugs you take more effective.

It sounds like a miracle drug, perfect for my situation. I did much research on the substance, poured through scientific journals and did all my home work. It's been well reviewed with no side effects. It is a natural compound that comes with very little risk. It was 20 dollars for a few grams, it's a bit pricy but might as well give it a try.

I took it for a few days, and I did feel better. It really clear up my depression, and the lowered tolerance allow my pain killer to work better, I am in less pain.

Miracle.

Then I found an old bottle of C B D oil. It is a natural painkiller made from hemp. The bottle was really small, and for the longest time, I thought I lost it. So I took the C B D oil with peperine powder.

Worked like a charm. A day or two later, my pain was gone. I can walk again. Not an athlete like I was in high school, but I was just happy to go outside.

Yesterday I completed a walk around a local lake. It is a beautiful 4 mile hike in a well maintained natural trail. It's been a few years since I was able complete that trail.

On my way home I remembered that ritual asking President Marbas for help. It had completely slipped my mind. It was as if President Marbas gently tapped my shoulders and said

"How you like me now?"

Now the skeptic would say I got better because of the drug not because of the ritual. but I think this is how manifestation really work. I don't dismiss the idea that an Angel or Demon would snap a finger and you are healed, but from my experience, they would give you hints and clues, and open a path to your goal, you will have to do your part in the physical world to make it happen.

Adding to the unusual nature of the situation, that E Bay store had been shut down. It was as if it came into being just to sell that batch of drugs.

So that was my experience with Marbas. I don't know if I am cured of my autoimmune disorder, but I am feeling fine right now. Being able to walk anywhere I want is a blessing. I want to publicly thank President Marbas for his help.

I have worked with other spirit before, and in time, I would like to share those stories too.

Looking online, I haven't found a lot of people who have specifically worked with Marbas. There are a lot of talks about him, but very few true story I can count on to reference. Do you have an experience with this entity? Share your experience on the comments below.

One last thing, if you are a youtuber or have another blog, and you enjoyed this story, which is 100% true, please share it on your channel. Marbas would appreciate the attention. Good things happens to people who gain the favor of this powerful spirit.

#marbas #rapheal #arch angel rapheal #angel #demon #healing #faith healing #medicine #pepprine #satan #lucifer #ea koetting #witch craft #witch #wiccan #voodoo #christian

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otp-bubbline · 5 years

Text

I didn’t write this it was requested

ImmoImmortals (1/8)

[Originally posted on my fanfiction.net account back in May, before I had a tumblr, but since the Bubbline fandom’s pretty lively here, thought I’d share. It’s been turned completely AU by Stakes, but still works pretty well as an alternate history. Romance/Angst/Tragedy

[As it turns out, Marceline and Bonnibel have more history than all of Ooo, and back in the beginning, Marceline still had a moral code, and Bonnibel still had a heart. But a thousand years is a long, long time, and nothing lasts forever.

[Adventure Time belongs to Pendleton Ward and the song “Immortals” to Fall Out Boy.]

(they say we are what we are

but we don’t have to be)

“Why isn’t there any…chicken…soup?!”

That plaintive cry echoes throughout the dead city, ricocheting off busted cars and broken buildings, and muffles in the freshly fallen snow that clogs one of its alleys. In the alley’s center, an elderly man, his skin tinting to blue, shakes his fists at the unsympathetic leaden skies.

And nearly gets concussed by the falling can of chicken soup.

“What? I’ll freeze you!” he yells, spinning around with his hands extended, crab-like, but there’s nothing there—no threats, no oozing monster. Just a deep divot in the snow, shadowed blue as his skin. He lowers his hands, the fear fading from his face, and fishes out the miracle can. “Er…”

“Simon? Simon, what’s going on?”

He turns around, still cradling the can, but waves arrestingly at the girl halfway out of a rusting automobile. “Marcy! Stay in the car! I’ve got your soup, but it’s cold now—the air, not the soup, although I suppose it’d be cold anyway, being that it’s in a can and all—but whatever, I mean, you’re not well, and what if there’s more monsters—”

His protests fall on deaf ears, as Marceline disregards his concerns and clambers through the snow to his side, even though it’s up to her knees and she’s decidedly not equipped to be trekking across a polar landscape. She laughs upon seeing the can, like it’s the prize at the end of a long quest, but her attention is quickly caught by something in the background.

Something smiling. Something pink.

The half-demon approaches the sticky substance where it’s strung across the wall. “Is this who gave you the soup?” she asks, mirroring the smile hanging in the translucent material: the happiest semicircle of a curve.

“Huh? What?” Simon bleats, and he looks vaguely at the pink goop. “What’s that? You think that thing gave me this soup?” He chuckles, but it’s ranging towards a cackle, and Marceline slants him a suspicious look, which swiftly swivels to fixate on the crown hanging from his belt. Simon clears his throat and tries to salvage the situation and fails rather miserably. “What? It’s just a wad of sentient bubblegum.”

“Simon!” she protests, glancing nervously at her magenta benefactor, whose smile has faded. “That’s really mean! I think she heard you! And she probably has a name, you big jerk!”

“Eh? She? Why d’you think it’s a girl? It’s a blob,” the man says, pointing up at the strings of gum that wander up the wall like rigging on a ship. “Quite a bit of blob, too.”

“You really are a jerk,” Marceline declares, laying her hands on the gum somewhat to the sides of the eyes: her best guess as to where the ears are. “And of course it’s a girl. It’s pink. What kinda boy would be pink? Geez.”

“A bubblegum boy, that’s who,” Simon grouses, but there’s no real fight in his words, and he exhales a long sigh. “Fine, fine. ‘Princess Bubblegum’ here gave me the soup, sure. Can you just eat it now? You’re sick, Marcy, and I want to help you. Would you let me help you like I’ve always done?”

Her dark eyes narrow, not oblivious to the sarcasm riding his words, but she capitulates with a nod. “Okay. I am hungry, anyway.”

He beckons, already halfway back to the dilapidated husk of the car. “Come on. It’ll be warmer in here, and safer, too. Once you’ve eaten, we need to get out of this city. Who knows how many more slimy monsters are prowling the streets.”

Marceline starts to follow him, but she hesitates, glancing back at the gum. “But what about her? We can’t leave her here, Simon. Those oozy monsters might attack her next, and she can’t protect herself.”

“She can if she drops ballistic cans of chicken soup on their heads,” he mutters, but with a note of fondness. Rather more realistically, he poses, “There’s enough gum up that wall to weigh both of us down, Marcy. How do you want to go about carrying her? Or are you suggesting that we chew her up and blow the world’s biggest bubble and balloon away from here?”

The half-demon child laughs. “Oh, Simon, you’re so silly! Blowing a bubble, geez. You’re pretty dumb for being so old. No, we…pull her down, kind of, and mush her up until she’s…person-shaped. Like…like a snowman, but with gum, and a girl. A gum-girl. Yeah. We’ll make a gum-girl.”

One of Simon’s eyebrows rockets skywards, and he cranes his neck, scanning the lattice of pink elastic roped up the wall. “Well,” he says at last, “I’ve heard stranger ideas. What the heck. Let’s give it a whirl.”

Giddy, Marceline claps her hands together and turns back to the nearly-featureless face on the wall. “Did you hear that, Princess Bubblegum? You can come with us. Just…come on down here.”

The smile returns, spreading wide and semicircular again. As the child and the old man watch, the strands of pink gum shiver and contract and coalesce, creeping down the building like a vine growing in reverse. It pulls in streamers and reclaims clumps until, at long last…

Simon blinks. “It’s a wad,” he echoes.

Marceline crouches next to the lump, which is almost half her height and possessing all the form of a beanbag chair. “Aw, Princess, that’s not right. You need to have legs! And arms! Otherwise, how’re you gonna do anything?”

The small, hazy eyes are half-closed, though, as if coming this far were exhausting enough. With a last burst of energy, a tendril extends and scrapes loopily through the snow.

The half-demon cocks her head to the side. “Sugar?” she reads, and she sends a questioning glance to her adopted parent.

Simon scratches his whiskery chin. “Makes enough sense,” he muses. “Not only are simple carbohydrates the core ingredients in most metabolisms, given the fact that she’s composed of gum, it might also serve some secondary, structural purpose.”

Marceline’s brows pinch together. “…What?”

“She can’t form a body without sugar,” he explains, and he sighs again, more heavily this time. “But to get sugar, we’ll have to venture even further into the city.”

His small companion, though, falls on her knees and hugs the pink blob. “Aw, c’mon, Simon, we have to! It’d be great to have a friend!”

He blanches. “Aren’t I your friend?”

She considers this. “Well, yeah, but…you’re kinda like a dad, Simon. I meant a friend who’d be another kid. And then you’d have another kid, and we’d…” She falters, her chin trembling, and tears bead up in her eyes. They slip down her cheeks in crystalline trails and drip, soundless, onto the mound of gum, which looks up at her sympathetically. “We’d be like a family.”

Simon stares at her for a long time, the crown heavy on his belt. One day, he knows, the power of it will pull him beneath its gilded surface and he’ll drown in its depths; one day, he won’t be able to be there for Marceline, to protect or provide or simply accompany. When that day comes, he would dearly like to guarantee that she won’t be alone, even if all she has left is a princess made of bubblegum.

Walking over to her through the snow, he braces an arm around her small shoulders and presses a kiss into her night-black hair. “We are a family,” he gently corrects her, and he empties his pack onto the ground. “Here, take Hambo,” he says, passing over the teddy bear. “I think our new friend here will fit inside. That way, we can carry her to the sugar and still able to run away if we have to.”

Marceline scrubs the tears off her cheeks and grins, sharp-toothed and riotously happy, and she squeezes Hambo so hard in her arms that his seams threaten to burst. “Thanks, Simon! You’re the best!”

He chuckles, a little embarrassed, but shimmies the empty pack over the pink blob and hefts the whole thing onto his shoulders. “You still need to eat your soup,” he reminds her.

“Oh, right!”

It doesn’t take them long to find sugar; the stuff is apparently more plentiful than chicken soup, or perhaps horrible slime monsters prefer more complex offerings. Either way, they find torn-open, paper-wrapped pounds of it spread about the shelves like snow in the first grocery they check. After exchanging a glance and a shrug, Simon sets his pack down and opens the flap while Marceline gathers handfuls of the sweet crystals and dumps them over the bubblegum blob.

Some of the grit sinks in, but most of it just spills over the top and sits there, delicious dandruff.

“Um…” Marceline bends over the bag, head tilting to one side, lips pulling to the other. “Are we supposed to do something, Princess…?”

But the bubblegum begins writhing, kneading the sugar into its own flesh, and the half-demon stumbles backwards. Simon catches her under the arms and pulls her a safe distance away, and both of them look on in wary interest as the pack begins to jostle this way and that as the gum surges about inside it. The motions are so violent, though, that the flap flops shut, and neither the man nor the child can quite summon the courage to approach closely enough to tip it open again.

At length, the shaking stills, and Marceline gets her weight back on her feet and creeps closer. There is movement again, but it is now sluggish and slow. The half-demon reaches out and pulls aside the flap…and looks down into a face that is no longer so featureless, into eyes that are no longer so small and dark and a smile that isn’t a perfect semicircle.

It’s better, though. It’s practically human.

Violet lashes blink across lavender eyes, and teeth as white and square as sugar cubes shine in her smile. Her skin is pale, barely pink at all, but it absorbed the majority of the sugar and so faded out. Her hair retains its obnoxious shade and almost all its stickiness, too, falling in globs instead of strands around her small, round-cheeked face.

“Whoa! You’re like alive and stuff!” Marceline exclaims, grinning another razor-edged smile.

The gum-girl bobs her head. With the help of the half-demon’s hand, she unfolds herself from the pack, standing strong and steady on her new legs. “Bonnibel,” she says in a voice that’s light and sweet.

Marceline quirks a dark eyebrow. “Eh, what?”

“My name,” she clarifies, and she touches a hand to her breast and bows. “I’m Bonnibel.”

The other girl chortles. “Not Princess Bubblegum?”

Bonnibel tucks her chin to her chest in a posture of deep thought. “No,” she says at last, “but I suppose I could be, if you want.”

“Nah,” Marceline dismisses, “I like Bonnibel. I’m Marceline, and this is Simon,” she says, taking in her other friend with a wave.

“Yes, I heard,” the gum-girl confirms, and she offers a bow to the old man as well. “Thank you for coming along to save me.”

Simon arches a doubtful eyebrow. “We hardly saved you,” he says. “You pulled yourself down off that wall without any help from us.”

“Yes, but I had nowhere to go before,” Bonnibel explains. “I had no reason to leave the wall for years, and no sugar to grant me form. You see, I got blown there during the final bombings.” She stretches her fingers into stars and adds for emphasis, “Splat.”

“Gross,” Marceline remarks with a smirk, fangs just jutting into her lower lip.

Bonnibel nods solemnly. “Gross, indeed,” she confirms, and then she smiles again, sugar-bright. “But then you two came into my alley, and spoke of friendship and family, and I…had almost forgotten about such things. I’ve been so lonely.”

The half-demon boldly grasps one of her hands and extends her other to Simon, who completes the chain. “Well, you’re not alone anymore, Bonnibel!” she declares, her smirk widening into an almost perfect semicircle of a grin.

“No,” she agrees, “I’m not.”

(i’ll be the watcher of the eternal flame

i’ll be the guard dog of all your fever dreams)

Slouched next to the campfire with her crossed arms balanced on her knees, Marceline stares through the flickering yellow flames at the sprawled figure of Simon. He’s deep asleep, his crown hugged possessively to his chest, as if he fears someone will take it from him—and his fear is well founded, as Marceline has attempted exactly that over the years but has always been met with failure. Now she doesn’t really try, because afterwards, Simon always seemed more enraptured by the power than before. She doesn’t want to be the one that pushes him over the edge.

She couldn’t catch him if he fell. It’s not like she can fly.

“You’re doing that thing again.”

The half-demon glances sidelong at Bonnibel, who’s peering at her from the depths of her own sleeping bag. Lavender eyes flash orange in the firelight. “What thing?” Marceline prompts, scratching idly at one pointed ear.

Now laughter flashes, too. “Trying to think.”

“Har har,” Marceline tosses back with just a smidgeon of acid. “You’re hilarious, Bonni. Go back to sleep already before I bop you one.”

But the gum-girl disregards that warning and sits up, smoothing out the rumples in her sleeping bag. “Really, though,” she presses, “what’re you thinking about? You’re so intense, you look like you’re gonna blow a blood vessel.”

Exhaling through her nose, Marceline leans back against the half-rotten log behind her and gazes up at the stars scattered—like sugar, like snowflakes—across the velvety black expanse of sky, their light poorly hidden by the leafless branches of the surrounding forest trees. She fails to respond, although a muscle works in her jaw, pulsing like her heartbeat.

Bonnibel waits half a minute more before surrendering—but not in the way Marceline would have expected. Instead of rolling over and punching another ticket to dreamland, she wriggles out of her sleeping bag entirely and reclines at her friend’s side. They’re the same height, the half-demon idly observes: their arms, their legs are the same length, too. But these facts don’t really surprise Marceline, and she’s always secretly appreciated the unspoken explanation. After all, Bonnibel doesn’t have any rules about growing up—the girl’s made out of gum, for glob’s sake. She could skip straight to adulthood if she wanted to, if she packed on enough sugar.

But she’s always been very careful about how quickly she ages.

She’s always been the same height as Marceline.

Their shoulders brush, and the half-demon sighs once more, blustery this time. “He’s calling you Princess Bubblegum again.”

The other girl hums, an unconcerned confirmation. “It’s a little creepy,” she concedes, “but he’s harmless. It’s nothing to keep you up at night.”

Marceline’s lips twist in a grimace, one fang poking free. “It’s not the creep-factor I’m worried about. I mean, I don’t want him creeping on you, ’cause that’s mega-nasty, but…” She trails off, her expression creasing further, and she pulls her legs closer to her chest, locks her arms more tightly around them. She’s fairly bristling with angles, like a defensive star. “But he hasn’t called you that in seven years, Bonni.”

Eyes dimming, Bonnibel, too, stares across the fire.

“I think he’s forgotten,” the half-demon concludes in the most regretful whisper. “And not that he’s forgotten that it’s not your name or whatever. I think he’s forgotten the last seven years altogether.”

She tucks her chin in. “And he’s calling you Marceline,” she adds slowly as the realization occurs to her.

“Exactly,” she agrees, even less than a whisper now. “He’s never called me by my full name. I introduced myself with it, of course, but…he never used it. I’ve always been Marcy.” She tries to swallow, but her throat’s too thick, and the knot of emotion serves to slowly strangle her.

Until Bonnibel rests a hand on her shoulder, that is; then she can breathe easier. She takes in several gulps of the cool night air, willing its chill to calm the hammering of her heart, and she shakes her head in a terribly lost motion, black hair rustling in a waist-length curtain. “What’re we supposed to do, Bonni? It’s the crown, I know it’s the lumping crown, but…I don’t think I can save him from it. I mean, what am I? I’m a scrawny teenaged half-demon, not a hero. And it’s taken him already. There’s nothing I can do.”

Pink fingers tighten in reassurance. “Perhaps not,” she admits, low and gentle. “But he’s not a lost cause yet.”

“So, what?” Marceline rasps, half-sneering and hating the tears that burn in the corners of her eyes. “We’ll sit around, twiddling our thumbs, until he becomes one?” She shoves the other girl’s hand from her shoulder, not caring that such a forceful motion almost causes the threadbare fabric of her t-shirt to tear. “That won’t solve anything!”

Bonnibel studies her in the shivering firelight, her expression inscrutable, her eyes dark and distant. “Not every problem has a solution,” she says at length. “Some equations are broken from the beginning.”

“Simon’s not an equation,” Marceline snarls, fangs gleaming gold, knuckles bleaching white. “He’s a person.”

A wrinkle appears in her brow. “I know that.”

“Do you?” the half-demon snaps, and she unfolds her gangly limbs to stand, stiff and shaking, above her friend. “’Cause it sure as hell doesn’t sound like it! It sounds like you’re ready to write him off, like one of your stupid experiments when they go wrong!”

Bonnibel’s lips seal in a thin line, but whatever she intends to say is never heard: across the fire, Simon stirs lethargically and half-opens one swirling, ice-blue eye. “Hrm, Marcy? Is that you? Are you alright?”

Marceline slackens like a sail that’s lost the wind, flapping loose against the mast of her spine. “Yeah, I’m—I’m fine,” she croaks, and her voice splinters into shards. “G-Go back to sleep, old man. Glob, you’re such a pain.”

“Hmph! You’re no cakewalk yourself, kid,” he mutters, and his white-lashed eyelid drops shut again, sweeping the snowy madness out of sight.

Marceline stands there and trembles, tears sliding slickly down her pale gray cheeks, until Bonnibel breathes a soft sigh and wipes them away. The droplets soak into her sugary skin, melting shallow depressions, but she doesn’t seem to mind. “We won’t leave him,” she declares, fingers lingering on the slanting planes of the half-demon’s face.

She snorts, but there’s no humor in the sound. “He’ll leave us,” she points out, cracking and hollow.

“Yes, one day, he will,” Bonnibel murmurs. “But we’ll stay until he does. It’ll be his decision.”

The skin strains around Marceline’s eyes and mouth, and she corrects darkly, “It’ll be the crown’s decision.”

There is nothing Bonnibel can say to that, so she says nothing.

It takes three more months, and Simon, lost in the depravity of his magic, is no longer so harmless. A horrified Marceline has to tackle him off Bonnibel, yelling and grabbing fistfuls of his beard and his coat, and even then, she can’t hold him down unaided. He’s old, true, but the crown grants him terrible power, and she’s just a scrawny teenaged half-demon, not a hero.

In the end, Bonnibel whacks him in the head with a stick. Even though that knocks off his crown, both girls know that doesn’t make a difference anymore: the crown is in his soul, its madness buried deep where they can’t dredge it out. So she hits him again and again until he’s exiled to unconscious realms, but she has more trouble extricating Marceline, who’s sobbing into his chest, all regret and apology and anger.

Mutilated by the magic, he has betrayed her loyalty and her love, and that knife sinks up to the hilt in her heart and twists and twists and twists.

Bonnibel manages to untangle the other girl’s fingers and drag her away; Marceline is incoherent in her grief, and she lacks the clarity to walk or stand. So after a dozen paces, Bonnibel lets her friend sag against her and cry a divot into her shoulder.

Before they flee, Marceline throws the hated crown as far as she can, heaving it somewhere into the dark trees. It won’t help him now—he’ll always, always find it, chained as he is to its irresistible anchor—but it makes her feel a little better.

It makes her feel like she tried.

(sometimes the only pay-off for having any faith

is when it’s tested again and again everyday)

Three years pass, three years without Simon—but not without snow, no. They crossed some mountains, and there was a trio of winters to contend with, but this snow melts, and it doesn’t taste like insanity. Three years in which Bonnibel carefully adds seemingly inconsequential amounts of sugar to her own frame, because after three more years, Marceline isn’t quite as scrawny anymore. She’s still a riff on the theme of angles, pointed ears and teeth and nose and sharp triangles of collar- and cheek- and hipbones, but there’s a softness now that wasn’t there before, even considering their meager diets, their constant travel.

Bonnibel’s taken note of these changes, but she has to, she tells herself, because she has to augment her own body to match. They’ve grown up at the same rate, and they’ll continue to do so. She’s not noticing anything because shewants to, oh, glob, no.

She doesn’t admire Marceline’s hair when it shines iridescent like a raven’s wing in the moonlight. She doesn’t stare when Marceline’s movements are languid and lithe, smoothed by a grace that Bonnibel can’t quite replicate, despite having almost exactly the same proportioned limbs. She certainly doesn’t wonder what it’d be like to twine her fingers through Marceline’s, and not for comfort or for support or simply not to lose one another on foggier days but just because she can.

She doesn’t think about any of these things, ever.

Never, ever.

“Kssh. Earth to Bonnibel. Come in, Bonnibel. Over. Kssh.” And knuckles rap on her sugarcane skull.

“Ow!” the gum-girl protests, and she swats peevishly at her friend’s arm. Snickering, Marceline retracts her hand and plops down beside her in her usual effortless lounge. “You’re back already?”

“Yup,” the half-demon replies, tilting her head back to ease the kinks from her neck. Bonnibel resolutely does not trace her eyes up the slender curve of her throat. “No sign of any nasty monsters anywhere around our campsite—hooray.” She raises a loose fist in a parody of triumph, and she tips her head forward again, opening one dark eye to peer at her friend. “Good thing, too, ’cause you woulda been dessert. How lost in thought were you, eh? Forget to bring a map when you wandered into that big ol’ brain of yours?”

“Shut up, Marcy,” Bonnibel grouses, and she sniffs importantly. “Maybe I was concocting marvelous plans about how to fix the entire world, and now you’ve gone and interrupted me, and everyone will suffer. Way to go.”

But the other girl shrugs, an easy ripple of thin shoulders. “Well,” she concedes, “I am the daughter of Evil Incarnate. If I didn’t ruin the world’s chance for, um, a second chance, then I’d hardly be living up to the family expectations.”

She squints sidelong at her friend. “Yeah…what’s up with that?” she asks. “Like, how evil are you?”

“Pretty evil,” Marceline quips, forked tongue flicking out from between her sharp, sharp teeth. “But seriously, I don’t even know. Glob, I haven’t even been in the Nightosphere since I was way young; I don’t remember much, ’cept for like fire and brimstone and junk. Mom thought I’d grow up better in the human world, but I guess she wasn’t expecting the Mushroom Wars. ’Course, for all I know, Dad orchestrated the whole thing. Seems kinda like his style…more souls to munch and all. Whatever, though, right? I mean, if I am the harbinger of the Apocalypse or somethin’, then mission accomplished ’cause, wow, did the Apocalypse happen hardcore. Go me, I guess.” And she raises another fist, this one much more sarcastic, into the air and gives it a half-hearted pump.

Bonnibel absorbs this with the impartiality of a true scientist, and as such, she goes on to wonder, “Do you have any abilities? Outside of the physical characteristics, you don’t seem particularly demonic.”

Marceline shifts her weight, getting more comfortable against the pillows of their packs braced against the sheer cliff wall. “Who made you drink curious juice, Bon?” she asks in a lazy drawl, her eyes slipping shut, as if she intends to take a nap, conversations be damned.

The gum-girl tries not to take offense at this. “I just realized that we always talk about the present, that’s all. Where we are, where we’ll be going tomorrow, what’s for dinner. Nothing consequential, really. Nothing about…before.”

The atmosphere crystallizes, ever so slightly. Before means before Simon, and that just dredges up his frozen ghost. Marceline suddenly seems to have more edges than usual, but then, just as suddenly, she relaxes. “Oh, is that all?” she says, her tone determinedly light. “Well, dang, you shoulda just said. I think I’ve got some latent magical talent that I’ve never really messed with. Like I’m pretty sure I can open a portal to the Nightosphere whenever the plop I want, but really, who wants to do that? And I’m immortal, just like the old man.”

Bonnibel lifts her eyebrows, impressed. “You’re deathless?”

“I’m…something?” Marceline hedges, her brow furrowing, and she stares inquisitively off into the night. Storm clouds are brewing in the west; she can smell the change in the air from here, and she vaguely concedes that they’ll need to set up the tent soon. “I mean, I’m aging, right? I don’t know if I’ll stop at some point or what. I’m only half-demon, after all. I think I’ll live forever, though; it’s a surety I’ve got in my bones. But, like…I also think I could die,” she adds, more quietly. “That’s in my bones, too.”

“I don’t want you to die,” Bonnibel blurts before she can think better of it.

The other girl tips her a wink, and Bonnibel’s glad the darkness hides her blush. “Aw, shucks. I knew you were sweet, but now you’re just giving me cavities. Lemme just dig out my toothbrush and—”

“Shut up,” she grumbles once again, and she pulls her knees in to her chest and sulks with her chin on their knobby curves.

Marceline sniggers. “Geez, I didn’t know you were so sensitive. Guess you’re not hard candy.”

Bonnibel throws her a flinty glare. “I do have feelings, you know.”

The half-demon rolls her head back again and flaps an unconcerned hand. “’Course ya do, babe. There’s bound to be more than just sugar in your veins.” She frowns but doesn’t straighten up to ask, “Now how does that work, eh? How do you function? I’m not the only mysterious person in our intrepid little duo.”

“I function on the same principles as everyone else,” Bonnibel says, adding conscientiously, “at least, everyone else who exists in a corporeal fashion. The only difference between us is that I’m carbohydrate-based and you’re protein-based.”

“English, Bonni.”

The gum-girl sighs. “I’m made out of sugar and you’re made out of meat.”

“Well, geez, you could’ve just said,” Marceline says with hint of annoyance that smoothes into a luxurious shrug. “Whatevs. That’s all I’ve got. I’m tappin’ out.”

Bonnibel stalls for a long time, trying to organize her thoughts, and they’ve never been so hard to file before. As of late, though, she finds that as much as she prizes her intelligence, she’s liable to be receiving awards for idiocy if she remains in the unsettling grasp of this strange emotion whilst in Marceline’s presence. But even with the threat of embarrassment, she can’t find it within her heart to want to leave—just the opposite, in fact.

She’ll do anything to stay.

Awkwardly, she clears her throat. “Marcy,” she ventures, soft, “do demons…have feelings?”

“Just went over this,” her friend drawls, twirling one finger in a circle for emphasis.

“No, I meant like…” Her throat closes up and chokes off the words, and only with determined prying can she open the pathway again. “Like, y’know…feelings.”

Marceline blinks up at the faraway stars and watches for a few beats as more and more of them are covered by the incoming clouds. “Like feeling-feelings? Like love and crap?”

Love and crap, Bonnibel echoes internally. Oh, glob. What do I see in this girl. “Yes,” she confirms aloud. “Like love.”

“’Course,” the half-demon replies, settling more deeply into her comfortable slump, lashes like crow’s wings feathering on her cheeks. “I loved Simon. I loved my mom. I…think I love my dad? Ish? That one’s hard to say; I don’t remember the dude. I’ll have to pop into the Nightosphere one of these days and have a big ol’ family reunion.” She shrugs again, clearly done talking.

Bonnibel’s more than certain that her candy heart is going to crack in half. “And…no one else?”

Marceline furrows her brow and stares, once more, straight up at the sky. “Have I met anyone else?” she wonders, sounding genuinely confused.

The gum-girl reaches over and taps her fist into her friend’s forehead, exactly as Marceline herself had done when she arrived at the campsite. “Hello, you dingus! Me! What about me!”

The half-demon shifts her gaze down and across until charcoal irises meet lavender ones. “What about you?” she protests, bewildered.

Bonnibel resists the urge to throttle her, or perhaps just to burst into mortified flames. “Argh! Do you love me?” she all but yells. The words echo off the cliffs, mockingly hollow.

And Marceline explodes laughing. “Whoa, calm down, Bonni! Of course I love you,” she says, still chortling, her arms wrapped around her ribs: “You’re my best friend! Glob, what a dumb question.”

A strange, curious ache sets in the back of Bonnibel’s jaw, like she’s eaten too much sugar—except she can never eat too much sugar, and this ache goes deeper, far deeper, right down to the molasses in her marrow. She turns aside stiffly, and it will rain soon; she can smell it too, the promise of moisture, the pressure of the surly atmosphere. They need to set up the tent. She needs to stay out of the wet, lest she start to melt.

But she gets to her feet, instead. “I’m going for a walk,” she says, her voice small.

The humor hitches in her friend’s smile, warping it into something closer to a frown. “Er…okay?”

Bonnibel doesn’t reply. As she wanders off into the darkness, she vows never to ask Marceline that again.

Never, ever.

It starts to rain, and Marceline curses, fumbling through their packs for coats, blankets—anything that will pass as a makeshift umbrella. “Stupid sugarbrain knows she’s gonna melt but goes for a freaking joyride anyway,” she mutters under her breath as she irritably knots a jacket around her waist. She slips a second one on properly, hiking its collar up against the rain even though her hair provides more of a barrier than the stiff material can really hope to match. “Stupid lumping sugarbrain…”

She crawls out of the tent, and the steady plunking of rain on canvas is replaced with the rather more intimate plunking of rain on her face; the droplets are fat and heavy, each one bursting like a ripe berry as they strike her skin. Marceline scowls and retreats momentarily into the tent, snatching up a well-worn baseball cap and screwing it onto her head, and the pressure of it makes her ears stick out even more, appearing almost wing-like at a glance. The cap’s bill shelters her face from the deluge, though, and grants her a modicum of comfort, so she sets out again, still grumbling but no longer quite so miserable.

The cliff road is dark and wet and treacherous, and only intermittent lightning flashes illuminate its tortuous length. Once upon a time, Marceline recalls, she and Simon had flashlights, but the batteries succumbed to time and use and went to rest with everything else antebellum, and they never did manage to find replacements. Marceline retains the flashlight, though, empty and useless as it is; it’s stowed in the bottom of her pack, as if it will still keep her from getting lost in the dark.

It doesn’t help her now, and not just because she didn’t bring it along, and she slips more than once on the slippery rocks, the broken asphalt of the long-forgotten mountain pass. Rusting guardrails flare and shine in the lightning’s evanescent electric glow, but there’s no sign of Bonnibel, not even a trail of half-melted sugary footprints, which Marceline has been hoping she’d find. Eventually, after a quarter hour of determined trekking, the half-demon discovers that the road winds back into the mountains, and along the path of least resistance, too—or the path of greatest resistance, if you’re a pessimist—because it carves a tunnel into the rock face. Its far end is a distant gray smudge, and its arched length is opaque and black.

Marceline has no time to appreciate the brief respite from the rain; her breath hisses in past her fangs, instead, when she realizes what’s lying on the ground just inside the tunnel.

It’s a leg, still oozing sugary blood, molasses-slow.

“Bonni?” she yells, and its first iteration is a shriek, scraping up the octaves in her throat via the train of sheer panic. She grapples for control after that and manages to shout, rather more audibly over the raging storm, “Bonni! You in here? You alive? You better freakin’ answer me!”

A weak reply reaches her pricked ears, small and shrill with fear. “No! Marcy, get out of here! Go away!”

Relief washes over Marceline like a tsunami wave, and it almost topples her, too. She hangs onto her balance with grim determination, and after a wavering moment of pure nausea, she gingerly lifts the severed leg—it’s surprisingly heavy, for being made of sugar. Biting back against the acid that rises unstoppably in her throat, she ventures into the tunnel.

“Don’t be a total moron, dude,” she says, loud and carrying, although the cheerfulness falls terribly flat. “Who d’ya think you are, the lumping gingerbread man? You can’t just go around lopping off your limbs and think you’ll be fine.”

“Didn’t you hear me?” Bonnibel’s voice possesses more of an edge now, its timbre buzzing like a saw. “Get outta here!”

Marceline homes in on the sound, stumbling in her haste and the inky darkness, and she can barely distinguish the shadow of her friend from the shadow of everything else. “Here you are,” she declares, and she crouches down, willing the enveloping blackness to recede so that she can investigate the gum-girl’s terrible injury. “I’ve, er, got your leg…I’ll just set it down, shall I? Like right next to whatever stump you’ve got left, yeah?”

Bonnibel recoils in the thick gloom, though, her shoulder blades endeavoring to burrow through the stone wall behind her. “Glob, Marcy, I don’t care about my leg!”

“Now that’s just blood loss talking,” the half-demon dismisses. She scootches closer again, still wielding the leg like a determined carpenter wrestling with a broken chair. “Can I borrow some of your hair, maybe? I think I can, like, glue it back on, kinda, with the gum…”

“Stop it! You don’t understand! Why aren’t you listening to me?” Bonnibel reaches out, and at first she twists her fingers in Marceline’s jacket’s sleeves, as if she wants to keep her here, but then she uses her grip to propel her friend backwards, instead. “It’s still here! It’ll attack you next—”

But Bonnibel’s warning is truncated as Marceline slams into her, and that only happens because something, in fact, slammed into Marceline. The girls’ foreheads knock together sharply, dizzyingly, and with a discombobulated groan, the half-demon braces her hands on the tunnel wall and tries to lever herself back up. The weight on her back, though, is so heavy, and somehow, it’s getting heavier…

“What the hell?” she grunts, and this close, she can read Bonnibel’s expression: utter terror. The same fear lances through her willowy frame as a voice—low and guttural and riding cold, rancid breath—purrs in her ear.

“Ahhh, you smell good,” the vampire says, slow with relish, and something that feels very much like a tongue slides slickly up Marceline’s neck. “Like real blood, not that syrupy crap…”

The half-demon only has time to gasp, “Oh, shit—” before the vampire’s fangs pierce the delicate skin on her neck and delve into the mineral-rich seam of her carotid artery. Agony like no pain she has ever felt before rushes through her veins: a wildfire or chain-lightning or anything that moves too fast to be predicted or blocked. It burns, it burns, and then, once her entire body is screaming itself hoarse, the pain switches direction, running against the grain of its own just-inflicted wounds as the suction starts.

She can feel like the life draining out of her, but she can’t stop it.

Bonnibel tries. Not paralyzed by the vampire’s poison herself, she drives her fist into the monster’s head with as much power as she can manage, howling rage at him all the while. Her pummeling, though, achieves no victory, and helpless saccharine tears flood her cheeks.

Marceline’s heart stops, a sudden arrest that leaves it hanging hollow behind her ribs, and it never starts again. The last thing she sees before the world fades into inescapable shadow is Bonnibel’s horrified face, her eyes wide, their lavender irises washed gray in the darkness.

And then she doesn’t see anything.

The vampire, swollen with blood like some disgusting, engorged spider, finally plucks his fangs from Marceline’s neck and tosses her body aside with all the care and ease of a child discarding a rag doll. Another scream catches in the traffic jam in Bonnibel’s throat, and she stares through the blurring screen of her tears at her friend’s corpse sprawled gracelessly on the cracked asphalt, just a shadow within a shadow.

“Mmm, delicious,” the vampire says, his voice thick and lush like velvet now. “So much more satisfying than you, my candy princess. Your red was so watery, and your blood…mm, it was not very pleasing. Not nearly enough salt, no.” He runs his tongue, stained with Marceline’s ichor, over his icicle fangs, and his eyelids flutter at the pleasure of the taste.

A thousand desires flood Bonnibel, principal amongst them the driving need to rip out the vampire’s throat, but before she can rush to any foolish action, a dry laugh rasps in the air. It’s a quiet sound, and she’s surprised she can hear it over the continual rumble of thunder and shudder of rain. Her own heart stills in her chest when a very familiar voice reaches her ears.

“Haha, oh, wow…did you think I’d take death lying down?”

Bonnibel’s gaze flickers aside, and yes, Marceline’s body is stirring, awkward like a marionette that’s had its strings cut and needs to learn to stand on its own. Her hair sweeps across her face in a black curtain, but the strands slip aside to reveal her eyes, gleaming red, the dark red of sullen embers in a banked fire. Her lips pull back in a terrible grin, and the once-even serration of her teeth is interrupted now by the sharper points of prominent canines.

The vampire beast still squatting in front of Bonnibel stares at her, his jaw slipping open in wordless shock. With dint of great determination, though, he manages to speak. “I didn’t want to turn you!” he all but squawks. “I wanted to kill you! I—I did kill you!”

“I’m the daughter of Evil Incarnate,” Marceline lets him know, as she had let Bonnibel know. She stretches her arms wide like she’s expecting applause. “You can’t kill me.”

She lunges then, faster than Bonnibel’s eyes can follow in this gloom, and snarls her fingers in the bat-like fur rising up all over the vampire beast’s body. She pivots on one foot and, with unprecedented strength, throws the monstrous form across the tunnel, where he slams into the far wall and groans pathetically.

The gum-girl stares up at her friend for a fracturing instant. “Marcy?” she whispers.

Marceline glances over her shoulder, and something in her face softens; some of the fire in her eyes dims. “This must be how Simon felt,” she remarks, quiet and bitter and with half her mouth still cranked in a parody of a smirk. “Calmly accepting a curse just to protect a friend. Yeah. I think I understand now.”

Her heart wrenches in her chest. “You…you came back like this…for me?” she croaks.

“Don’t be an idiot, Bon,” she replies, the insult curling fondly off her tongue, and her smile straightens out. “You already know I love you. Glob, you only just made me say it. So what did you expect? That I’d leave you here with this lumping freak to die? Geez.” And she shakes her head. “You’ve got like the worst opinion of me, babe.”

Her heart just writhes further. “Marcy,” she echoes, plaintive and pleading—although for what, she doesn’t exactly know.

“Sit tight, not that you have much choice,” Marceline quips, and she jerks a thumb at the beast, who’s stirring again. “I’ve got a vampire to slay.”

It’s hard to discern much in the darkness, but Bonnibel can see that, for being new to the vampiric lifestyle—deathstyle? Unlifestyle? She’ll have to work on that—Marceline manages to steal and keep the upper hand. Perhaps it’s due to the fact that the other vampire seeks strength in its huge monstrous form, which might have been more of an advantage if the tunnel weren’t so cramped. Marceline, by comparison, flits about easily, dodging and landing quick strikes, and Bonnibel is certain that it’s not just a trick of the dark—she’s certain that Marceline’s flying.

The male vampire’s roars suddenly cut short as the female dives in for the kill; humans might need to kill vampires with elaborate methods, all garlic and sunlight and wooden stakes in unbeating hearts, but amongst their own species, brutal violence suffices. Bonnibel closes her eyes, because even the storm-dark is not enough of a shield against the carnage, and she presses her fingers into her ears, too, so she doesn’t have to hear the cold flesh tearing free of ancient bones.

She only knows it’s over, then, when Marceline is gently pulling her hands down, and she blinks up at her friend. Smoldering eyes gaze back at her, level and searching, and the new vampire must feel her arms trembling beneath her grasp, as she sighs and lets go.

“Oh, Bon,” she breathes sadly, “you’re scared of me, aren’t you.”

She doesn’t pose it as a question, already resigned to the answer.

“No, I’m not,” Bonnibel protests, not admitting that she’s more than a little disconcerted by the change. It’s a lot to process, but she’s a scientist by nature, and she approaches all things with as much clinical detachment as she can muster, and she scrambles for its objective comfort now. Marceline being a vampire just means there’s a fresh set of variables to consider in the never-ending experiment of their lives. Nothing more, nothing less.

“My leg’s torn off,” she points out, as if that’s a detail inconsequential enough to be forgotten. “I think the blood loss is having some ill effects on my constitution, that’s all.”

Marceline crouches down, her vision now augmented by the inclusion of infrared, and reviews the wound. “Yeah, it’s not pretty,” she remarks, her tone still a bit brittle around the edges. “I think my gum-glue idea is gonna work, though. It should keep things from getting worse, at least, while I nip back to camp and borrow a cup of a sugar, heh.”

Bonnibel tugs a clump from her hair and hands the sticky wad over. The new vampire accepts it without really looking, and after swiveling the severed limb so that it’s lined up with the stump, she smacks it down haphazardly. “Um, there?” she ventures, tilting her head to the side without much confidence.

The other girl laughs, thin and light. “I’ll seal it better while you head back to camp. Don’t worry about it.”

Marceline grimaces doubtfully, and she rocks back on her heels, not yet departing. The sullen embers in her eyes are shadowed by her lashes as she stares down at the ground. “I’m…not gonna end up like Simon,” she whispers at length. “I know being a vampire comes with a whole ton of baggage, but I won’t let the bloodlust drive me mad or anything. I won’t go nuts.” Her eyes flicker up. “I won’t hurt you.”

There’s supplication in her tone. It’s raw, so raw.

Brow pinching in sympathy, Bonnibel reaches out and brushes her fingertips across Marceline’s cheek; the pale gray flesh is cool now, no longer suffused with the warmth of living tissue. It’s more than enough to bring tears to her eyes, but she determinedly holds them at bay. “I know,” she says, soft, and she taps a finger to one of the new fangs. “Besides, I have it on good assurance that I don’t taste good to vampires.”

“Well, we’ll see about that,” Marceline remarks impishly. She sticks out her tongue, just to taunt, not to taste, but it’s a fine line.

Despite the blush heating her own cheeks, Bonnibel rolls her eyes. “Glob, gross, Marcy.”

The vampire chuckles and gets to her feet—or not, because she hovers above the crumbling asphalt—and this newfound ability gives her pause. After a second of deliberation, she shrugs out of her jacket, draping it over her friend, and then scoops the gum-girl effortlessly into her arms.

“Wh-What are you doing?” Bonnibel yelps, the blush returning full-force.

“Dude, I can fly,” Marceline says with a shrug, and she unties the second jacket from her waist and arranges it on the other girl’s legs. For a moment, then, she’s just holding Bonnibel with one arm, and not apparently taxed in the slightest. “It’s super radical. And, like, I can get us back to camp and to all the sugar your little candy heart desires in no time flat. Maybe it’ll be the greatest thing ever, me being a vampire, eh?”

The optimism rings false, but she’s trying, and hard.

After a second’s hesitation, Bonnibel lowers her head to Marceline’s collar, and as she shuts her eyes, she catches herself listening for a heartbeat. Her friend’s chest is silent, though, and she twists her fingers in the vampire’s shirt over the spot where the sound should’ve been. “I know it’s a curse, and I know it won’t be easy for you,” she murmurs, throat thick, “but I’m really lumping glad you’re still here.”

Marceline’s fingers flex. “Yeah,” she agrees, “me, too.”

“We’ll be fine,” Bonnibel adds. “We’ll…we’ll both be just fine.”

Something like a laugh escapes the vampire as she floats out into the rain. “Oh? Is that what your science tells you? Is that a fact?” There’s no real venom in her voice, though—just more bitterness.

“No,” Bonnibel admits, the softest yet. “It’s just faith. I believe in you. In…us.”

Her lips tilt, and it might be a smile, though it’s hard to tell for sure.

(live with me forever now

pull the black-out curtains down)

Summer steals across the ravaged world, bringing warmer winds and longer days, the latter of which only yields complications for Marceline. She discovers early on—with drastic results—that vampires don’t appreciate sunlight, and Bonnibel has to bodily shield her from the burning rays while she digs through her pack with blistered hands in a desperate search for appropriate articles of clothing. But layering up isn’t so bad, because she doesn’t really have a body temperature anymore, and like a lizard, any amount of warmth she absorbs is almost instantly dispelled. It’s strange, and it takes some getting used to, but by the time they achieve the western side of the mountains, slapping on a hat and gloves in eighty-degree weather is second nature.

They could’ve simply begun traveling nocturnally, but Bonnibel has the worst eyesight in the dark—her fructose-filled diet isn’t exactly bursting with vitamin A—and they’ve yet to come across a handy pair of night-vision goggles in any of the abandoned cities they encounter. They do find an unbroken pair of sunglasses, which Marceline dons with a serrated grin and a tip of her hat, and in the end, she doesn’t really mind the sun.

Its indirect warmth almost makes her feel alive again.

She’s aware that Bonnibel’s kept a close eye on her ever since her transformation, but it’s tactfully done, and Marceline knows she means well. Cataloguing her strengths and weaknesses might prove useful down the road, and it would be outside of the gum-girl’s nature to ignore the chance to study something. For example, it’s Bonnibel who discovers that Marceline can simply subsist on the color red, not blood itself, and the vampire believes for a little while that she won’t have to be a monster at all.

But the color is thin and lacking compared to the fluid, and it doesn’t sustain her half as well. She hunted for food long before she turned into a bloodsucker, though, and now she’s the kind of predator that other carnivores can only dream of imitating. Hunting is a breeze, and she no longer has to bother with cooking.

Still, she doesn’t eat—or drink, rather—in front of Bonnibel. She just…doesn’t.

Some things shouldn’t be observed, even by a scientist.

But this new life, or whatever it is of Marceline’s, acquires much the same rhythm as the old. Sometimes, she almost forgets she’s a vampire until she notices that she’s hovering a few inches off the ground on absentminded instinct, or that she has a craving for strawberries that has nothing to do with flavor.

Bonnibel’s still there, though, right there beside her, and that’s all that really matters.

Sometimes, Marceline finds herself holding Bonnibel’s hand, just to preserve the illusion of her own lost body heat in her friend’s warmth.

And sometimes, she finds herself twining their fingers together, just because she can.

By autumn, they reach the coast. The ocean stretches out before them, seemingly infinite as it conquers the horizon, and the cities here seem less pillaged—still ruined by the apocalyptic might of the Mushroom Wars, but not as ransacked in the aftermath. They wander down pockmarked and desolate streets, scavenging supplies from shops, until Marceline sees one they’ve never found intact before: a music store.

“Oh, Bonni, we have to check this out!” she exclaims, all giddy enthusiasm, and she tugs on her friend’s arm.

The gum-girl raises her eyebrows, a little surprised by this excitement. Sure, she’s heard Marceline humming nonsense to herself and singing made-up songs to the moon, and sure, maybe she likes listening to her voice more than she really should, but somehow she’s never actually pegged the vampire as a musician.

She allows herself to be pulled into the dark, musty, cobweb-filled interior and glances around at the veritable forest of instruments decorating the walls and littering the floor. “Do you…know how to play any of these?” she asks. Stretching out a curious finger, she plucks the string of a rotting acoustic guitar; it only makes a dull thunk.

“Well, no, not know exactly,” Marceline says. In the shade of the shop, she’s busily stripping off her sun-gear until she’s just left in jeans and a t-shirt, and Bonnibel rolls her eyes inwardly at the latter garment. It’s such an ugly shirt, like the worst thing she’s ever seen, black and branded with some cartoonishly terrifying version of…she’s not quite sure—zombie marshmallows, maybe, spitted for their future as S’mores? But when the vampire found it shortly after her transformation, she was thrilled by the discovery.

Dude, this was like the best band ever, she confided. And this thing’s like in mint condition. Check it! And she tugged it on.

Of course, it fit perfectly. Fate and all that.

With the way Marceline’s floating to and fro now, unable to focus on anything in the grip of her exuberant glee, Bonnibel’s reminded of that day and of the fact that vampire or not, her friend is still reassuringly human. No monster would ever be this overjoyed by music, or a t-shirt.

Marceline’s speaking, though, and her voice drags the gum-girl back to the present with a bump.

“That’s why I’m gonna try every last lumping one until I find one that fits. You don’t mind, do ya, Bon? It’s not like we have anywhere to go, right?” And she glances pleadingly at her friend, fingers laced together in prayer, scarlet eyes full of blood and delight.

Bonnibel shrugs. “Why not? I’ve still got half of that chemistry textbook left.”

“Nerd,” Marceline teases, lips curved in a fond smirk, and she turns eagerly to her task.

The gum-girl opens the tome and invests herself in learning, listening with only half an ear to the vampire’s extremely thorough and often woefully out-of-tune exploration. She gets so lost in the wonders of thermodynamics and equilibrium that she doesn’t even notice when it becomes quiet again. She reads right through to the section’s end, and before she can begin the learning about the properties of gases, it occurs to her that she’s getting hungry, and only that prompts her to look up.

Marceline is reclined cross-legged on the window sill, surrounded by discarded instruments. Her eyes are shut, loosely so as if she’s only half-caught in a dream, and she cradles a red electric bass in her lap, vertically as if it were a cello with its neck extending up past her own. She isn’t really playing anything, just hugging it to her chest and plucking the lowest string over and over and over again, steady as a metronome.

Dunnn. Dunnn. Dunnn.

Quietly, as if she believes she’s witnessing a wizard casting a complex spell—not that she’d have half as much respect for that—Bonnibel approaches, her brow wrinkling in quizzical thought. “Marcy,” she whispers, hesitant to break the almost-silence but needing to satisfy her curiosity, “what’re you doing?”

The vampire doesn’t open her eyes or even reply right away. She just keeps plucking that string. “I want this one,” she finally replies, soft and sure.

Bonnibel considers the instrument politely. She’s picked up a thing or two, so she asks, “Are you certain? I think a regular guitar, as opposed to a bass guitar, would grant you more versatility.”

“No. This one,” Marceline repeats, instantaneous. “The bass…I need the bass. The vibrations of the sound…I can feel ’em in my chest, Bon.” She taps one of the prongs on the top of the guitar’s body, which is resting squarely on her sternum. “I haven’t felt anything in my chest in a long time, not since…” She trails off, her lids rising halfway, but her ember eyes are still shadowed by the lashes. Her voice scrapes, roughshod, in her throat as she concludes, “It’s like a heartbeat. It’s like having a heartbeat again.”

Empathy nearly overwhelms Bonnibel, and she’s forced to swallow before she can speak. “Then you should definitely get that one,” she agrees. “Don’t forget to stock up on extra strings and all. Who knows when we’ll find another place like this.”

“Yeah, good idea,” the vampire murmurs, still playing that lone note.

Bonnibel gazes at her for a long moment, sadness swirling in her lavender eyes. “You seem to be doing well,” she ventures at last. “With the whole vampire business.”

Marceline chuckles, low and dry. “Yeah, I’ve somehow come out on top, haven’t I? I mean, sure, I have to drink blood now, but I had to eat back in the day, and a balanced diet at that—now I don’t ever have to worry about getting scurvy again. Going feral, sure,” she concedes, “but that’s the only problem, and it has an easy solution. Just think of the positives, dude: I can fly, which is beyond mathematical; I’m super strong; I like never get tired; my teeth are even sharper; and I can heal from almost any injury in no time at all. Being allergic to sunlight is hardly worth complaining about.”

As Marceline mentions her healing ability, though, Bonnibel’s gaze is drawn to the two holes pierced in her neck, which still gape as raw as the day they were inflicted. “What about those?” she asks, nodding at her friend’s stigmata. “They’ve never gone away.”

She reaches up gingerly, just brushing across them with her fingertips, and winces. “I don’t think they’re ever going to.”

The gum-girl frowns at her friend’s reaction. “Do they still hurt, too?”

“Nothing awful,” Marceline dismisses in a show of bravado. She lowers her hand and tilts the bass in her lap, holding it now in the more established horizontal position. “I guess that’s a strike against vampirism. Oh, glob, is that three strikes? Then I’m out.” She grins, but it falters, and she turns her head to stare out the window, her gaze getting lost in some middle distance.

Before she knows what she’s doing, Bonnibel’s shifting closer, and her own fingers extend to trace the bloodless holes. Marceline flinches away, but it’s just reflex, and when she understands her friend’s intentions, she relaxes against the window frame once more, tacit permission.

Bonnibel touches the pale skin beside the marks, not wishing to cause the vampire pain, and all she can think is that the flesh is so smooth and that she wants to touch more of it. Her fingers ache with the desire; her cheeks burn with it; but Marceline has her eyes closed again and doesn’t notice. Maybe that’s what gives Bonnibel the courage, or maybe she’s more reckless than she ever believed, because she leans in and ever so carefully presses a kiss to the eternal wound.

Marceline stiffens beneath her touch, a more subtle reaction than her earlier one that is nevertheless infinitely more profound. A breath she habitually inhales catches in her throat.

Bonnibel still has the blood to pound in her ears, and it nearly deafens her as she draws back. “There,” she whispers, barely audible to either of them. “All better.”

The vampire is blushing, and it must be from the blood she consumed earlier, because otherwise the reaction wouldn’t be possible. But it is, it is, and heat and color she thought lost forever flow up her otherwise empty veins to settle in her cheeks.

Embarrassment is understandable, Bonnibel thinks within the haze of her own awkwardness. After all, she did just kiss her friend on the neck—not a place generally associated with platonic gestures. Which it was decidedly not, but if anyone asks, she’ll swear to that lie for all eternity.

Marceline at last musters a response, and it’s caught between a surprised hum and a strangled grunt. Her eyes, wide and even redder than her cheeks, are fixed on the gum-girl in…it’s hard to say. It might simply be shock. But then again, there might be something more than her usual banked fire burning in their depths.

“You can fix things with kisses, right?” Bonnibel remarks with a shaky laugh, several eons too belated to be a legitimate explanation.

Another indistinguishable sound escapes Marceline’s throat, and she blinks a few times in an effort to regain her composure. At length, she manages to unlock her jaw and woodenly reply, “So I’ve heard.”

The gum-girl dips her head, looks aside. “Ah, well, good. I hope it helps.” She makes to move away, but Marceline lashes out, viper-quick, and snags onto her wrist. She stares down at the pale gray fingers wrapped around her own pale pink flesh, as if daring them to disappear. When they don’t, she tentatively returns her gaze to the other girl’s.

Those changeable eyes, locked on hers, draw her in. She wonders briefly if it’s some sort of vampire hypnosis designed to attract prey, but she disregards that notion as ludicrous in the next second. She wanted Marceline long before she became a vampire. It’s a bit moot, as thought processes go.

“You asked me once,” Marceline says slowly, deliberately, “if demons were capable of love.”

“I did,” Bonnibel confirms, her voice little more than a breath. Oh, how she can’t look away.

“I’m not a demon anymore,” Marceline continues. “Bit of a downgrade, really, when it comes to my evil-factor, but…” She trails off, shakes her head. “That’s way beside the point. My point is—”

“—Are vampires capable of love?” Bonnibel finishes for her, the words slipping out as gracelessly as amateur skaters on ice.

The vampire in question studies her for another timeless moment, and the setting sun somewhere outside stains everything in molten orange. And it might just be a reflection, but Bonnibel can swear that the fire in Marceline’s eyes is real, and she can almost swear it’s burning just for her. She shivers at the thought, despite all the heat prickling her skin.

“Yes,” Marceline says, as low and rough as musical sandpaper. She tugs on her friend’s wrist, pulling her closer, and lifts her other hand to the back of her neck, pulling her closer still. “The answer is decidedly yes…”

She doesn’t need to breathe to live, but she needs to breathe to speak, and the air is cool and soft like twilight’s last caress as it drifts across Bonnibel’s lips. In the next moment, Bonnibel discovers that her lips are cool and soft, too, and that she tastes like the reddest autumn leaves and wood smoke and the promise of winter’s edge, something cold and dangerous and utterly thrilling lurking just a whisper out of sight. Sensations ride down her spine on an express train to the bottom of her belly, where they curl and twist and conspire to sap all the strength from her legs.

She stumbles forward, catching one hand heavily on the window sill and blindly planting the other on the wall beside Marceline’s head, and accidentally crushes their mouths together. The vampire makes a small sound, but whether that’s in protest or pleasure, Bonnibel can’t discern. But she does feel her grin a second later, and there’s a rasp of fangs against her lower lip.

“M-Marceline,” she gasps, a shuddering little breath.

“Yeah?” the vampire prompts languidly between searing kisses.

For the first time in her life, Bonnibel gives up on thinking. She just tangles her fingers in the collar of that ugly t-shirt, even though it’s no longer the worst thing she’s ever seen. Maybe it’s the best. Maybe she’ll never be able to see it again without swooning a little inside.

“Just do that again.” She means to make it a command, but it comes out rather closer to a plea.

The fire fairly dances in Marceline’s eyes, and she obligingly scrapes her teeth across once more.

(i’m bad behavior

but i do it in the best way)

Time passes.

So much time.

Centuries rise and ebb like tides in the sea of the gods, pulling the spinning, half-destroyed world along their undulating sine-wave path to infinity. Marceline and Bonnibel see all of it, or all that’s left of it: they climb to the peak of the highest mountain, cross the vastest sundering ocean, and even stand on the lip of utter ruin. There, they gaze down grimly at the subtle yet shocking transition of rocky crust to molten mantle all the way down to the starkly disconcerting glimpse of the planet’s sullen iron core, almost invisible behind the rising convection currents.

They find settlements occasionally, too, groups of survivors that have cobbled together rudimentary societies.

“It’s like watching history come full circle,” Bonnibel observes once after they’ve departed a village of friendly albeit seriously mutated crab-people along the waterfront. “We’re nomadic hunter-gatherers. Now other people are starting to experiment with agriculture and the concept of stationary communities. Fascinating.”

“Yup,” Marceline lilts in absentminded agreement, floating along on her back and picking out a new melody on her bass. “Totally math.”

“More like ‘totally anthropology’,” Bonnibel corrects, reaching up to tweak her girlfriend’s elbow.

“Bah, you keep your fancy schooling,” the vampire grumbles, rolling over and out of the other’s grasp, though she flickers a teasing tongue and lazily opens one eye in an inverted wink. “I’ll keep the sick jams.”

The gum-girl shakes her head, accustomed to these barbs; they’ve never been sharp, anyway. “Yeah, yeah, I’m a nerd and you’re a badass. Got anything new, Marcy?”

The vampire’s smirk acquires a particularly wicked slant. “I’m sure even after five hundred years I can come up with something new, babe,” she replies, all sultry taunt, and she waggles her eyebrows in a suggestive ripple. “Wanna bet? I know you wanna bet.”

Bonnibel snorts. “What makes you think I want to bet against that?” she wonders rhetorically, her own lopsided grin dimpling one cheek.

“So you’re willing to find out?” Marceline presses, licking a fang in a thoughtful fashion.

Her girlfriend catches onto her collar and pulls her around in mid-air, capturing her in a sudden and clumsy but far from unsatisfactory kiss. “Glob, would you just rock my world already?”

“Yes, princess,” the vampire agrees, her smile edged in razor-wire.

As it happens, even after five hundred years, Marceline can come up with something new.

Afterwards, as they’re lying in the grass—Bonnibel half in the sun and Marceline all in the shade—the former raises a tired question. “I wonder if there’s any way to accelerate social progress—you know, get things back to where they were before the Mushroom Wars.”

The vampire blinks up at the lush canopy above them, her saving grace from daylight’s wrath. And then she snickers, still tracing her fingers in idle swirls up Bonnibel’s bare arm. “Dude, is that seriously what you’re thinking about at this moment? Social progress? Really?”

She smacks her hand lightly on her girlfriend’s stomach. “Don’t mock me, Marcy,” she chides. “I wasn’t thinking about that during, for glob’s sake. Now that my blood’s back to circulating in my brain and my hearing’s returned—”

“I always consider it a bonus if I can deaden one of your senses,” the vampire interrupts in a fit of cocky triumph.

Bonnibel continues speaking as if Marceline hadn’t. “I think it would be beneficial to the world if we established…a role model. Display a higher-ordered society that everyone else can imitate and learn from. There’s still very little security, what with gangs and bandits and glob knows what else. We’re only safe because you’re mega-terrifying.”

“Thank you,” Marceline quips with a toothy grin—and with her particular pearly whites, that’s saying something.

“Indeed,” the gum-girl acknowledges. “But not everyone on earth can have a vampire bodyguard. So our next best alternative is structured society.”

The other girl shakes her head, grass catching in the ankle-length strands of her inky hair. “So, what, Bonni?” she poses with audible humor. “You wanna save the world?”

“No, not save,” Bonnibel corrects. “The world’s already been lost. But fix, perhaps. Not everything, and not everywhere, but maybe some things, here. Or somewhere else. But somewhere.”

Marceline wrinkles her brow and considers her girlfriend sidelong. “Who knew you were such a hero,” she remarks, but the humor is gone, replaced with a curiosity that shades towards suspicion.

“Oh, plop, no,” she dismisses. “I’m not a hero. I’m a scientist. I identify problems, and I provide solutions. It’s not altruistic, exactly, it’s…rational.”

The vampire sniggers, amused once more. “Real stirring speech, babe. You might wanna work on that before you accept your Nobel prize.”

Bonnibel rolls her eyes and sighs, “Oh, Marceline. As if there’s Nobel prizes anymore. But I would totally win one if there were, obvi,” she adds impishly.

Shrugging and disrupting Bonnibel’s comfortable repose on her shoulder, Marceline remarks, “Well, I’m all for, er, saving the world. I mean, why not. So how do you wanna go about this, eh? It sounds like it’s gonna be really lumping complicated.”

“First we have to research,” the gum-girl declares, all confidence. “We need to get back to that one library, the really ginormous one.”

“Dude,” Marceline protests in an elongated whine, “Oxford is like so freakin’ far away…”

Bonnibel sits up, brushing grass flecks from her skin, and reaches for her shirt. “Nevertheless,” she insists, and after wriggling into the garment, she leans down and plants a kiss on her girlfriend’s lips. “If you take me there, I’ll do to you what you just did to me.”

The vampire perks up, cautiously. “That sounds totally rad, babe, but does that mean I get rewarded now or in like three weeks? ’Cause, three weeks…that’s a long-ass time to wait. I’ll be, like, chafing by then.”

Bonnibel taps one of her fangs; it makes a faint ting. “You need to save your energy for flying.”

Marceline scowls. “You suck, man. You really, really suck. Like hardcore.”

The gum-girl casts her a fond, askance look. “So tonight, when we’re done traveling for the day and you don’t need to fly anymore, then I’ll reward you. Geez, if you would just let me finish talking…” She trails off, smiling close-lipped and not at all mysterious, and bursts out laughing when the vampire takes to the air so quickly that she nearly collides with the trees branches above them.

“What’re you freakin’ waiting for?” Marceline protests, yanking on her outfit for daylight travel—gloves and hat and sunglasses crammed crookedly in place. She darts out into the golden glow once she’s done, gathering up the rest of Bonnibel’s clothes and tossing them in her face. “Get dressed on the way! Nobody will see! C’mon! Places to go, babe, places to go!”

The library is subjected to so many cobwebs it almost looks like it has snowed indoors, and the windows, equally subjected to centuries of grime, only let a fraction of the sunlight inside. That’s just as well for Marceline, and Bonnibel very carefully navigates with a glassed-in lantern, her feet kicking up thick, choking clouds of dust.

They’ve been to every library in the world before now, and they have an established routine. While Bonnibel hems herself in on all sides with teetering towers of tomes, Marceline wanders in and out, hunting for her own meals and scavenging supplies for her girlfriend’s. In her free time, she floats along the stacks, sometimes perusing the volumes for her own pleasure or fetching something new for Bonnibel, but mostly she finds a comfortable perch up in the ceiling’s arches and strums out song after song on her bass.

It’s a symbiotic relationship. They’re both remarkably independent, for being so reliant on each other.

Weeks pass, filled with long dusty days and short dusty nights, and sometimes, Bonnibel shares her new knowledge and fledgling theories with her girlfriend, who listens politely as she hugs her bass. But by and large, the gum-girl keeps her thoughts to herself, and Marceline’s unbothered by that. If something truly important comes up, Bonnibel will let her know, and there’s no point pushing for answers before then.

Eventually, though, the vampire observes that the genre of the books has changed. No longer are they concerned with history or philosophy or even science; now they venture into more mystical realms, flirting with the bounds of sorcery and magic, whispering promises of power and dominion.

Marceline hovers near one of the more recent stacks, nudging aside a treatise on Marxism and idly thumbing through the biography of someone named Machiavelli, who doesn’t seem like the nicest sort. “What’s up with all this junk, Bon?” she wonders, one fang snaking out to balance her rising eyebrow.

The gum-girl doesn’t look up from the ancient, yellowed pages of her latest interest. “Mm, oh, that stuff…that’s just different theories on government, really. I need to examine every alternative so that I can create the most efficient hybrid. I’ve been over it all, though. I think I’ve got a handle on what’ll work best.”

The vampire nods as if she really understands. “Radical, babe,” she remarks, and she floats closer to her girlfriend, glancing down over one pink shoulder. “And…what’s this? I mean, if you’ve filled up your thinking cap, then shouldn’t we make tracks? Start building…whatever we’re gonna build?”

“The model kingdom,” Bonnibel provides with a hum and a nod. “Yes. But you can’t have a kingdom without subjects.”

Marceline’s lips pull to one side, and she peers closer at the page—it’s written in a foreign tongue, though, and no amount of scrutiny will force it to yield its secrets to her. Somehow, that makes her feel uneasy, as if Bonnibel’s hiding things from her, as if she’s reading different languages on nefarious purpose. She shakes her head and tries to shake the feeling with it, but it won’t quite budge.

“Er, well,” she begins, slow and confused, “aren’t we going with the whole, if you build it, they will come notion?”

“Oh, glob, that’s optimistic,” Bonnibel dismisses, her eyes tracing the strange script. “And mega-naïve. You can’t just build a castle and expect the right people to show up.”

Everything unsettled in her belly sloshes a bit more, and Marceline swallows. “The right people?” she echoes, even though she hardly wants to hear the answer.

“Yeah,” the gum-girl absently confirms. “Our model kingdom should be easily imitable, so that others can construct replicas of it without needing to acquire all the knowledge that went into devising it in the first place. Everything has to go according to plan, then, and so we’ll create the subjects—subjects that will perfectly match the kingdom.”

The vampire half-expects those words to echo in the library’s dusty air, they’re so ominous. She has no idea how to respond to that, so she just hovers there, struck dumb with this swelling dread.

“I’ll need more than just science to do so, at least initially,” Bonnibel continues, oblivious of her girlfriend’s reticence. “I think I’ve discovered the answer, though. Many of these books reference Stones of Power, which seem to be collected in one special book called the Enchiridion. If we find the Enchiridion, then we’ll have everything we need.”

With effort, Marceline pries her teeth apart. “And where’s this En-ky-whatsamajigger?” she asks, and it’s so, so hard to keep her usual nonchalance tacked onto her tone.

Bonnibel flips through the thin parchment pages until she reveals the inked contours of a map. She points at it, all the explanation required.

“Oh,” Marceline whispers. “X marks the spot.”

There isn’t an X, but buried deep beneath the ruin of a temple, condemned to millennia-long sleep in the cradle of a catacomb, there is the Enchiridion.

Marceline’s skin has been crawling ever since Bonnibel set them on this quest, and now that the moment is here, she just wants to vomit—an urge she hasn’t had since she used to use her stomach. The book reeks of power, giving off waves of it that entice Marceline’s half-demon soul to sit up like a dog and beg, because it reeks of evil, too, and so strongly that even she wants to make it her master.

Even she, daughter of Evil Incarnate, wants to submit to its thrall.

“What is this?” she asks hoarsely, one hand raised as if she expects it to shine sunlight at her.

“Technically, it’s a hero’s handbook,” Bonnibel explains, blowing the thick coating of dust off its leather cover. “I believe it was designed as such as a safeguard. Only someone pure of heart could claim the book, so only someone pure of heart could claim the Stones.”

And are you? Marceline wants to ask but doesn’t dare. Pure of heart?

Head cocked to the side, Bonnibel studies the book for a long moment in the flickering light of their lantern, and then she reaches out with steady fingers and twists the sword emblazoned on the cover. To the vampire’s surprise, the sword spins like the hands on a clock, and a compartment in the cover cracks open, revealing glittering gemstones, arranged in a circle.

Three of them are already missing.

“Oh, plop,” the gum-girl laments, her brow furrowing. “That’s a bit disappointing. It’ll be okay, though; I shouldn’t think we need quite that much power. Besides, if we do,” she adds, and she digs into the stone sarcophagus that held the book and withdraws something gleaming on a chain, “we have this amulet. Pretty math, eh?”

Marceline swallows, something in her instincts—her demon instincts, again, not her vampire ones—recognizing the shape of this magic. “I dunno, Bon,” she whispers. “Amulets of power are…” She trails off, trying to find the words. But for all the skill she has for penning lyrics, she can’t fathom a way to subvert this doom with mere diction.

“Powerful, I bet,” Bonnibel finishes for her, sounding freakishly unconcerned, and she loops its golden chain around her neck without so much as a flicker of doubt.

“What’re you doing?” Marceline shrieks, and she snags at the chain. “Take it off, Bonni, take it off now!”

The gum-girl recoils, batting the vampire away with one hand and pressing the amulet’s pendant snug to her chest with her other. “Fudge, Marcy, what’s gotten into you?”

“Do you know what this thing does?” the vampire protests, swiping at it again—ineffectually, again. Bonnibel’s stronger and faster than she should be, for being a hodgepodge of sugar and gum. “Do you even know what you’re taking on? What if it’d blown your head off?”

The other girl eyes her with irritation and just a pinch of pity. “Except it didn’t, Marceline. It’s harmless.”

“Harmless?” the vampire echoes, not believing that for a second, and she glares darkly at the amulet. She wants to sink her fangs into it, bite it hard and drain its poison.

Bonnibel stares at her, lavender eyes dark in the catacomb’s shadows and flickering in the lantern’s light, and she shuts the Enchiridion’s compartment and hugs the book to her chest as well, caging it in with her arms. “What the plop’s gotten into you?” she repeats, her voice hard-edged.

Marceline’s jaw works soundlessly for several iterations, incredulity jostling in the queue of other emotions. Eventually, she finds it easiest just to ignore the question and pose her own. “This kingdom,” she says with difficulty. “What’s it gonna be like? Who’s gonna be king, eh?”

“There won’t be a king,” Bonnibel sniffs. “It will be a monarchy, though. All simple societies start with a single sovereign leader. Lawmaking is easier that way, as is enforcement. It will also be easier for other groups to imitate the structure—they’ll only need one really capable person to begin.”

Marceline’s shaking. Dear glob, she thinks, I’m actually shaking. “So, what, Bon? You’re appointing yourself queen?”

Bonnibel looks away. “I was thinking princess, actually.” Her lips curl, the ghost of smile. “Princess Bubblegum, even.”

“That’s sick,” the vampire spits, automatic and dead-certain. “Mega-sick, and not in a good way.”

“I don’t mean it in poor taste,” Bonnibel denies. “It just seems like a good title for the ruler of a candy kingdom.”

“A candy—?” Marceline echoes, and she coughs up a peal of acrimonious laughter. “Blood and hellfire, Bonnibel, what’re you planning to do? Bake your subjects in your own image?”

To her horror, Bonnibel simply shrugs. “More or less, yes.”

“You can’t do that!” the vampire shouts, the sheer volume knocking down dust from the ancient stone ceiling. “You can’t make people and then—then have them do your bidding! You’re not a god!”

“I know that,” she snaps. “I also know that if you’re not going to help me, then get out of my way.”

“Bonni…” Marceline staggers back a step, as if those words were a physical blow. “Y-You can’t be serious. Not after all I’ve done for you!” And she taps two fingers to her bitemarks.

Bonnibel shakes her head. “I didn’t ask you to do that,” she says, quiet and steady and so eerily, eerily calm. “I’m grateful, obviously, for your sacrifice, but the fact remains that it was your sacrifice. I don’t hold with the old-fashioned notions of life-debts, so I can do what I please with the life that you saved. And what I want is to craft a kingdom. My kingdom.”

With a hollow, fracturing laugh, the vampire shakes her head as well. “Oh, Bonnibel…is this really all about power? Because I thought if either of us was gonna go crazy, it was gonna be me! Because of this!” She strikes her stigmata again. “I’ve been terrified for centuries that I was gonna snap and do something horrible. But in the end, geez, it’s you, Bonni! You’re the one who’s gone completely whack! I never thought it would be you. I mean, come on—I’m heiress of the freakin’ Nightosphere and a vampire to boot, and you’re literally made of sugar! And probably spice and everything nice and you’re freakin’ pink and yet somehow your heart’s colder than Simon’s! At least he was possessed by evil magic! You’re choosing all of this with your eyes wide open! It’s sick!”

Bonnibel’s hands tighten on the Enchiridion, and it is true: there is more ice in her eyes than there ever was in the old man’s. “I already told you,” she says, biting off each syllable with scientific precision, “that if you don’t like it, you can leave.”

The dead tissue of Marceline’s dead, dead heart cringes in its bony prison in her chest, and tears spring to her eyes, tears filled with burning salt that Bonnibel’s have never contained. “And go where?” she demands hoarsely, even though her arms are spread in something much more like a plea.

The self-proclaimed monarch turns away. “Wherever you like. You have the entire world to choose from.”

Marceline sags, every last vestige of strength drained from her body as surely as that vampire had once drained her blood. She sways in the weak breeze that worms through the catacombs, as if it truly has the power to topple her. “That’s it?” she whispers.

Bonnibel doesn’t look back. In fact, she begins striding away, taking her amulet and her book and her light with her. “That’s it.”

The words echo in Marceline’s ears.

They never quite fade.

(i try to picture me without you but i can’t)

Centuries pass, but this time, oh, they pass so slowly.

After some deliberation—and some tears, so many tears, entire storms and rivers and oceans, and she doesn’t know how she can shed them when she never drinks any water, but even so, she can’t make them stop—Marceline surrenders to fate or destiny or whatever it is and retreats from the world entirely, seeking refuge in the Nightosphere.

Home sweet home, she thinks. Nothing like fire and brimstone to warm the cockles of my unbeating heart.

The Nightosphere is chaos, unrelenting and raw, but it seems like the most benign of tumors when Marceline considers the sterile, calculating order that Bonnibel is imposing on the world above. She tries not to think of it, though—it’s impossible not to, or not to think of her, but at least she tries. She lives in her father’s house and watches as he presides with cruelty and stark, raving madness and recalls that absolute power corrupts absolutely and how’s that going for you, Bonnibel?

She samples some souls, but she doesn’t really like the taste. It doesn’t hold a candle to blood. (It certainly doesn’t hold a candle to Bonnibel.) There’s plenty of red here, though; the place is madly decorated with it; and even if she used her whole eternity to drain each morsel gray, she’d still never drink it all.

She joins a ghost gang. They’re petty and stupid and mean, and Marceline finds herself hoping they’ll corrupt her, that this whole place will corrupt her. Maybe if she rusts and rots, maybe then she’ll be able to go back to Bonnibel and look her in the eye and not cringe at that cold, cold clarity she sees there.

She writes a lot of angry songs. She writes a lot of sad songs. She writes songs for her, too, with words that plead and beg and forgive and condemn and forgive again, but she burns the papers where she scrawled the lyrics. Sometimes she records them just so that she can tear the cassette tapes to shreds, just so she can watch it all fall apart.

It’s lonely. She forgets things, things she ought to remember.

Then her father eats her fries, and that’s the last lumping straw.

The world outside the Nightosphere is foreign to her now, and she hisses in pain as the sun scalds her flesh, forcing her to retreat into the shadow of an overhanging cliff. Oh, yes, she vaguely recalls, that happens here.

This time around, she simply adapts to being nocturnal. There’s no one else’s comfort to consider.

She doesn’t know where to look first, so she just flies around, refamiliarizing herself with the geography. It hasn’t had a chance to change, not in a meager three hundred years, but there do seem to be more cities than she remembered. Not cities like there were in antebellum ages, towering spires of metal and glass, but cities out of antiquity, castles and fortresses of stone.

Not all of them are made out of stone, though.

One of them seems to be made out of incredibly stale cake.

Marceline floats down towards it in the darkness, and with her bird’s eye view, she perceives that this is the center of it all. The other castles, the other cities ring it like planets, each on their own orbiting arc, each revolving around this sun. Landing in front of the castle door, she knocks—she’s not a heathen, after all.

When someone answers, she almost cracks up laughing. It’s a banana. It’s alive. It has a spear.

“Who dares come to Princess Bubblegum’s door at this hour?” it demands gruffly, dark little eyes glaring at her.

Shit, I can’t believe she went with that title. But that’s an inward thought only, and outwardly, she considers for a moment and then flashes her fangs. “Tell Princess Bubblegum that Marceline the Vampire Queen wants to see her ASAP.”

The banana guard’s eyebrows rocket skyward. “Q-Queen?” it echoes. “Oh! Oh! Your Majesty! Forgive my rudeness! I shall fetch Her Highness immediately. Come in, come in!” It backs up, bowing over and over again, until she’s standing in the entrance hall, and it skedaddles across the cavernous room and waddles awkwardly up a flight of stairs at the far end. Left to her own devices, Marceline glances around. The whole place is pink: pink and made of sugar. It’s disgusting, and she wrinkles her nose and hawks a contemptuous loogie on the floor. The saliva melts into the saccharine tile, and she smirks, dark and humorless.

She’s only been waiting for ten seconds total when she gets bored. Lounging on her back in mid-air, she swivels her bass around and plucks out unconscious melodies as she wonders, for the first time, what the plop she’s doing here. What does she really expect to happen? What does she want to happen?

She doesn’t figure it out before Bonnibel arrives.

The princess pauses but once when she catches sight of the vampire, and then she glides across the hall, graceful as ever and seemingly pinker. But that might just be the surroundings, or because she seems to have acquired quite the penchant for purple, which only accentuates her coloring.

Marceline doesn’t notice much of these details, though. Her attention is fixed only on the golden crown.

“Why is it always crowns?” she laments under her breath. She slings her bass onto her back again and comes to rest on the floor and nods as cordially as she can manage. “Bonnibel.”

“Marceline,” the princess replies in kind, and one of her eyebrows arches. “You’re a queen now? Or so I’m told.”

The vampire smirks, all teeth and no heart. “I didn’t want you to think you could give me orders, Princess.”

“You wouldn’t listen in any case,” Bonnibel dismisses. She folds her arms on her chest.

Marceline hums inattentive agreement, and she can’t bite this bitterness back: “Nice crown, babe. Did it come with the title?”

Lavender eyes narrow. “In a manner of speaking,” she allows, ignoring the reference to Simon, to his descent into rotten madness. A pause, and then, “Did you simply come here to harangue me?”

“That depends.” The vampire cracks her knuckles, glacier-slow. “Does that mean I get to rip you a new one?”

“Crude but accurate,” Bonnibel concedes, and she shakes her head, her gaze falling away. She does not attempt to speak again, leaving the ball in the other girl’s court.

Marceline pushes off the floor, hovering about eight inches up, and circles the monarch like a buzzard weighing the chances of dinner. “A nice Franken-nana answered the door,” she snarks at length. “That’s pretty jacked up, Princess—giving life to fruit. Giving life to anything and then making it serve you. Pretty freaking jacked up. I s’pose I should be thankful that you didn’t cross the line of calling yourself Goddess Bubblegum and making them worship you, but it’s a small blessing. Practically a pittance.”

Bonnibel’s jaw tightens, but that is all.

“I don’t see your precious amulet,” Marceline continues, lashing out again, her tongue a whip, her fangs knives.

She sighs. “I lost it, quite a while ago.”

“Is that so,” the vampire murmurs, and her eyes sweep back to the crown. “Seems you didn’t lose the Stones of Power. You’re wearing that one pretty proudly.”

Bonnibel lifts an absentminded hand to caress the opalescent stone. “I retained this one, yes,” she admits. “The others I distributed amongst the kingdoms.”

“Mighty gifts from their benevolent ruler,” Marceline sneers. “What did they do to win your favor, eh?”

Unspoken, but glaringly loud: What could I have done to do the same?

The princess swallows but maintains level speech. “They established orderly, fair, and just communities. Thusly they were entrusted to guard a portion of the Enchiridion’s power.” She pauses again, almost as long this time, but Marceline has nothing more to say, so Bonnibel picks up the thread of the conversation by herself. “Speaking of…I’m actually glad you’ve come.”

“Oh?” the vampire challenges, but it comes out too raw to truly be a taunt.

She dips her head. “I would ask you a favor.”

Marceline barks a laugh, and it’s thin and full of tears. In contrast to that response, and to Bonnibel’s surprise, she permits, “Ask away, Princess.”

The monarch beckons the vampire to follow, and with a half-suspicious frown, Marceline floats after her. They ascend staircase after staircase until they reach the highest room in the tallest tower, where princesses are always required to live. When she realizes where they are, the vampire summons another scathing laugh, but again, it doesn’t come out quite as harsh as she wants it to.

“Wow, Bonni. Don’t you think it’s a bit presumptuous, asking me for a favor and then showing me to your bedroom?”

The other girl just slants her a look, otherwise not deigning to rise to that. She heads to her closet, instead, and shoves some of the boxes and dresses aside. Marceline ventures over, curiosity getting the better of her, and frowns as something catches her eye.

“Hey,” she says, reaching out for the sleeve of a black t-shirt. “Isn’t this mine?”

“What? Oh,” Bonnibel realizes, straightening from her crouch. “Yes. I…think you must’ve stowed it in my pack by mistake back…well, back then. Yes. Er.” She stares at the garment for a long, ticking moment, and then she returns to her rummaging. “You can take it, if you want,” she offers, muffled.

The black cotton is thin and almost slick between the vampire’s fingers, but cotton lasts practically forever if it’s not exposed to direct sunlight, and Marceline has always been careful to avoid just such a circumstance. She’s also always been careful to keep her own clothes in her own pack; she and Bonnibel have never exactly had the same taste when it comes to fashion.

Marceline’s throat thickens, just a sliver. “Nah, I haven’t missed it.” But you’ve missed me, she adds in the astonished silence in her head. Maybe you’re not a lost cause, after all.

“Oh, well, if that’s fine with you. I guess I have enough room in here to store it,” Bonnibel says, still with deliberate evasion in her voice, and then there’s the heavy metallic sound of a lock slipping free, of bolts sliding back. “Come on,” she adds, and she steps into the thick press of the hanging dresses.

Marceline steps closer guardedly. “Dude, where’re we going? Narnia?”

The princess laughs, and now Marceline’s throat does swell shut—it’s been so long since she heard her laugh. It’s beautiful. Musical, almost, light and bubbly. Like sugar. “Glob, no. We’re just going to my strongroom.”

“You have a…strongroom…” The vampire trails off, her mouth slipping open as she stares. Calling this place a strongroom is an understatement—it looks like the most fortified chamber in the whole world. “What’s this lumpin’ placemade out of?” she asks, brushing fingertips across a wall.

“The hardest substance known to candykind,” Bonnibel replies, and a grin flits across her face. “Jawbreakers.”

Marceline whistles appreciatively and tucks her hands into her pockets. Bonnibel is standing near the plinth in the room’s center, and she floats over. “What’s in the box?” she wonders, nodding at it.

In response, the princess pulls a key from around her neck and unlocks it. There’s a click and a rush of steam, and when that clears, there’s the Enchiridion.

Their last meeting playing sharp across her mind’s eye, Marceline wills her hands to unclench. “Why’re you showing me this?” she asks, low and hollow.

Bonnibel hefts the book from its resting place, her fingers tapping arrhythmically on the leather cover. “With the Stones of Power distributed, this…well, I have no reason to have it,” she decides at last. “It’s a handbook for heroes, and I’m not a hero.”

“Neither am I,” Marceline reminds her, ember eyes gleaming crimson with the blood of the creature she killed and drained earlier that night.

For a moment, the vampire swears that the princess is going to fight her on that one, but Bonnibel lets it pass. “You can fly, though. I’ve located a place to keep it safe, a place only a true hero can reach. You’ll be able to deliver it there with ease. The trials aren’t as insurmountable when you’re airborne and undead.”

She tugs at the strap of her bass, a nervous tic of a motion. “You’re not making much sense, Bonni. Geez, look around you—this place is a freakin’ fortress. Why d’ya wanna move it somewhere else?”

Bonnibel shrugs. “It doesn’t require a pure heart or heroic courage to get at the Enchiridion here. All it takes is the key.”

Marceline has to give her that. “And that’s no test for a savior,” she realizes. “Just a test for a really radical burglar.”

“Exactly,” the princess concurs. She proffers the book, heavy beyond its physical shell. “Will you take it there?”

“If you riddle me this,” the vampire replies, not yet accepting the tome. “What’re you expecting to happen, eh? You’re setting this up so you can judge someone competent enough to save you. So what danger do you imagine you’ll need to be saved from?”

There’s a terrible weight in Bonnibel’s eyes, too, even more so than that which burdens the Enchiridion.

“Would you believe me,” she whispers, “if I say myself?”

The only blood in Marceline’s veins is stolen and sluggish and cool, but that statement nevertheless serves to make it run cold.

Marceline takes the Enchiridion to the appointed place, skimming through the clouds over the trials below and placing it in the hands of its new guardians. She doesn’t return to the Candy Kingdom afterwards, choosing instead to wander the new, somewhat more civilized countryside of Ooo.

(“Why’s it called that? Ooo? It’s a lump of a name,” she asked Bonnibel before departing.

The princess exhaled an awkward laugh and scratched the side of her head. “Er, well, when I’d first built the kingdom, everyone who came by was so impressed by it that…well, the first words out of their mouths were, ‘This place is…Ooo!’, so, as a joke…”

“You named a country after a joke?” Marceline cackled. “Dude, I knew I loved you for a reason!”

That had killed the atmosphere pretty quick.)

That’s not why she doesn’t return, though. She doesn’t return because she couldn’t save Simon from his crown—she was just a scrawny teenaged half-demon, not a hero. Now, she’s a powerful eternally-eighteen vampire, but even so…

She can’t save Bonnibel from her crown, either.

(i’m still comparing my past to your future

it might be your wound but they’re my sutures)

All across Ooo, Marceline claims or constructs or carves out houses. She acquires dozens, in convenient places, in whimsical places, forever searching for a home that she knows is only present in the heart of a princess made of bubblegum.

She does whatever she wants, whenever she wants to do it. She even gets a terrible boyfriend who treats her awfully because sometimes, when he smiles at her, there’s a hint of Bonnibel in the curve. Eventually, though, she kicks him out, because a dash of remembrance isn’t worth putting up with his crap and she’s nine hundred years old, for glob’s sake. She’s finally outgrown fairy tales.

She’s not a knight, so she doesn’t get the princess. That’s the long and short of it. She might as well stop pretending.

(She still doesn’t have a home.)

Bonnibel labors ever for stability and progress, fashioning experiments in her lab and crafting order and prosperity outside it. She champions the rule of law, the rule of justice and decency, and in Ooo before anywhere else in the world, there is a glimmer of hope for the future.

Such hope is a little forced, a little false, since she had to create the population by herself, but there has never been any hope that could survive unsupported by sheer willpower. And there has never been any progress that rests on a foundation untainted with sin.

The world doesn’t work that way. And Bonnibel is shrewd enough to understand that, and cold enough to carry it out.

Princess Bubblegum has a line of suitors (because, let’s be real, they’re not there to court Bonnibel herself) that she never even begins to consider. She hasn’t thought about dying since that vampire ripped her leg off centuries earlier, and sees no reason to provide an heir to her throne, especially in such an uncouth way. But she glances at them sometimes, the poor candy fools, and each time she does, she experiences a little pang. Marceline’s never lounging there with her razor teeth and her red eyes and her raven-wing hair, ready and willing to sweep her off her feet and take her away from all this…gravity.

Marceline’s never there at all, except in the shirt she let Bonnibel keep.

In the beginning, the princess only takes it out sometimes, caressing the ancient fabric and remembering that first heady rush of Marceline’s lips on hers. She presses the cotton to her face and breathes in, deeper than deep, as if there’s really a scent left there after so many hundreds of years. There isn’t, of course, but the memories remain, twisted and tangled in the threads, inextricable as barbed wire in her heart.

As the years drag by and her crown grows heavier, she takes it out more and more often until she starts to wear it to bed. It protects her in her sleep, wrapping her in memories of happier times, of freer days. It adheres to her skin like armor, and maybe it’s more of a talisman than she thought, because the alluring whispers of the Stone of Power fall on deafer ears.

When it gets really bad, she wears it beneath her clothes in the daytime, too.

It keeps her mind sane, but it wears her heart so, so thin.

A message arrives at Marceline’s treefort during late summer when the dusk lingers thick on the western horizon in the most glorious, sullen shade of gold. She lazily pokes open the window with her foot, letting the carrier bird flap inside, and when it drops the envelope in her lap, she arches a curious eyebrow.

The bird pecks at her shoulder as she turns the letter over and recognizes the seal of the Candy Kingdom. With a frown trickling across her face, she absently sinks a fang into the scarlet wax and dissolves the seal, flicking open the paper a second later.

There’s not much of a message. Come to the castle, it reads. Very important.

It’s not even signed, but that doesn’t matter. Marceline’s been reading Bonnibel’s handwriting for almost a thousand years. It’s not as if she can mistake it.

For a moment, she’s caught at a crossroads. The flinching pressure in her hand wants to crumple the note, and the flinching pressure in her dead heart wants to preserve it behind glass and a frame.

In the end, she scowls and shoves it in a drawer and spitefully takes her time, waiting for full night to descend before nudging open the window again and following the bird’s invisible path through the skies above Ooo. The countryside below is dark except for the occasional flicker and flare of firelight, but Marceline pays it little heed; her attention is fixed on the growing silhouette of Bonnibel’s castle, pockmarked like the rolling hills with bursts of light.

Skipping all façade of manners, the vampire floats through one of the princess’s bedroom windows, sprawled on her back with her fingers laced behind her head. She’s irritated to be summoned like this—she’s irritated that she still canbe summoned like this, that she can’t possibly refuse to come when Bonnibel calls—and she is sure to let that emotion leak into her voice.

“What doth you desire, O Great and Chewy One? What could be so lumping important that you’ve deigned to break a century of silence?” she sneers, her eyes stubbornly, disrespectfully shut.

She opens them, though, when Bonnibel replies.

“Marceline,” she says, and her own voice is small. Very small.

The vampire peers at her, her irritation ebbing in the face of vaguely annoyed confusion and more than a modicum of concern. The princess is just standing in the center of her bedchamber, looking as small as she sounds. “What?” Marceline barks, harsher than she intends, but her nerves are starting to fray.

Bonnibel winces, though it’s not clear if her pain derives from Marceline’s tone or something else entirely. Either way, she approaches the vampire and, to her scalding surprise, takes hold of her hand. “There’s something you need to know. It would be easiest just to show you.” She wavers, gnawing on her lip. “It would also be fastest if you flew us there.”

The other girl stares at her for a calculating moment, and then she exhales a sigh through her nose and hefts Bonnibel into her arms, the motion as effortless as it ever was. “Point the way, Princess,” she says, soft and somehow tired.

Bonnibel does, sweeping an arm out like a compass needle, and together, they venture into the night; the moonlight ripples iridescence across Marceline’s hair, and Bonnibel’s body leaks warmth into the vampire’s cold, empty chest. Neither of them tries to breathe too deeply, because Marceline smells like everything her shirt no longer holds—the tang of metal from her bass strings, the crispness of fallen leaves, the cloying salty rasp of blood—and Bonnibel smells less like sugarcubes and more like purest syrup, something startlingly clear and only halfway sweet.

It’s easy for the vampire not to breathe, but the princess has less of a choice. She has to keep loosening her hands from their nostalgic death-grip in the other girl’s tank top as the scent and the memories nearly overpower her.

Marceline doesn’t need Bonnibel’s indicating finger to realize they’ve reached their destination; she started descending towards the snow as soon as she saw the white gleaming in the summer night. She lands lightly on the edge of it, not certain if she should set the princess down or not. As she hesitates, though, Bonnibel lowers herself and slides a pace away, seeking the return of her compromised composure.

The vampire tries not to be offended by that distancing, telling herself it doesn’t matter anyway, and valiantly refocuses. “So,” she remarks. “Snow in summer.”

There’s not really a question in her voice, but Bonnibel nevertheless provides an answer. “Yes. Simon has come to Ooo.” She pauses, glancing at her former friend to determine her reaction.

Marceline just stands there, though, stands there and stares across the unnatural ice. She seems stiff, her jaw tighter and her shoulders straighter than usual, and she bows her head in something like an acknowledging nod.

Bonnibel swallows. “He calls himself Ice King now. From what my reports have gathered, he doesn’t remember the past at all. Not you, not me, not himself.”

The vampire digs a small divot in the snow with the toe of her boot. “Reports, huh,” she murmurs, staring into the frozen blue shadow by her foot. “You’re spying on him?” Before Bonnibel can defend herself, Marceline shakes her head. “No, I get it,” she dismisses. “I would, too, if I were you. You have more reason to be cautious of him than anyone.” Her lips pull taut, causing the points of her fangs to flash in the starlight. “What’re you gonna do?”

“Nothing,” Bonnibel replies, and Marceline looks at her so sharply her neck cracks. “Seriously,” the princess insists. “His crown may have deranged him, but I can’t imprison a man who’s already imprisoned in his own head. That would just be cruel.”

A spiderweb of hairline fractures spread across the vampire’s countenance, giving the impression that the slightest touch will shatter her completely. “So what’re you gonna do?” she echoes, as hoarse as an asthmatic in a cigar club. “Just leave him to his own devices?”

She nods. “Unless he proves himself a deadly threat, I see no reason to act. I certainly see no reason to act preemptively.”

Marceline is unwilling to let this lie, though, and she picks at it masochistically. “But before…I mean, shit, Bonni, he tried to—”

“Yes, he did,” the princess interrupts, some of her own ice creeping across her words. “You don’t have to remind me. I haven’t forgotten. But.” She shifts her weight, braces her arms on her chest. “That was almost a thousand years ago. Not that there’s a statute of limitations on that crime, but…well, I have guards now. And walls. I’ll be safe.”

The vampire looks away. “Yeah. Safer than when all you had was me.”

“That’s not what I—”

Marceline holds up a hand, and Bonnibel submits to that. “It’s fine,” she whispers. “It’s true.”

No, it’s not, the princess almost blurts, but she catches the words halfway up her throat and tucks them back away. Instead, she remarks, “My reports also seem to indicate that in his advanced senility, he has in fact become ratherless of a threat. I think, perhaps, he is truly harmless once more. Potentially annoying, but harmless. Like…like allergies.”

The vampire bobs her head, over and over and over again, as if it’s loose on her neck. “Okay,” she breathes, and at last, she looks up, sweeping her gaze across the wind-sculpted snow drifts. “Maybe I’ll drop in on him one day.” Her eyes flicker to Bonnibel’s, and there’s a warmth in their depths that has nothing to do with bloodfire. “See if he wants to share some chicken soup.”

The princess almost tears up at that, almost flings her arms around Marceline’s neck and sobs every last truth into her collar. Like I miss you and I still love you and I’m so damn sorry that I hurt you and You’re so much better than I deserve, don’t you see, that’s why I can’t have you. She almost says it all.

But only almost.

“I’m sure he’d like that,” she declares, bright and brittle, and she sniffs—just from the cold, just from the cold. “We should be getting back, though.”

Marceline nods, still so preoccupied, and gently scoops her up again.

This time, Bonnibel doesn’t play at pretenses. She snarls her fingers in the shirt and tilts her face into the vampire’s chest, making sure each breath is thickly infused with her scent and pretending that the wind whipping in her ears is a heartbeat.

If Marceline notices, she doesn’t say a thing.

One day, a human boy comes to the Candy Kingdom, and he’s noble and brave and pure of heart. Bonnibel recognizes this, much as she is initially loathe to, and she dangles the Enchiridion in front of him. He claims it like a hero, and he does Ooo proud. He’ll do her proud, too, eventually—and not just because he’ll do anything to make her proud, but because her heart’s not quite as hard as it seems. Not anymore.

She never tells him, though, that she’s always a little bit disappointed that he’s not Marceline.

She really, really thought that, in the end, her hero would be Marceline.

(i am the sand in the bottom half of the hourglass)

The thing about mortals is that they die.

Finn lives a long and rich life. His deeds are the stuff of legend, his victories guaranteed to earn him a seat of honor amongst the gods—or so the tales promise. But in the end, he succumbs to the ravages of time, that temporal storm that has never done more than brush fruitlessly at Marceline and Bonnibel, and Ooo loses its greatest hero.

They bury him as he requested: rocketing him upwards into the stars with his collection of swords and his silly, now-threadbare hat and the bones of his faithful canine companion—Jake had passed decades earlier—so that he could have one last grand adventure, sailing eternal across the cosmos.

Afterwards, Marceline burns the treefort to the ground. She can’t imagine ever living there again; it hasn’t been her house in decades, and it was Finn’s home like it never was hers. She respects that. She lets it die with him.

Bonnibel sits with her while it burns, and they watch as it chars itself to ash, as the beams pop and split, as the fire gutters and spikes. Somewhere in the middle, when the smoke is beginning to irritate their eyes, Marceline takes up her bass and composes their friend a tribute, the kind of epic poem that exalted the heroes of old. Tears flow freely down her pale gray cheeks before she makes it through the first verse, and Bonnibel is already crying the moment Marceline picks up the instrument, before she even strikes the opening chord.

The only thing they save from the pyre is the Enchiridion, but it wasn’t really Finn’s. He was just its caretaker for a while, even if it can never hope to have a better one.

When the first light of dawn sees the last wisps of smoke dancing away on the breeze, Marceline shifts her bass onto her back. Her fingertips are bleeding stolen blood from the long, mournful hours of quiet song, but she seems unaware of that, and picks up the hefty book.

“Guess it’s back to the temple for this,” she remarks, glancing sidelong at Bonnibel to make sure.

The princess nods and scrubs the tearstains from her face. “To await its next champion.”

Marceline doesn’t ask what happens if there isn’t one; it doesn’t occur to her. Even if it had, Bonnibel gives her no time to ask, as she’s reaching over and pulling on the strap of the bass. “What’re you doing?” the vampire hisses, glancing swiftly towards the sunrise. “I’ve gotta get going, babe.”

In response, Bonnibel just shrugs out of her long coat and drapes it ungracefully over the other girl’s head like it’s a lampshade. “I know this is terrible timing,” she says, her hand coiling around the instrument’s strap again, anchoring in place. “And not just because of the dawn, but because we just lost Finn. He did more than protect Ooo, though; he gave us common ground once more over the years, and with it, the chance to renew our friendship.” She pauses, deliberating. “We’re almost there. I just need to apologize.”

Marceline forces her lips to smirk. “Then grovel away, Princess.”

“No,” Bonnibel insists, and she tugs on the bass. “I’ve been working on this for a long time. I’m afraid I’m not quite the wordsmith that you are,” she admits ruefully, and the vampire finally permits her to take her guitar. The strings are stained with stolen ichor, and it transfers redly to the princess’s fingers as she runs them up and down the instrument’s neck; she doesn’t care.

“You’re gonna play?” the vampire wonders, genuine surprise in her tone. “Dude, when did you learn?”

She slants her a glance that has a shade of reproach. “I’ve been watching you play for a thousand years,” she drawls, eyebrow tilting up, “and I didn’t write the melody. I borrowed it from you.” She chews on her lower lip. “It seemed most fitting that way.”

Marceline adjusts the other girl’s coat, making certain it’s shielding her from the sun. “Go ahead then,” she teases, and she tugs on the gray points peeking through her hair. “I’m all ears.”

A measure of weary sorrow shadows Bonnibel’s eyes, though, and she does not remark on that attempt at humor. She simply begins to play, and it’s a very familiar melody to Marceline, indeed. What’s worse, it’s a very familiar apology, reminiscent of one she received ages and ages ago.

“La da da da-da, I’m getting buried under my crown

La da da da-da, yeah, it’s pushin’ me so far down

I know I wiped the smile from your pretty gray face

I know I lost the one thing that I just can’t replace but I’m

Sorry I didn’t treat you with compassion or even courtesy

Sorry my ambition drove you so far, so far away from me

It was jacked up, what I was doing, but it felt necessary

I don’t know if ends justify, so I’m sorry for my means

Turn’s out that, I am the problem

Yeah, I am the problem

It’s true, I’m not very perfect, am I

I’m just your problem

And I-I-I-I am getting buried under my crown, and

I-I-I-I am freakin’ scared I’m gonna drown

You’ve gotta stay this time and save me, Marcy, please

I promise this time I won’t do lump to make you leave

’Cause I know I’m just your problem

And know what? You’re still my problem

But maybe together, we could solve ’em

(How ’bout it now?)

Let’s try to solve ’em…”

The last deep notes fade buzzing from the bass, and Bonnibel glances up at Marceline. There are fresh tears tracking down the vampire’s face, silent and as resigned to this fate as the princess appears to be herself.

“You, too, huh,” she croaks, her gaze dragging to the golden circle, as hateful as Simon’s crown ever was. “You said we could solve it, though. Do you know how to fix it?”

The real question, unasked: Is it already too late?

Bonnibel runs her fingers lightly along the strings, causing quiet little shrieks. “There’s always research,” she provides with the smallest shrug. “It’s always worth a try.”

“And if it fails?”

She shrugs again, a more exaggerated and far less casual ripple of her shoulders. That’s answer enough.

Marceline feels she ought to say something, even though at this point, everything’s inadequate. “I’m sorry,” she manages.

Bonnibel smiles, wobbly and wet. “I’m sorry, too.”

Not much happens in Ooo after that. Finn had lived at the end of an era, and now, a new age of stability and peace stretches out before them, long and summer-bright as it trails after the sun. Simon’s madness progresses to the point where he doesn’t remember desiring princesses at all, the phantom of his fiancée finally lost beneath a millennium of snow. He calms, and fades, and Marceline plays checkers with him on the weekends and always, always brings chicken soup.

It’s his favorite. He re-discovers this each time, and he’s always surprised that this young vampire would like to spend time with him, but she never corrects him, and she never tries to explain. She just smiles and passes him a steaming bowl and wipes her tears away as surreptitiously as possible.

(Tentative and uninvited, Bonnibel dropped by on Marceline’s first visit, borne aloft on a descendent of Lady Rainicorn and Jake, but she didn’t intrude on their private moment. She just waited outside the ice mountain, gently buffeted by turbulence until Marceline emerged with her empty can and her checkerboard. Neither of them spoke; they just shared a look, and then the vampire hugged her so tightly that she could barely breathe.

Marceline held on for a long while, long enough that the rainicorn started expressing his awkwardness in apologetic Korean. She pulled away, but the shadow of her touch remained, and the bond begun in Bonnibel’s song solidified and sealed, becoming something real and true and unbreakable.)

Almost unbreakable.

Bonnibel’s research, extensive as it is, has unearthed nothing.

They fall into a rhythm then, as they’ve fallen into one before. While Marceline haunts the ceilings like the world’s most musical ghost—at least, when she’s not touring Ooo with her latest crop of songs—Bonnibel spends her time ruling. But she delegates more these days, shaping trusted lieutenants into leaders in their own right, and begins hypothesizing about the inclusion of a senate or parliament into the Candy Kingdom’s constitution.

“It worked for both the Roman and British Empires,” she points out with a shrug. “It would balance the power and allow for expansion.”

“Aw, geez, Bon,” Marceline drawls. “Now you want an empire?”

But she’s smirking as she says it, and Bonnibel knows better than to take her seriously when her eyes glitter like that. Some of the humor is lost on her, even so, and she leans more of her weight on her elbow so she can cradle her head in that hand. It feels thick and full of lead, the crown’s slow poison seeping in.

The vampire sits up straighter where she’s reclining in the air. “You okay?” she asks, worry humming a counterpoint to her nonchalance.

“I’m fine,” the princess dismisses. “I was just disgusted by your joke, that’s all. Honestly, Marcy, I want lessresponsibility, not more. One day, I’ll be nothing but a figurehead, and one day, I won’t even be that.”

Marceline’s eyes hover anxiously on her friend’s crown. “What’s less than a lumping figurehead?” she says, the humor creaking and betraying her. “All they do is smile and wave and—and—and raise little dogs in freakishly large numbers.”

Bonnibel narrows her eyes, furrows her forehead, concentrates hard. Nothing is as easy as it was before she traded away her beloved shirt for Hambo; that garment truly was a talisman, and while she hoped that their revived friendship would prove to be an equally potent charm, it’s not so tangible. It doesn’t armor her while she sleeps. Things slip through the cracks…

But Marceline herself can’t save her, so an old t-shirt of hers, no matter how drenched it is in memories, can hope to do the same.

“I…I don’t know what’s less than a figurehead,” she finally mutters.

The vampire’s knuckles bleach as she strangles her bass; it chunners metallically in protest. “That thing you said earlier, babe? Whatever it was? I’d get on that. Like now. The sooner, the better and all. Chop chop.”

Blinking, as if she needs to reorient herself, Bonnibel gives a hesitant nod. “Yeah. I’ll draft a proposal today. I’ll convene the other monarchs in a few days to go over it, and then I can…issue the edicts and begin the process of…appointing magistrates.” She massages her forehead, an action Marceline has seen her mime far too often recently.

Slinging her guitar onto her back, the vampire floats down to the desk and plucks the pen from her friend’s limp hand. “You talk, I write. Saves time. Time’s a-wastin’. Don’t got no time to waste.”

The princess slants her a bemused look, and while Marceline is relieved to see the clarity refreshed, Bonnibel’s words are no reassurance. “What’re you talking about? Despite the fact that both of us have died at least once, we seem pretty indestructible. We have all the time in the world to waste.”

But Marceline just thinks of Simon, who can’t remember breakfast once he’s finished it, and now of Bonnibel, who doesn’t know what’s less than a figurehead.

“There are worse fates than dying,” she declares flatly. “There are worse curses than vampirism.”

It would’ve been better if Bonnibel argued that, but she doesn’t.

She already understands.

Time, time, time, Marceline panics, draining the red from everything she can reach. Simon’s crown had three Stones of Power. Bonni’s only has one. And she’s stronger than he was. She’s so strong. Plus, she’s held it off this long already. She can hold it off a little longer.

And she thinks of the Enchiridion, how it kept the Stones out of corruptible hands—and maybe not corruptible like evil, but like rust, how it bites into metal and eats it and rots it and takes away all its shine.

She can’t stop thinking about the book. She gave it up, twice, but she hadn’t earned it either time. It didn’t mean anything to hold it then. But now the stupid book is locked behind a maze of trials designed to prove its bearer worthy.

Anyone can earn the Enchiridion.

Well, anyone who is strong and brave and pure of heart.

She wonders if it still counts even if that heart forgot how to beat a thousand years before.

“Maybe it’s just the price we have to pay,” Bonnibel murmurs later that week, once her proposals are drafted and her councils have convened. She strokes her fingers idly through Marceline’s hair where the long strands stray across her own arm, not really aware of the action; her eyes are shut, and she’s half-asleep.

The vampire bows her tightly closed lips to her friend’s shoulder. It’s not a kiss, but it’s close. They’re not what they used to be, but they’re close.

At length, Marceline prompts, “Price we have to pay…?”

“To save people,” the princess clarifies, her fingers slowing, faltering. “Maybe people who aren’t heroes…maybe when they try to be them, they have to sacrifice more. Simon wanted to save you, and his crown took him. You wanted to save me, and now you’re a vampire. I wanted to save Ooo, and my crown’s taking me. We get what we want, but…but maybe our sanity’s the price. Lost in our own heads for all eternity.”

“Speak for yourself,” Marceline shoots back reflexively. “I’m not off my rocker and I don’t plan on falling off ever. My bloodlust is quite under control, thank you very much for asking, I’m touched by your concern.”

Bonnibel chuckles, little more than a humorous exhale, and her lips curl at just the corners. “Oh, Marcy,” she laments, “you’re such a dingus. But I guess that’s why I love you.”

The vampire stiffens. It’s probably not true. She’s probably just forgetting intervening time, like Simon forgot it. She probably thinks they’re still together, that this is five centuries earlier, or even earlier still. She probably won’t remember a lick of this conversation when the sun rises.

It makes Marceline want to scream.

Instead, she kisses Bonnibel’s pale pink neck, right under her ear, and whispers back, “I love you, too.”

In the morning, Marceline attempts the Hero’s Trials in a desperate bid to claim the Enchiridion.

She fails.

But she’s known for a millennium that she’s not a hero.

She’s also known for a millennium that she’ll do whatever she has to do in a pinch, like come back from the dead as a vampire to save the life of her only friend. So she hikes a middle finger at the universe and flies over the obstacles that she couldn’t defeat, and when the guardians squabble and protest, she kicks the living daylights out of them.

“I’m Marceline the Vampire Queen,” she growls as she grinds the last one’s face into the dust beneath the heel of her boot. “I don’t play nice, and I don’t play by the freakin’ rules.”

“But the Enchiridion…it must judge you as worthy,” he protests feebly.

“It’s a lumping book,” she snaps with a razor-edged scowl. “What the flip does it know?”

He doesn’t seem to know what to make of that. “Er…everything it contains…?”

“Shut up,” she snarls, and she kicks him hard for good measure and swivels her glare to the ancient tome. “You’re just a book,” she repeats, as if she’s trying to convince it, or trying to convince herself. “You have no right to judge me. Ideem myself worthy, and you’re just gonna have to deal with it.”

The Enchiridion doesn’t burst into flames or howls or anything when she lifts it from its rest. That might not indicate that it’s her by right, but it is hers for the taking, and so she takes it, takes it and flies around Ooo as fast as she can. She explains to the other rulers about the threat inherent in their crowns, but none of them believe her, none of them seem to have suffered any ill effects. For a moment, she wonders if Bonnibel’s delirious musings were right—if only people who aren’t heroes yet try to play the role are corruptible by the Stones.

The Enchiridion is known as the hero’s handbook. Maybe those who forget that fact are doomed to forget everything, and maybe heroes aren’t such wonderful people, after all. Maybe they’re as spiteful and vindictive and possessive as anyone, because who else would lay such a trap and cast such a curse?

Marceline doesn’t know if that’s true or right or anything more than a flight of fancy, but she takes the Stones just as she took the book itself—by force if she has to. Nobody has to like her after this. Nobody has to like her ever again. They can all lump off in parliamentary bliss for all she cares.

Once she collects the Stones, even the three in Simon’s crown that have been missing from the book from the start, she flies the completed set and the book it resides within to the edge of the world. It takes her a long time to reach the jagged cliffs, and she almost goes feral more than once from the strain she puts on herself. She manages somehow, though, and when she gets there and gazes down at the seething heart of the planet, she is convinced that she’s doing the right thing.

There are extremes of power that people should not be allowed to have—the Mushroom Wars proved that.

Hovering out over the planet’s mortal wound, Marceline holds onto the Enchiridion until she’s above the molten mantle; it swirls sluggishly miles below.

Without preamble or any fitting, final words, she lets it go.

It might splash. It might incinerate long before it strikes. She can’t tell.

All she knows is that it’s gone, good freaking riddance, and that this action, while pleasingly rebellious and undoubtedly beneficial to future generations, doesn’t change anything for her friends. She was too late when she began this quest, and too late even before that. Taking away the Stones of Power will do nothing for Bonnibel. It’s been made amply clear via the example of Simon, and via the princess’s own futile research, that the corrupting effects are irreversible.

That grates against Marceline, flays her alive. She knew she was doomed before she started, and she can picture the future facing them all: lost in their own heads for all eternity. Except for her, that is—like she said, her vampirism isn’t that terrible, and even when she goes feral, she can recover. It’s not like how it will be for Bonnibel and Simon. It’s not the same at all.

Still, she doesn’t know where that leaves her.

It takes a few more decades for the sickness to set in entirely, a few decades of stumbling pauses and a love so belatedly rekindled, but even their love, which has conquered so much, can’t conquer all.

Eventually, Bonnibel forgets Marceline.

It’s subtle in the end. There’s just a loss of recognition in the depths of those familiar lavender eyes, the suffusion of a terrible blankness that has been erasing in from the edges for too long.

The vampire clasps their hands together—hers are shaking so badly—and she brushes her lips against the princess’s forehead.

Bonnibel looks up at her, only mild curiosity in her gaze, and she reaches out to catch a teardrop on her finger. The saline melts into her sugared skin.

“Yeah, you’ll wanna be careful with that,” Marceline chokes out, her serrated teeth gleaming in a watery smile.

“Okay,” she accepts, and her brow pinches slightly. “Why are you crying?”

Marceline considers that for a sticking second. “I just lost the love of my life.”

“That’s terrible,” Bonnibel murmurs, and despite the consequences, she wipes away another tear. “What happened?”

Her mouth curves, subtle and slow, and she shrugs. “She went away.”

The princess’s confusion deepens as she wonders, “And you can’t follow her?”

Marceline thought her heart had died a thousand years ago, but as it turns out, it was merely comatose all the while, because now…now it dies. She nearly suffocates from the mess it leaves behind in her chest, but she perseveres with grim determination—she’s always been able to subvert death for Bonnibel. “No,” she says through the gravel in her throat. “Not where she’s gone.”

“Oh,” she realizes, but there’s no real comprehension in her eyes. Just sympathy for a stranger. “I’m so sorry.”

Marceline nods halfway, chin tucked to her chest, and just looks at her, as if she hasn’t memorized everything about her centuries before. She’s still so stupidly pink. And she’s still so stupidly beautiful.

“Take care of yourself, Bonni,” she says, as lightly as she’s able, “and always be nice to little girls lost and hungry in the snow.”

Bonnibel looks at her politely and doesn’t understand.

(Sometimes, later, she notices the photograph taped on the inside of her closet door, and she wonders who this black-haired, sharp-toothed girl is, and whether or not they were friends. She likes to think they would be. And some preferences are carved in the bones, so whenever she hears rock music, Bonnibel really likes it, and her favorite color is red.

The candy folk take care of her, as she once so diligently cared for them.

And she is at peace.)

Unable to summon the strength to fly with this strangled concrete filling her limbs and the riven husk of her heart, Marceline trudges out of the room and unloops the princess’s crown from her belt. Without its Stone of Power, it’s just a fragile circle of gold, and she has strength enough to snap it in half. She drops the mangled metal on the floor and adjusts the ride of her bass’s strap for a snugger fit, fishing in her pocket afterwards for a piece of chalk. Deftly, she draws a magic circle on the castle wall and smears bug milk across it.

Once she speaks the incantation, the portal to the Nightosphere yawns wide, an eternal inferno plagued with chaos. It doesn’t look like home, but that’s because Marceline’s home is behind her, draped in a violet blanket and gazing contentedly out the window at the fading autumn sun.

She slips her pack off her shoulders and roots through its meager contents. Resting underneath the disintegrating form of Hambo, there’s a lock of Bonnibel’s bubblegum hair; tears prick her eyes anew when she thinks that it’s really more of a wad. A sentient wad, maybe, that has a name and enough love in her heart to last a thousand years.

She likes to think that it smiles at her, as it had smiled at her before: a perfect semicircle. While she knows that isn’t true—it’s wishful thinking at its finest—she indulges the delusion. It’s not like she has long to pretend.

She’ll be forgetting herself soon enough.

Raw heat blasts across her face, whipping her hair back like the tail of the darkest comet as she steps through the portal and enters the Nightosphere. Its volcanic landscape stretches out to indeterminate horizons in every direction, and she floats above the burning madness, not paying it much attention. She’s seen it all before, and she’ll be seeing it until the end of time.

Her vampirism never was going to drive her insane, but it wasn’t the first thing to grant her eternity, either—her demonic heritage did that.

And that which giveth, taketh away.

When she arrives in a familiar craggy mountain, her father leaps to his feet, thrilled to see her. “Marceline! What brings you all the way to hell, eh?”

“Hey, Daddy,” she replies, none of her usual lilt in her tone. She gestures vaguely at the amulet resting against his chest. “I’m…here to take up the family business.”

“Oh, happy day!” he cheers, oblivious of her agony, and he joyfully rips his amulet from his neck. “My little monster’s ready to embrace her destiny!”

Marceline hates him for that speech, but she hates other things far more, so she accepts the burden of her birthright without comment.

As she weighs the amulet in her hand, her mind wanders back to the beginning, reviewing more than ten centuries years of life and desperately searching for a loophole, for all the good it will do her now. She wonders if they could’ve done things differently somehow, if they could’ve subverted this fate, if she and Bonnibel and Simon could’ve lived out their undying days happily and together.

But if they saved themselves, then they couldn’t save the world.

And they wouldn’t be heroes.

“Huh,” she murmurs to herself with a cluck of her tongue. “Not bad for a sentimental old man, a brainy bubblegum girl, and a scrawny teenaged half-demon. Yeah. Not too bad at all.”

Marceline smiles one last time, real and heartfelt and true, and then she slips the amulet over her head and lets the chaos carry her away.

Elsewhere, the broken, healing world spins gently towards tomorrow.

(we could be immortals)

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phernderwood-blog · 5 years

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minijenn · 6 years

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Universe Falls Chapter 58

Wooooo here we go with The Last Mabelcorn, finally! You can’t imagine how long I’ve wanted to write this chapter and here it finally is for you to read and enjoy! I’m quite proud of it and I honestly don’t have a ton else to say outside of that so I suppose there’s nothing keeping us from diving right in! Let’s get started!

Previous: http://minijenn.tumblr.com/post/177662322439/universe-falls-chapter-57-part-2

Chapter 58: The Last Mabelcorn

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With Dipper and Mabel spending the night up at the temple with Steven and the Gems in light of their ongoing quest to release Malachite, the Mystery Shack was even quieter than it usually was in the deep, dark, dead of night. Though Stan had turned in for the night at a reasonable hour, it had taken Ford much longer to pull himself away from his ongoing research in the basement. By the time the author finally did trudge up to his old room, it was quite late and as a result, he was quite tired. Though he was now thirty years removed from his extensive bout of paranoid insomnia, there were times every now and again when Ford would stubbornly resist the lull of a full night’s sleep out of fear of what might lie in wait in the often unpredictable world of nightmares. This particular, night, however, wasn’t anywhere close to one of those cases, for almost as soon as the author’s head hit the pillow, he was out, fast asleep and promptly thrust into the dreaming state he so often tried to avoid.

Or rather, into what was very soon about to become yet another nightmare, one that seemed to refuse to end even 30 years after it had first begun.

When Ford opened his eyes, he was quite caught off guard to find himself not back in the peaceful darkness of the room he had fallen asleep in, but rather he was standing amidst a vast, arid field of tall, ripe stalks of wheat. This curious expanse seemed to stretch on for miles, only broken by three landmarks afar off in the distance: an aged and broken swing set, a dilapidated, half-rebuilt boat, and the ruined remains of a certain portal looming large and inactive on the horizon. The author took pause as he glanced around his odd, new surroundings, though he didn’t have much of a chance to make sense of them. Completely out of nowhere, the wheat surrounding Ford suddenly began to flatten itself out into a shape that the author knew all too well. A shape that was, of course, accompanied by the maniacal cackling of a demon, a demon Ford had hoped in vain that he’d never encounter again.

“I know that laugh…” the author growled, his hands already curling into tight, defensive fists, just in case. “Show yourself!”

Right on cue, the demon did just that, his triangular form materializing right from the imprint of himself he had made in the wheat as he sharply rose to float right behind Ford, his sinister laughter continuing all the while. “Well, well, well, well, well, well, well!” he quipped brightly, splitting up into several smaller versions of himself as they all cheerfully circled the quite unamused author. “Aren’t you a sight for sore eye! Stanford Filbrick Pines! My old pal! It’s good to finally see ya in the flesh instead of on all those wanted posters I had put out for you during your little stint in the multiverse. Those sure were some fun times, huh, Sixer?”

Ford wisely chose to ignore his longtime foe’s callous taunting, more than used to them by now as he sent the demon a cold, distrustful glare. “Bill Cipher…” he stiffly acknowledged, countless years of ire and hatred dripping into his tone. “What do you want from me? I already told you more than once that I want nothing more to do with you!”

“Oh, quit playing dumb, IQ!” one of the several Bills mocked knowingly. “You knew I’d be back! And boy, have I been busy… Heck, right before I dropped by here, I nearly snagged the deal of a lifetime with some kid you may or may know. But oh well, its not like he can really hold onto that space rock of his for too much longer since its already mine anyway!”

“Kid?” Ford questioned in alarmed confusion, wondering what poor child could have possibly been subjected to Bill’s cruel tricks. “Who did you-”

“Eh, forget it, Sixer, all that business is soooo two chapters ago,” Bill interjected with a flippant wave of his hand as his many doubles all merged back into one. “What I actually stopped by for was to tall you that you must not be that much of a ‘genius’ after all if you think shutting down that portal could really stop what I have planned! Like I said, I’ve been making deals, chatting with old friends, preparing for the big day! You can’t keep that rift safe forever…” With a single snap of his fingers, the interdimensional rift appeared floating above the demon’s palm, its amorphous, glimmering substance still safely contained within its protective globe, though not for long. “You don’t have good ol’ Quartzy around anymore to bail you out this time, Sixer! You’ll slip up sooner or later, and when you do…” As Bill trailed off, he suddenly slammed the rift hard onto the ground, its very breaking violently tearing open a nightmarish hole through the otherwise smoggy skies and igniting the wheat field in a burst of bright crimson fire all around the author. Yet even despite this horrific display, Ford refused to let Bill get the better of him this time; after all, he had already accomplished that more than enough countless times in the past.

“Get out of here!” the author shouted fiercely, wishing he could put an end to the demon’s twisted ambitions right then and there. “You have no dominion in our world!”

“Maybe not right now,” Bill began, his eye turning black as he began to ascend into the chasm of untold horrors and nightmares he wanted to unleash upon the world. “But things change, Stanford Pines! Things CHANGE!”

On this final, ominous proclamation, the demon departed, laughing wickedly all the while as he thoughtlessly left Ford to burn in the field, awash with fear over the dreadful threats he had just heard. Fortunately though, the author wasn’t left to such a terrible fate as he was instead met with quick flashes of three very distinct images: his own six-fingered hand, a set of runes containing various unknown symbols, all of them surrounding a visage of Bill himself, and finally, four bright, vibrant diamonds, one white, one blue, one yellow, and one pink, arranged together and positioned against the backdrop of a distant, foreign planet that seemed to be crumbling apart at the seams.

And on that, the author sharply awoke, his nightmare over. For now, at least.

Even so, Ford bolted upright on the couch that served as his bed, his entire body covered in a cold sweat as he tried to catch his breath amidst his current panic. The fact that Bill Cipher, of all beings, had suddenly shown up in his dreams was concerning enough, but even worse were the frightening implications he had left behind. Before, the author had only ever assumed that the demon would target the rift, but now, there was no doubt whatsoever. Bill wanted that rift and if he got his hands on it, then the entire world, no, the entire universe, would certainly face untold destruction and devastation. He’d be all-powerful, unstoppable, and completely and utterly merciless to anyone who ever dared to try and get in his way. Which was why Ford knew that he had to stop this disaster before it even had a chance to begin. He had to put an end to Bill’s plans before they could come anywhere close to reaching fruition, there simply was no other option. But unlike last time he had made such a bold, dangerous attempt, the author wasn’t about to undertake such a risky venture on his own this time. He had learned his lesson and seen his folly in trying to walk this path alone 30 years ago. And as far as he was concerned, that wasn’t a mistake he was about to make again.

“I have to warn them…” Ford muttered to himself as he finally began to calm down, even though Bill’s haunting warnings still rung in his mind as loudly as ever. “He’s coming…”

A cloud of solemn anxiousness hung over Steven, Dipper, and Mabel alike as they departed from the temple the following morning, their minds still equally focused on worrying thoughts of a certain demon and his malicious intentions, whatever those might be. The Gems had sent them off quite early on, encouraging them to relax for the day and try to find some way to take their thoughts off Bill, even if it was very likely they didn’t intend to do the same themselves.

Still, none of the kids argued with them as they set out for the shack, running into Connie halfway down the hill as she had been going up to meet them. Despite the Gems’ advising them to focus on other things, neither Steven, Dipper, nor Mabel were able to keep themselves from telling Connie all about the events of the previous night, including both Steven’s alarming encounter with Bill in his dreams, as well as their nightmarish confrontation the Gems had with the demon themselves over twenty years ago. Needless to say that after hearing such a disconcerting account, Connie herself was every bit as shaken as the other three kids were to know that Bill was still out there somewhere, still plotting to harm them all, if not worse. Which was why the conversation was still very much focused on the demon, even as the kids made it back down to the shack to try and ‘relax’, even if there was a slim chance such a thing would even end up happening.

“So… even the Gems don’t know how get rid of Bill once and for all?” Connie asked, her voice kept rather low as the four of them wandered down the hall.

“No…” Steven sighed, rubbing his arm apprehensively. “They said the most we can do for now is just make sure we don’t fall for any more of his tricks, but… I don’t know how long that’ll really work for…”

“Probably not too long, seeing as how he’ll lie to just about anyone to get what he wants,” Dipper remarked quite bitterly, clearly quite frustrated with the situation at large. “It’s just… you’d think there’d be some way to keep Bill from messing with us anymore, at least. I mean, how are we supposed to figure out a way to stop him if we can’t even keep him from showing up in our dreams any time he wants?!”

“W-well, even if the Gems don’t know what to do right now, m-maybe they’ll figure something out eventually,” Mabel assured with a weak smile, hoping to, if nothing else, reassure her clearly on-edge brother about the concerning situation. “For now though, we should probably just drop the whole Bill thing and relax like they told us to.” Her smile widened somewhat as she pulled open a nearby closet door. “Why don’t we see if Grunkle Stan has any decent board games lyin’ around here? Huh? Huh? Come on, you three, don’t hold out on me. Steven, I know you’re always up for a good round of Latzee.”

Steven, Dipper, and Connie all briefly exchanged tentative glances at this, all three of them still rather worried about the situation with Bill, but even so, they knew there wasn’t really much that could be done about it now. Wasting their thoughts and energy on it at the moment wouldn’t really produce anything but more dread and woe, things that the kids largely wanted to be free of after the harrowing night they just had. Which was why Steven was the first to perk up somewhat, stepping forward into the closet to take a look at what the stack of old games before them had to offer.

“Hm, let’s see here… ‘Battlechutes & Ladderships’, ‘Necronomiconopoly’, ‘Don’t Wake Stalin’…”

“Oh, what’s this one?” Connie grabbed an interesting-looking jungle themed box from the pile. “‘What Could Go Wrong? The Board Game. The last players who opened this box never made it out alive!’”

A beat of silence passed between the kids at this, but even so, they were all quick to reach largely the same conclusion.

“Well, I know what we’re doing today!”

“Yeah, this should take up the next half hour or so.”

“Sounds like fun!”

“Can’t be too bad, right?”

However, before the kids could even leave the closet to set the game up to play, their plans were instantly dashed as they heard Ford’s stark, urgent call coming from the kitchen. “Family meeting! Family meeting!”

Needless to say all four of the kids were somewhat surprised to hear Ford of all people, call for a so-called ‘family meeting’. But even so they were quite curious to hear what apparently serious demand was all about, which was why they put the game aside to hurry off to hear whatever it was the author had to say.

Meanwhile, unbeknownst to any of the kids, Amethyst had hurried down from the temple to the shack herself, surprisingly not because of anything remotely pertaining to what happened last night, but rather to make good on her promise to help Stan with a certain, rather illegal smuggling deal. “Alright, Santiago,” the conman remarked gruffly to the Spanish man him and Amethyst were passing off a sizable truckload of young pugs off to. “You have 24 hours to get these pugs over the U.S border.”

“And you better not… you know, no lo jodas this time either!” Amethyst snapped with a knowing scowl. “O de lo contrario lo vas a conseguir!”

“Yeah, what she said,” Stan remarked, though he did raise his eyebrow somewhat over the purple Gem’s rather crude use of language. However, before the exchange could properly end, Ford’s call for a family meeting rung out from inside the shack, startling the trio and cutting their illegal operation short as Stan swiftly shoved the last barrel of pugs into the back of Santiago’s truck before shoving him off.

“No te preocupas!” Stan shouted urgently as Amethyst kept a close lookout so they wouldn’t get caught as the truck sped off. “Vamos! Vamos!”

With Stan and Amethyst as busy avoiding the law as they were, it wasn’t surprising that they decided to avoid Ford’s meeting, though the kids were right on time to it, venturing into the kitchen just as the author was finishing setting up his copious array of scrolls, notes, and books. “Ah, children,” he greeted tersely, only briefly glancing over his shoulder as they arrived. “Come in, come in! Do any of you know if any of the Gems can make it down here within the next… minute or so? This is a very important discussion that I doubt they’ll want to miss out on.”

“Uh, w-well, actually… the Gems are kind of… busy today,” Steven replied, knowing this was both a truth and a lie in that, as far as they knew, they were still up at the temple, thinking about what to do to stop Bill. “We sort of had a… rough night last night…”

“Hm, you’re not the only ones…” Ford muttered to himself as he glanced away. “All the same, I suppose we can always pass this warning off to them sometime later.”

“Warning?” Connie spoke up with a worried frown. “What warning?”

“Does it have anything to do with these mysterious scrolls and potions?” Mabel asked curiously as she began rummaging through the author’s possessions. “Are you going to tell us we’re finally of age to go to wizard school? Is there an owl in this bag?!”

“No,” Ford interjected, quickly taking his bag away from her as his manner seemed to grow even more serious than it already was. “I can assure you that if there is an owl in this bag, then he’s long dead. Now, what I have called you children here for today is by far more pressing and urgent. Do any of you recognize this symbol?” At this, the author held up a weathered old scroll, one covered in ancient script and arcane text, though the triangular being emblazoned, large and dark and menacing on its center was one that all four of the kids knew the instant they saw it.

A round of frightened gasps escaped all four of the kids at the same exact time, each of them feeling as though they had been thrust right back into that horrific puppet show weeks ago. Connie quickly tore her gaze away from the scroll, as if simply looking at it would somehow summon the demon forth from it. Steven choked out another smaller gasp, one hand against his heart as it hammered away in his chest while his other was pressed close to his stomach, or rather his gem, protectively. Mabel latched a hand down onto her brother’s shoulder so fast that it normally would have startled him but instead Dipper only stared, his face pale and his eyes wide as he barely managed to even get the demon’s name out in so much as a weak, frightened whisper. “B-Bill…”

Ford flinched, quite taken aback by the kids’ initial reaction alone as he looked back to the scroll with growing alarm. “You… you know him?”

None of the kids offered an immediate answer save for Connie, who only gave one in the form of a small, anxious, silent nod. As for the other three, Steven tightened his grip around his gemstone, the vicious threats the demon had issues against him just a few hours prior ringing in his head as loudly as ever before. At the same time, Mabel’s focus remained on Dipper as she prepared to offer him whatever comfort and support he might need but in light of both his growing distress and his growing frustration he was hard pressed to accept any such sentiments now.

“I-it just won’t end, will it?” Dipper began, his tone quiet yet harsh as he shook his head incredulously. “First there was what happened last night with the Gems, and now this? Why won’t he just quit already?!”

“Dipper-” Mabel attempted to interject, though her brother was far too upset to back down now, especially as he got up to pace around frenetically.

“I was right last night after all,” Dipper continued, angry and anxiously as he largely talked to himself, even as the others all watched him with growing concern. “A-and I was right even before that! This isn’t over! Heck, maybe it never will be! He’ll just keep showing up and messing with us and lying to us and forcing us to play his games and there’s no way to stop him or get rid of him a-and it’ll just keep happening over and over again until he-”

“Dipper!” He finally cut himself off with a sharp gasp, stopping in his tracks under the weight of Ford’s firm, steadying hand on his shoulder. The author’s expression was initially fraught with palpable worry and dread, which quickly shifted into untold remorse before finally settling on what almost looked like grave, yet muted fury. “He… he possessed you, didn’t he?”

Dipper flinched at this, quickly averting his uncle’s gaze out of slight fear of how he might react to the truth of the matter. After all, the last thing he wanted was to admit such a momentous failure to the author he practically idolized and looked up to without question; the thought of disappointing him with his own shortcomings alone was enough to bring him more shame than he really knew how to deal with. But even despite his lack of a concrete answer, it was clear to see that Ford had inferred one anyway as he rose to stand, closing his eyes and letting out a long, almost tired sigh, one that gave really no indication of any sort of react at all.

“G-Great Uncle Ford,” Dipper began, his former frustration gone and replaced with obvious nervousness instead. “I… I just-”

“It wasn’t Dipper’s fault!” Steven suddenly interjected, tears already starting to well up in his eyes as everyone turned to look at him. “B-Bill tricked him! H-he lied to him and then he took his body a-and I was there for the whole thing and I wasn’t able to stop it a-and I couldn’t even tell anyone about it ‘cause he said he’d hurt Dipper’s body a-and I was so afraid and confused and we almost didn’t stop him in time but-”

“But we did,” Connie interjected as calmly as she could, taking Steven’s hand reassuringly as Mabel did the same for Dipper. “And that’s what’s important here.”

“So the four of you… ‘defeated’ him…” Ford mused, though his tone conveyed a hint of doubt in this fact. Still, he didn’t voice that doubt as he met all four of the kids’ fretful expressions evenly enough. “Even so, the fact that you kids have dealt with Bill before is gravely serious.”

“So… you know Bill too, Grunkle Ford?” Mabel asked, anxiously curious.

“Too?” the author frowned, confused.

“Uh, well, l-last night the Gems told us about how Bill tricked them before too…” Steven admitted somewhat hesitantly. “Mom even had to fight them to get him out of him. I-it was-”

“Oh yes, I already know about all that,” Ford interupted. “Pearl… told me all about that rather… unfortunate encounter just a few days ago. Honestly, I can’t say I’m even really surprised; it’d only make sense that someone as mad and as power-hungry as Bill would try to target someone as dedicated to protecting the Earth as Rose and the Crystal Gems.”

The kids looked to each other again at this, their expressions all somewhat uncertain but craving to know more about whatever knowledge the author might have concerning the dream demon. “Um, so how exactly do you know Bill, Great Uncle Ford?” Dipper asked rather hesitantly in light of his own lingering regret.

“I’ve encountered many dark beings in my time, Dipper,” Ford replied curtly. “But perhaps none as dark as Bill Cipher. All the same, the specifics aren’t important right now. What matters is that his powers are growing stronger, and if he pulls off his plans, then none of us, not this family, not the Gems, not even Gravity Falls itself will be safe!”

Upon hearing this, none of the kids were able to hold back a unified frightened gasp. In light of their past encounters with the dream demon as well as everything the Gems had recently revealed, it was obvious that Bill was certainly a threat to them all. But to hear this confirmation come from someone as wizened and well-traveled as the author of the journals himself only served to hit that alarming thought home even more. After all, if Bill really was such a severe and present danger to not just them but the town, possibly even the world as a whole, then what hope did any of them possibly have in trying to stop him?

“Fortunately,” Ford continued, as if he had somehow heard the kids’ shared worries and decided to address them. “There should be a way to shield us from his mental tricks. A way to ‘Bill-proof’ the shack and even the Gems’ temple, as it were.”

“R-Really?” Steven asked with a small but growing smile, one that was filled with relief that the other three kids equally shared. “That’s great! How does it work?”

“It’s quite simple, really,” the author began, laying a map of the shack out on the table. “All I have to do is place moonstones here, here, and here, sprinkle some mercury, and… let’s see, I always forget that last ingredient!” Ford frowned as he flipped open journal 1, briefly glancing through his notes before finding what he was looking for. “Ugh, that’s right… unicorn hair…”

“That’s not… rare, is it?” Dipper asked, picking up on the author’s disgruntled tone.

“Its hopeless,” Ford shook his head dismissively as he looked back to the journal. “Unicorns reside deep within an enchanted glade, and their hairs can only be obtained by a pure, good-hearted person who goes on a magical quest to find them. And of course, unicorns themselves are-”

The author’s explanation was abruptly cut off from a loud, shrill, undeniably excited squeal from Mabel, one that tore starkly through the ongoing solemn manner of this meeting. “Grunkle Ford! Can I please go on this quest?!” she asked with a large, eager grin as she hopped out of her seat. “I am literally obsessed with unicorns! My first word was unicorn, I once made my own unicorn by taping a traffic cone to a horse’s head and got banned from the petting zoo for it, are you even looking at the sweater I’m wearing right now?!” She quickly pointed to said sweater, which, fittingly enough, had a colorful design of a unicorn stitched onto it. “Not to mention that I’m probably the most pure of heart person in this room. Well, aside from Steven, that is.” A round of murmured agreements arose from this, no one really dissenting to such a claim given Mabel’s very transparent sense of altruism and helpfulness. “So can I please go on a mission to get that hair?” she continued pleadingly. “Please, please, please?! I’ll give you my blood!”

Despite this concerning vow, Ford simply nodded, albeit a bit hesitantly given the nature of the quest his niece wanted to go on. “Very well,” he consented gruffly. “But it won’t be easy. Take this,” he handed off journal 1 to her, largely since it offered a map pointing to where unicorns were known to dwell. “And this,” he also gave her a fully-loaded crossbow, much to excitement, even as she struggled to properly lift it. “I haven’t been in this dimension in a while. It’s still ok to give children deadly weapons, right?”

“Pssh, come on, dawg,” Mabel remarked with a casual wave of her hand. Of course, she didn’t notice that her other hand had accidentally squeezed the crossbow’s trigger until an arrow fired off through it, crashing through the nearby window and startling a certain pair of partners in crime outside.

“Ah! It’s the cops!” Stan shouted frantically somewhere outside. “Gun it!”

“Soy inocente, ¡lo juro!” Amethyst cried as a truck carrying a heavy load of pugs sped off.” ¡Todo fue idea de Stan!”

“Amethyst! Cut it out with all the Spanish already!”

“Heh, sorry, dude, can’t help it. Its mucho divertido.”

“Um… on second thought, why don’t I go with you, Mabel?” Connie asked after a beat of somewhat awkward silence. “Not that I don’t think you can handle yourself, but maybe having my sword along with that crossbow will make this whole, uh, ‘enchanted quest’ thing go a little easier.”

“Oh my gosh, yes!” Mabel gasped, cheerfully pulling Connie up out of her chair as she spun her around excitedly. “This is gonna be great! Mabel and Connie: Unicorn Hunters Extraordinaire! Ooo, wait! I got another idea! We should turn this unicorn duo into a whole unicorn party!” Without another word, Mabel quickly pulled her phone up and began dialing several numbers at once as she ran out of the room. “Wendy, Candy, Grenda, clear the afternoon!”

“Oh boy…” Connie chuckled as she prepared to follow after Mabel. “This oughta be… interesting.”

“Hm… perhaps you girls should take one of the Gems along with you as well…” Ford mused. “As far as I know, they do have some experience with unicorns so their aid will likely be an asset, and not just in finding them either…”

“Get a Gem to come, got it!” Connie nodded, offering the remaining trio a thumbs up as she headed out herself. “Thanks, Mr. Ford!”

“Yes, yes, try not to come across any packs of marauding ware-fairies while you’re out,” Ford advised, waving both girls off as Steven and Dipper did the same.

“So… what are the odds that they actually get that hair?” Dipper asked Ford, trying to hide his rather palpable concern.

“Unlikely,” the author replied as soon as he was sure the girls were out of earshot. “I’ve dealt with unicorns before and if I had to describe them in one word it would be… frustrating.”

“Aw, but this is Mabel and Connie we’re taking about here,” Steven said with an encouraging smile. “If anyone can get that hair, its them!”

“Well, just in case they don’t,” Dipper countered diffidently. “Is there anything else we could maybe do to stop Bill in the meantime?”

Ford took pause at this question, his expression initially unreadable as he looked between both of the boys sitting in front of him before his focus finally settled on Steven. The young Gem shifted somewhat apprehensively under the author’s scrutinizing stare, one that seemed to almost be searching for something, though he had no idea as to what that something could possibly be. “Um… Mr. Ford? What’s-”

“Steven,” the author interupted, his tone and manner both very serious as he glanced around rather discreetly. “Rose Quar—I mean, your mother, used to be the one person, or Gem rather, that I always felt like I could confide in. I trusted her immensely, and… I’d like to think that I can trust her son as well. So… can I?”

The young Gem was admittedly somewhat taken aback by this, but as he glanced over and met Dipper’s rather expectant expression, he found he was hard pressed to say no. “Y-yeah—I mean, yes,” Steven said with much more resolve, hoping that he could somehow honor the genuine bond that used to exist between the author and his mother even in some small, simple way. “Yes, you can. But, uh, can I ask with what exactly you wanna trust me with?”

Ford cracked something of a small smirk at this, clearly glad to have the young Gem on board. “Dipper, why don’t I let you tell him?”

“Oh, uh, ok,” Dipper nodded, immediately understanding exactly what the author wanted him to reveal. Even still, he hesitated somewhat, remembering the promise he had made to Ford himself to keep silent about it only a few days prior, a promise he devoutly intended to keep even still. And yet, since Ford was the very one telling him to make an exception to that promise right then and there, he decided to relent and do just that, knowing that if there was really anyone who he’d personally trust with such a momentous secret, it would be Steven. “So, Great Uncle Ford took the portal apart, right? But it sorta left this… what was it again?”

“An interdimensional rift,” Ford filled in, his voice low as he took another cursory glance around the room for any sort of prying eyes.

“An interdimensional rift, right,” Dipper said with a bit more confidence, which was something Steven only met with confusion as he tried to follow along. “And that’s bad because it could…?”

“It could tear our reality itself apart,” Ford finished gravely. “Especially if someone like Bill were to get his hands on it. If its power were to be unleashed, then he’d be completely free to wreak untold havoc upon this dimension, destroying everything and everyone in his path.”

“W-whoa…” Steven whispered, his eyes wide as he tried to take such a dark implication in. “And I thought everything the Gems told us last night was bad. B-but this… rift thing sounds like it could be even worse than that was!”

“Indeed it could,” Ford nodded coldly. “And that’s why the three of us have to do everything in our power to protect it from Bill. Including maintaining its secrecy from everyone.”

“Even the Gems?” Steven asked apprehensively. “B-because I-”

“Even the Gems,” the author interupted staunchly, glancing away. “The more people who know about the rift, the more danger it could potentially be put in. I did have some reservations about telling even you, Steven, but… well, I figured I might as well fill you in since I very likely would have done the same for your mother if she were still… around.”

“Oh, uh… gee, thanks…” the young Gem said with a halfhearted smile, the comparison Ford was apparently drawing between him and his mother not lost on him. A comparison that, in light of recent revelations, Steven wasn’t sure he was too comfortable with anymore, even if he knew that it was rather fitting. After all, wasn’t keeping such a potentially earth shattering secret hidden from the Gems the very same sort of thing Rose herself did before him? Still, he knew he couldn’t exactly betray either Ford’s trust on the matter either, especially since it was of such grave significance. The author had said so himself: if Bill ever managed to get ahold of that rift, then reality itself could very well cease to be. The knowledge of that fact alone was a momentous, massive weight, one that the young Gem feared he wouldn’t be properly carry but at the very least, he didn’t have to do it alone. For just as he began to doubt his own resolve, he was broken out of his thoughts by the comforting hand that fell upon his shoulder. Steven was unable to hold back a small smile as he met the gentle, affirmative one Dipper was offering him, one that carried the promise that, despite how daunting protecting the rift and its secrets might be, it was a task that they’d carry out together. And that alone was exactly the kind of warm reassurance the young Gem needed to hope that they’d be able to carry that untold, almost crushing weight after all. “B-but… you don’t have to worry,” Steven said as he turned back to the author. “I won’t tell anyone. I promise.”

“Very good,” Ford said, genuinely grateful as he rose to stand. “Now, both of you, follow me. We’ve much to do.”

Neither boy questioned the author any further as they hurried after him to the gift shop, watching in curious anticipation as he opened the hidden elevator behind the vending machine up. However, instead of taking them down to the basement lab, the elevator stopped on the floor between it, at an ornate wooden door that only Ford seemed to hold the key to. And needless to say that that boys were quite amazed by what they saw.

Contained between the gift shop and the underground lab was an entire floor in and of itself, one that surprisingly spacious, even despite the walls lined with full bookshelves and old, interesting artifacts and machinery strewn just about everywhere. The rather long room stretched back into a corridor with covered walls and a massive machine consisting of several large screens and a dizzying array of wires and buttons. Of course, both Steven and Dipper were absolutely amazed to discover such an impressive hideout, one that neither of them ever even knew existed before though Ford was steady as ever as he led the way into it.

“Welcome to my private study,” he began, not making much time to give the boys even a simple tour of the room. “A place where I keep my most ancient and secret knowledge. Even Stanley, Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl don’t know about this place, however, Rose did.” At this, the author briefly sent Steven a small, knowing grin over his shoulder, one that he only weakly returned as he continued following after Ford to the other end of the room. Dipper, however, detracted somewhat, curious to see exactly what knowledge his uncle might be keeping in this extensive collection, however, before he could really try to investigate, Ford urgently prompted him onward.

“Dipper, come along!” the author called as he began setting up the large machine, which was only labeled as ‘Project Mentum’. “If we can’t Bill-proof the shack, then we’re going to have to do the next best thing.” At this, Ford held up a rather old-looking metallic helmet, one that was connected to the machine by several wires and seemed to carry some sort of unknown purpose to it. “We’re going to have to Bill-proof our minds.”

Both Steven and Dipper let out a shared gasp at this, but even so, they were unable to hold back relieved smiles as they looked to each other. Because for perhaps the first time since last night, it seemed as though there was actually a way to fend Bill off after all, to keep him from tormenting them any further, from plaguing their thoughts and haunting their nightmares. And, after everything they’d been through because of the demon throughout the summer, that alone was enough to fill both boys with more hope than they had known in quite some time.

Even if such hope wasn’t destined to last.

With their unicorn-finding mission clear and their shared resolve burning, Mabel and Connie set out on their intrepid quest, gathering a motley crew consisting of Wendy, Candy, and Grenda to accompany them. And, as Ford had advised, the girls managed to recruit the first Gem they could find to act as something of a chaperone, said Gem just so happening to be Pearl, who had just ventured down to the shack to check on the kids as soon as Connie and Mabel stepped out of it. Without filling the white Gem in on much of their mission, she still decided to join the group, largely out of her lingering worry concerning the upsetting reveals made throughout the previous night. All the same, Pearl was somewhat surprised by just how overtly upbeat the majority of the group was as they ventured into the depths of the forest with only journal 1 and the knowledge contained therein to serve as their guide.

“It’s nice to finally be out on a mission, just us gals!” Mabel quipped as she led the way with a bit of an excited spring in her step.

“Well, a mission that isn’t super likely to put all of our lives in danger, at least,” Connie remarked rather knowingly.

“And exactly what the purpose of this mission again?” Pearl asked, making sure to keep an eye out for any supernatural monster that might possibly assail them. “You girls failed to really give me all of the details before we set out on this so-called ‘magical quest’ of ours.”

“Isn’t it obvious?” Grenda asked boisterously. “We’re going to meet, touch, and/or become unicorns!”

“U-Unicorns?!” Pearl gasped, completely appalled as she looked back to Mabel and Connie. “That’s what all this is about? Well, if that’s the case then you girls can count me out of this little venture!”

“What?” Connie asked as the collective group stopped short to look to the white Gem in confusion. “But why?”

“Why?” Pearl repeated incredulously. “Because simply put, unicorns are nuisances. They always have been, ever since we happened upon them decades ago. Even Rose couldn’t stand their self-entitled attitude and honestly I completely agree with her. I can’t even begin to fathom why on Earth any of you girls would actually want to actively go looking for such… infuriating creatures!”

“Because Grunkle Ford said that if we get a whole bunch of their hair then we can use it to make some sorta barrier thing that’ll keep the shack and the temple safe from Bill!” Mabel informed with a sense of pressing urgency.

“Wait, what?!” the white Gem exclaimed, even more stunned to her this. “Y-you mean there’s actually a way to arm ourselves against that… that monster? All this time and we had no idea… This changes everything!”

“So… does that mean you’ll help us find a unicorn?” Connie asked, exchanging a hopeful glance with Mabel.

Pearl hesitated for a beat at this, though inevitably she let out a long, begrudging sigh, knowing that she really had no other choice. “I suppose I will if I really must… Still, I wish there was another way of going about this… Dealing with those infernal unicorns almost isn’t worth the aggravation, even if it will potentially help us ward off Cipher…”

“Um… well, who knows?” Mabel said with a bit of a forced, encouraging smile. “Maybe unicorns aren’t as bad as you remember them being, Pearl. I mean, based on everything I’ve heard about them, they sound like they’re the most magical, sparkly, amazing magical horses out there!”

“I hear that if you lick a unicorn’s neck, it tastes like your favorite flavor in the world!” Candy added enthusiastically.

“Candy, I will make sure you lick that unicorn’s neck, because I care about my friends,” Mabel said with heavy resolve, remembering what Ford had said about unicorns only allotting their hair to the most pure of heart. And as far as Mabel was concerned, she was already that and then some, to the point that the unicorns very likely wouldn’t need any proof of her innate kindness and goodness at all. Or so she thought.

“Honestly, I stopped believing in unicorns when I was like, five years old,” Wendy remarked, casually swinging at low-hanging tree branches with her axe. “I’m just coming along to keep you kids from stepping into a bear trap and to make sure you guys aren’t too disappointed when you find out unicorns aren’t actually real.”

“Oh, they’re real all right,” Pearl countered, her eye twitching out of slight frustration over the thought of merely encountering any sort of unicorn alone. “Real aggravating.”

“Stop!” Mabel suddenly exclaimed as they reached a rather ethereal glade, filled with shimmering, otherworldly flora, ancient stone monuments, and the occasional fairy or sprite floating nearby. “This is the magical part of the forest! Now, let’s see…” The others gathered around her as she flipped through journal 1 before landing on a map of the mystical area they now found themselves in. “The gnome tavern is over there… the fairy nail salon is over there, but it says that to summon the unicorn, one must bellow this ancient chant droned by only the deepest-voiced druids of old.”

“On it!” Grenda proclaimed, grabbing the journal and rushing forward to the center of the glade. And from there, she got right to chanting, her abnormally deep voice carrying across the clearing as she belted the ancient non-melody out while the others stood by watching curiously.

“Ten bucks says nothing happens,” Wendy said, crossing her arms dubiously.

“I’ll take that bet,” Mabel smirked, confident that this chant would work. And work it did as suddenly, the entire glade began to violently shake. In response to Grenda’s deep, summoning chant, a massive stone structure began to rise up from the ground, one that was clearly mystical in nature based on its castle-like appearance and the shimmering golds and lush vinery decorating it.

“Here we go…” Pearl muttered bitterly to herself as the younger girls reacted excitedly, all of them rushing through the large wooden doors and into a place somehow even more dreamlike and enchanted than the magical forest it was situated in. A rainbow-accented waterfall fed a flowing stream that cut through the grassy enclosure, one that was inhabited by a pan flute playing faun and none other than an unquestionably magical unicorn, one that was practically straight out of fairytales and legends of old. Simply put, she was ethereal, lightly shimmering all over, from her pale blue skin to her bright, multicolored mane and tail, to her huge, wide, sparking eyes. She tossed her rainbow mane and let out a mighty neigh as the intruding group entered, almost all of them completely dazzled by her mere appearance alone, much less her actual existence.

“Mother of mothers!” Grenda gasped, amazed.

“Dream of dreams!” Candy exclaimed, just as stunned.

“It can’t be…” Connie whispered, shocked.

“No way,” Wendy scowled, especially as Mabel reached her hand up for the bet she had just won and the ten bucks she now had to fork over.

“Oh of course…” Pearl grumbled upon looking to the familiar unicorn poised before them. “It just had to be her…”

“Hark!” the unicorn proclaimed sharply, apparently communicating through her glowing pink horn. “Visitors to my realm of enchantment!”

“Oh my gosh! Oh my gosh!” Mabel squealed happily, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet. “What’s your name?”

“I am Celestabellebethabelle, last of my kind!” the unicorn introduced herself. “Come in, come in. Just… take off your shoes. I have a whole thing about shoes.” The girls were quick to comply, all of them removing their shoes at the gate save for Wendy and Pearl, both of whom were already none too enthused about this encounter in the first place. Even so, Celestabellebethabelle was quick to notice their belligerence and even quicker to call them out on it. “Ah, ah! I’m talking to everyone!” Despite their increased annoyance at this, both the cashier and the white Gem complied, though the unicorn let out something of an angry snort the moment she caught sight of Pearl in particular. “You! Crystal Gem!” she exclaimed hotly, slamming one of her hooves down. “I do believe I was quite clear with your leader many years ago that NONE of your kind are welcome back into my mystical domain! So please, be a dear and… REMOVE YOURSELF FROM MY PRESCENCE AT ONCE!”

“Oh, believe me, I gladly would,” Pearl huffed, crossing her arms as she unapologetically at the unicorn. “After all, the last thing I want is to be in the ‘presence’ of someone as completely gaudy and over the top as yourself, Celestabelle.”

“It is Celestabellebethabelle, and I will thank you kindly to remember it!” the unicorn snapped fiercely, lowering herself as though she planned on charging the white Gem herself, though fortunately, Mabel intervened before any such altercation could take place.

“W-wait!” she exclaimed, rushing to stand between the two before offering Celestabellebethabelle a very saccharine smile. “Heh, you’ll have to forgive Pearl here, she… had a pretty rough night last night.”

“I did not!” Pearl exclaimed defensively. “I’ll have you know that I tried sleeping for the first time last night and even if I still don’t understand the functional purpose of such an activity, I’d like to think that I still did a suitable job at it!”

“Pearl…” Connie whispered, giving the white Gem something of a pleading glance. And, despite her own apt frustrations at the unicorn that was still issuing her a rather harsh look, she begrudgingly backed down, knowing that acting out was doing nothing for their much more important cause.

“A-anyway…” Mabel continued, trying to make up for Pearl’s outburst with a heavy layer of politeness. “Celestabellebethabelle, we have journeyed far and wide-”

“About an hour!” Grenda chimed in.

“-On a mission to protect our family with your magical hair!”

“This is your chance, Candy…” Candy whispered to herself as she snuck to Celestabellebethabelle’s side, her tongue out as she leaned in close. “Lick the neck… lick it…”

“Very well!” the unicorn exclaimed, lifting herself up and her neck out of Candy’s reach. “Despite your rather… poor company,” she paused, briefly sending another cold scowl Pearl’s way. “I shall allow you this opportunity out of the immense goodness of my immaculate soul.”

“Oh please…” Pearl muttered, rolling her eyes at such an exaggerated claim.

“To receive a lock of my enchanted hair, step forth, girl of pure, perfect heart!” Celestabellebethabelle called, her tone as dramatic and bold as ever.

After a round of encouraging smiles and nods from Connie, Candy, and Grenda, Mabel stepped forward with a confident grin, assured that she’d be able to win the unicorn’s favor, even despite the rather rough start of this meeting. “Presenting… bum buh da bum bum ba bum bum! Mabel!”

Celestabellebethabelle seemed to take pause for a moment, as if sizing the girl before her up for a moment before letting out a harsh, appalled gasp. “What? You?!” she asked in what sounded like offended disbelief. “A unicorn can see deep inside your heart, child, and you have done WRONG!” To punctuate her claim, Celestabellebethabelle pointed the tip of her horn directly at Mabel, sparking up a bright, heart-shaped glow on her chest, one that was quick to turn dark and black, much to her alarm. “Wrong, I say!”

“W-what?” Mabel gasped, confused and distraught as she quickly covered her heart from the unicorn’s piercing gaze.

“But how can that be?” Connie interjected, quickly placing a comforting hand on Mabel’s shoulder as she addressed Celestabellebethabelle with apt seriousness. “I’m sorry to sound rude, but Mabel really is one of the kindest, most helpful people you’ll ever meet. Right, guys?”

“Yeah!” Grenda exclaimed in rowdy agreement.

“Absolutely,” Candy said resolutely as Pearl and Wendy also nodded.

“So… maybe your magical, uh… heart-scanning magic was just a bit… I don’t know, off?” Connie finished amicably enough.

“It is most certainly NOT ‘off’!” Celestabellebethabelle scoffed hotly. “A unicorn’s tuition is never wrong! And my intuition can confirm, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that THAT girl’s heart is nowhere near pure enough to obtain the prize of my glorious hair!”

“But-”

“H-hold on a sec, Connie,” Mabel interrupted with a fretful frown. “I… s-she… might have a point… I mean, I do make fun of Dipper a lot… Plus there was that whole… puppet show thing with Bill that was kinda mostly my fault… and I did just shatter a window with a crossbow…”

“Your bad deeds make me cry!” Celestabellebethabelle let out an embellished sob, rainbow tears spilling from her eyes and burning up the grass below on contact.

“Noooo!” Mabel cried, shocked and horrified by the unicorn’s incredibly harsh reaction. A reaction that was only garnished from her own apparently unknown lack of purity all along.

“Alright, that’s quite enough!” Pearl interjected hotly, sending Celestabellebethabelle a vicious glare as she came to stand defensively between her and Mabel. “Don’t think I’m not wise to your little ‘game’, Celestabelle.”

“Again, its Celestabellabethabelle!”

“I don’t care!” the white Gem huffed angrily. “If you think I’m going to let you get away with emotionally devastating a poor innocent child like Mabel, then you’re dead wrong!”

“Oh, well that’s just the thing,” Celestabellebethabelle remarked with a knowing smirk. “I don’t ‘have’ to get away with anything. I’m a unicorn. I do whatever I want! Including kick you out of my enchanted glen like the rabble you are.”

“Oh, I’ll show you ‘rabble’ you self-righteous, pretentious, over-glorified equine snob!” Pearl yelled, more than ready to summon her spear and outright attack if not for Connie and Wendy holding her back.

“Uh, Pearl? I’m with you on this whole thing being pretty screwed up, but you should probably reign it in just a little,” Wendy remarked as they began to lead the still quite hostile white Gem out of the glen.

“Yeah, its not worth it,” Connie agreed. “Well, I mean, it is worth it if it means we can get that hair protect the shack and the temple from Bill, but still we shouldn’t resort to violence to get it unless we absolutely have to.”

“Yes, yes, that’s right, leave with whatever small shred of dignity you have left,” Celestabellebethabelle said, turning her nose up at the rest of the group as they dejectedly left in defeat. “Perhaps try coming back when you’re PURE OF HEART!” At this, the unicorn let out another dramatic neigh, only to pause for a brief beat of silence as the group looked to her once more rather incredulously. “Exit is that way. Oh, and shoes! Shoes! Take your shoes! This isn’t some… some shoe store!”

And with that, the collective group was shut out of the unicorn’s glen, though thankfully it didn’t sink back into the ground, just in case they all decided to actually return again. Even so, that wasn’t something any of them were too keen on after the very cold reception they had just received from Celestabellebethabelle, especially Mabel, who was practically fighting back tears over the rather biting, perhaps accurate, claims the unicorn had made against her.

“Hey, Mabel, don’t let her get to you,” Grenda said as both her and Candy put comforting hands on their distraught friends’ shoulders.

“Yeah, I wouldn’t trust a horse that wears makeup,” Wendy scoffed, rolling her eyes over the unicorns’ uppity mannerisms.

“How dare that haughty horse pull that ‘not pure of heart’ gambit again,” Pearl remarked crossly, sending a cold glare back at the now closed gates of the unicorn’s glen. “I wouldn’t put any stock into anything she said back there, Mabel. After all, she had the gall to tell Rose, of all people, that she wasn’t pure of heart around the turn of the century! True, Rose may have made… a few mistakes in the past, but even so, such a claim is completely ridiculous; I mean, Gems don’t even have hearts in the first place!”

“Uh, I think what Pearl is trying to say, Mabel,” Connie interjected much more rationally. “Is that you shouldn’t worry about what that unicorn said about you. We can always find some other way to protect ourselves from Bill. Probably… Hopefully.”

“No, girls, she’s right,” Mabel said, sucking in a deep, resolved breath. “I used to be one of the sweetest people I knew, but recently I’ve been seriously slacking in the whole goodness department. Well, today, we’re gonna fix it! From this moment forth, I’m gonna do so many good deeds that I’ll have the purest heart in Gravity Falls!” With this dedicated proclamation, she threw a first up into the air with gusto, only for it to squarely strike a low flying bird by mistake, knocking out of the air and clearly injuring it, much to everyone else’s concerned surprise. “…That… that bird is fine.”

Knowing that time was of the essence when it came to halting Bill’s ambitions, Ford wasted none of it in calibrating his mysterious Project Mentum while the boys stood by, both of them curious, hopeful, and anxious as they mutually wondered whether or not this plan of action would truly work at all. Eager to finally be rid of the menace that was the dream demon once and for all, Dipper had volunteered to go first, with Steven patiently sitting next to him while Ford carefully hooked him up to the machine by way of its bulky metal helmet. Things had been rather quiet amongst the three of them in light of the seriousness of their shared endeavor, but when this tentative silence finally was broken, Steven was the one to do so.

“Um, Mr. Ford?” he began somewhat hesitantly as the author turned to the machine itself to finish setting it up. “Are you sure this is gonna work?”

“Yes,” Ford said, completely confident as he glanced over his shoulder. “I built this device specifically with the intent of using it as a defense against Bill quite some time ago. Which is why I have the upmost certainty that it’ll do its part in shielding you boys against his influence.”

Steven and Dipper exchanged another brief, somewhat hopeful glace at this, knowing that the promise of freeing themselves from the lingering nightmares Bill caused them even still seemed almost too good to be true. And yet, even that promise, as wonderful as it sounded, wasn’t quite enough for Dipper. Based on past encounters with the mysterious dream demon, as well as the Gems’ own horrific account given last night, he couldn’t help but still have quite a few questions concerning the looming threat that had been terrorizing them all practically all summer. “So… what exactly is Bill anyway?” he asked, hoping that, with his vast knowledge, Ford might hold at least a few answers to those questions.

“No one knows for sure,” Ford began, handing off a folder to his nephew that was simply entitled the ‘Cipher File’. Both Steven and Dipper glanced over its sparse contents, a few old documents that game only very brief, not very detailed information concerning matters only remotely related to Bill as the author went on. “Accounts differ of his true motivations and origin. What I do know is that he’s older than our galaxy, and far more twisted. His current domain is the Nightmare Realm, an unstable place of untold horrors all crafted by Bill himself. Thankfully though, he’s mostly confined there, for now. Without a physical form, he can only project himself into our thoughts through the mindscape. That’s why he wants this,” Ford held up the rift, being ever careful with its fragile form as the boys both looked to it apprehensively. “I dismantled the portal, but with this tear, Bill still has a way into our reality. To get his hands on this rift, he would trick or possess anyone.”

“Wait, so… he wants that rift too?” Steven asked, unconsciously placing a hand over where his gemstone was.

“Too?” Ford paused, turning to glance at the young Gem at this. “What do you mean ‘too’?”

“Uh… well…” Steven hesitated somewhat, though upon receiving an encouraging nod from Dipper, he decided it was best if he spoke his piece. “Last night, Bill showed up in a dream I had. He tried to get me to give him my gem, but after I told him no, he said that its already his since my mom promised to give it to him. The Gems are pretty sure that Mom never did that, but… I’m still not sure. What do you think, Mr. Ford?”

The author didn’t answer right away, instead looking to the young Gem with an expression of unquestionable alarm upon hearing such a claim. Yet at the same time, his reaction to the news was every bit as vague as it was when he learned that Bill had possessed Dipper, almost as if he was trying to conceal how he really felt about such a revelation. “So you’re the one he-” Ford quickly cut himself off, noticing the curious looks both boys were sending him as he immediately regained his usual scholarly composure. “Hm, yes, well, the fact that Bill is after your gemstone is extremely troubling indeed, Steven. Even so, I agree with the Gems; its highly unlikely that Rose would have agreed to turn over her gemstone to the likes of him, no matter what he might have promised her for it. As for why he might want it though, that’s… unclear. It makes sense that he’d want to get ahold of the rift, but its hard to say what he might want a gemstone—Rose Quartz’s gemstone in particular—for. Unless…”

“Unless… what?” Steven pressed, immensely curious.

Ford jolted at this, quickly shaking his head as if to clear it before offering both boys a somewhat forced reassuring smile. “Oh, i-its nothing, nothing at all,” he remarked with a dismissive wave of his hand. “What matters now is that we do what we can to protect our minds from Bill.”

“So how exactly do we do that?” Dipper asked intently.

“Well, there are a number of ways,” the author said. “I personally had a metal plate installed in my head by an otherworldly, seven-eyed oracle.”

“Heh, good one,” Dipper chuckled in response to such an admittedly outlandish claim. That is, until Ford proved it to be true by knocking against the side of his head, eliciting a strong metallic sound that was more than enough to get his nephew to awkwardly retract his doubt.

“But this machine is much safer,” the author continued, nodding to the several screens behind them. “It will scan your mind, bioelectrically encrypting your thoughts so Bill can’t read them. Now…” Ford paused, only to press the final button to set Project Mentum in motion. “Say hello to your thoughts.”

All at once, the machine sparked to life, its various screens filling in with Dipper’s own thoughts, putting them all on unfettered display for all three of them to see and hear as they cycled through at a seemingly random pace: “Oh man, I can’t believe I’m actually with the author!” “Is my fly down?” “Disco girl! Coming through!” “I miss Tyrone…” “Bill better stay away from Steven if he knows what’s good for him!” “I have to find a way to save Lapis!” “Huh, I might be just a little emotionally unstable… Maybe I should go get some therapy or something?”

“Um, y-you might wanna… ignore that last one…” Dipper said, quite flustered by his thoughts being so openly and unintentionally revealed like that.

“Whoa, that’s so cool!” Steven exclaimed, stars in his eyes. “I wanna see what my thoughts have to say! I mean, I already know what they say since they’re in my head, but I wanna see them laid out on a screen like that!”

“And you will,” Ford interjected. “After Dipper is done. This is a very delicate process that could potentially take hours to complete. Which means all we can do now is be patient and let the machine do its job.”

“Oh, well, uh, maybe in the meantime you could… I dunno, maybe fill us in on what your history with Bill is in the first place?” Dipper ventured, still quite eager to know exactly what the apparently quite significant context for Ford’s impressive knowledge concerning the dream demon actually was.

“Dipper, do you trust me?” Ford asked, his tone quite serious as he knelt down next to his great nephew.

“Well, yeah, but-”

“Then you’ll trust that that’s not important,” the author concluded staunchly, standing as he headed back over to his desk, leaving both Dipper and Steven as much in the dark as they ever were. “Now, focus. Its time to strengthen your mind…”

Determined to prove herself to Celestabellebethabelle, Mabel took to the town, the others following suit to do whatever they could to help her carry out the lengthy list of good deeds she had come up with. Their main objective was clear: to help out as many people as they could in the hopes that no one, not even the unicorn herself, would be able to deny that Mabel was not just more than worthy enough to not just obtain that magical hair, but also that her heart was overflowing with purity and goodness beyond compare.

And so the group set out to do just that, lending their cheerful aid to any troubled soul they could find. They moved snails from the danger of the streets to the safety of the grass and planted a tree right in front of the door to the Gravity Falls’ Gossiper office, unknowingly trapping Toby Determined inside of it. They helped Kiki on her pizza delivery route and fixed up several of the games at Funland Arcade. They gave Stan a literal smile in the form of a giant smiley face sticker slapped onto his face and Mabel even went as far as donating three pints of her own blood to those in need, disregarding her own lightheadedness after the fact. From there, they covered several smaller deeds on the list, like helping old ladies and ducks cross the road, to filling Lazy Susan’s tip jar, to sprucing up the town statues of Nathaniel Northwest and William Dewey with a fresh coat of glitter. Though their altruistic mission took several hours of hard, selfless work on their part, by the time they were finished, they all felt quite satisfied that they had met their goal, particularly Mabel as they began to make their way back to the unicorn’s glade.

“Boom! A thousand good deeds!” she exclaimed happily as she crossed the last item off her list. “When that unicorn scans my heart again, she’s gonna say that I’m absolutely, one hundred percent, bona-fide-”

“NOT pure of heart!” Celestabellebethabelle proclaimed after the group returned to her glen, her insistence on the matter just as harsh and firm as it was before.

“Booyah!” Mabel cheered, though she quickly changed her tune upon realizing exactly what the unicorn had said. “Wait… w-what?”

“How is that even possible?” Wendy asked with an incredulous scoff. “Mabel’s a straight up saint, you judgmental hoofbag!”

“Seriously, she just spent the entire afternoon helping people,” Connie added knowingly. “Doesn’t that mean anything here?”

“Please! Tell me what I’m doing wrong!” Mabel practically begged, distraught that her efforts were apparently all for naught.

“Doing good deeds to make yourself look better isn’t good at all,” Celestabellebethabelle remarked haughtily. “Not to mention you’re crushing like, ten dandelions right now. Those are basically children’s dreams.” Mabel let out a horrified gasp at this, quickly stepping off the small patch of dandelions she was incidentally standing on before the unicorn condescendingly continued. “I’m sorry, Mabel. It’s not my fault you’re a bad person.”

Unable to take the unicorn’s brutally harsh criticisms any longer, Mabel ran off, not even trying to hold back a heartbroken sob amidst this second, much more painful rejection. As appalled by Celestabellebethabelle’s rather cruel attitude as they were, most of the others didn’t stick around to chastise her on it as they all hurried out of the glen to make sure she was alright. All except for Pearl, who decided to hang back solely for the sake of giving the unicorn a few choice words in light of the completely shameful display she had just witnessed.

“You may have those girls fooled, but you’re not fooling me,” the white Gem said, her voice almost a vicious hiss as she glared at the unicorn unflinchingly. “I know what you’re trying to do here. You did the exact same thing to Rose Quartz about 100 years ago so if you think I’m going to stand by and let you tear someone else down like that, especially someone like Mabel, then you’ve got another thing coming!”

“Oh really?” Celestabellebethabelle deadpanned, clearly not taking the white Gem seriously. “And what exactly might that ‘thing’ be?”

“Trying to act like you’re some grand authority on the contents of a person’s character!” Pearl exclaimed hotly. “I don’t know who made you had the right to judge others like you do, but whoever they were, they probably knew as little about actually being good and kind as you do.”

“As if you really know any better?” Celestabellebethabelle scoffed crossly. “The last time you were here a century ago, the only thing I saw you do was helplessly cling to your precious Rose Quartz as if she was paradigm of perfection. But even still, all these years later, I still stand what I said. She’s not pure of heart and neither are YOU!”

Pearl simply let out a harsh scoff at this, not even bothering to dignify the unicorn with a response to this as she simply turned on her heel to leave, though not before giving one final, bitter remark as she departed. “I don’t need some sanctimonious unicorn to tell me that,” she huffed, her anger dissipating into remorse as she completely turned away, recalling a certain recent mistake of hers that had all but proved her impurities through and through. “After all…” she muttered to herself somewhat sadly. “I already know…”

However, the white Gem’s self-pity didn’t last too long as she left the unicorn’s glen, only to find the girls all gathered around Mabel, who was lying close to the nearby stream, curled up into a miserable ball as she wept quietly, even despite the comfort the others were trying to offer her.

“Come on, Mabel,” Wendy encouraged earnesty. “Don’t beat yourself up about this.”

“Let’s just forget about that dumb hair and go home,” Candy advised, though Mabel was having none of that.

“It’s not just about the hair anymore, guys,” she sniffled as she sat upright and held her list of failed good deeds close. “It’s about me. Being kind and sweet is what makes me who I am. If I’m not a good person, then who am I?”

“Well, I know who you are,” Connie interjected, placing a steadying hand on Mabel’s shoulder. “You’re Mabel; you’re fun and creative and most of all, kind, no matter what that unicorn says. And you don’t have to prove that to anyone, especially not her; because as far as we’re all concerned, that was something we all knew from the very start.”

Upon hearing this, Mabel briefly looked up at Connie, her cheeks still wet with tears as she met the warm smile her friend was offering her. And for a moment, her encouraging, hopeful words almost managed to convince her that it was true, that she was a good person, despite Celestabellebethabelle’s claims. And yet… it still wasn’t quite enough. “I-I appreciate it, Connie, but… she’s right…” Mabel sighed sadly as she pulled her shoulder away. “Its time I finally admit it to myself; I’m just not as pure of heart as I used to think I was… Which is why I’m not leaving this spot until I think of a deed that makes me as good as Celestabellebethabelle!”

“But Mabel-” Grenda attempted to reason before she was promptly cut off.

“Just leave me be!” Mabel snapped in morose frustration, turning her back to the group as she began pondering over her list once more. The other girls were largely at a loss over what to do to comfort her at this juncture, but even so, they didn’t get much of a chance as Pearl discreetly called them all over to her spot under a nearby tree.

“Alright, enough is enough,” the white Gem began as soon as they had all gathered near her. “It’s time to put an end to this unicorn nonsense once and for all. And the sooner we do it, the better, especially for Mabel’s sake…” Pearl frowned as she stole a sympathetic glance at the miserable girl sitting only a few feet away, desperate to find a way to make herself worthy in the eyes of a creature who clearly didn’t deserve that kind of valiant effort.

“I’m with Pearl on this one,” Wendy staunchly agreed with a deepening scowl. “If you ask me, this whole thing is a serious load. Mabel’s like one of the best people I’ve ever met. We tried getting that hair the nice way; now its time we try the Wendy way.”

“Are you suggesting violence? Sabotage?” Grenda asked, caught off guard.

“Oooo… you know, normally I’m not the kind to approve of such roguish behavior but… in this instance… that sounds… quite intriguing…” Pearl remarked, sending a daring smirk towards the nearby unicorn’s glen.

“Honestly, at this point? I’m up for trying something like that too,” Connie said, crossing her arms. “Its about time someone puts that awful unicorn in her place, so it might as well be us.”

“But what about Mabel?” Candy asked worriedly. “She’s not going to like this…”

“Mabel doesn’t need to know,” Wendy shook her head dismissively. “Look, its time we stopped trying to be so ‘perfect’ and be who we really are. We’re crazed, angry, sweaty animals—well, except for you, Pearl, I guess. No offense.”

“None taken,” Pearl said, nodding for her to go on with her inspiring rand.

“But anyway, we’re not unicorns, we’re WOMEN! And we take what we want!” To punctuate her point, Wendy slammed her fist into the nearby tree, eliciting excited cheers from Connie, Candy, and Grenda alike as well as a satisfied grin from Pearl.

In fact, the newfound revelry was so contagious that Grenda ended up smashing a rather large rock to bits against her forehead, instantly quieting the cheers as the others all looked to her, aptly startled. “…Too much?”

“Ok,” Wendy said as the group huddled in to begin their ambitious, albeit morally ambiguous plan. “Here’s what we’re gonna do…”

Gnasty’s Gnome Tavern was by and large the most popular gnome tavern anywhere near Gravity Falls, largely since it was just about the only gnome tavern in the surrounding area. Its usual patrons were a notoriously rowdy bunch who spent their days knocking back honeysuckle shots and exchanging the regular brutal punch or kick to the face to anyone in the remote vicinity. Yet despite their renowned roughhousing, none of the gnomes occupying the tavern were quite prepared for the much larger group that rather violently burst into the bar completely out of nowhere.

“It’s the cops!” one of the gnomes cried as the tavern was immediately thrown into a panic as the group of girls forcefully pushed themselves into the hallowed-out tree. “Hit the deck!”

“We’re looking for someone who knows how to take down a unicorn!” Wendy shouted fiercely amidst the clatter of scattering gnomes. “No tricks or games!”

“We are human!” Candy yelled, breaking an empty bottle over a nearby table and holding its sharpened end up threateningly. “We take what we want!”

“I know a sure-fire way of K.Oin’ a unicorn,” a rather shady, grizzled gnome sitting in the darkened corner of the tavern spoke up. “Too bad I ain’t in the market for spillin’ that kinda info to a bunch of normal-sized girlies like yourselves.”

“Oh, I think you will,” Connie said coldly, drawing Rose’s sword and aiming its sharp tip directly at the gnome.

“Heh,” he chuckled, surprisingly not surprised by this overt threat. “I like the way you ladies operate. So, listen up. Fairy dust; a whole magic bag’s enough to put a unicorn out cold. But if I do you a favor, then you gotta do somethin’ for me.”

“Just spill it, half-pint!” Grenda roared, slamming her fist against a nearby tree stump.

“Now, now, patience,” Pearl advised much more calmly as she looked back to the gnome with solid seriousness. “Name your price.”

“Butterfly traffickin’ is illegal in this part of the forest,” the gnome began, his voice low and discreet. “But I like butterflies. They tickle my face and make me laugh. Bring me a bag of butterflies and we got a deal.”

The girls all exchanged a dubious glance at this, most of them rather bewildered by how the odd rules and regulations of gnome culture. Even so, they were quick to nod their agreement to this plan, knowing that this haggle would be more than worth it to make Celestabellebethabelle pay for what she had done.

Fortunately, it didn’t take the group but a few minutes to capture a whole bag full of butterflies before meeting up with the gnome in the designated clearing. The others all hid out in the nearby bushes as they sent Grenda in to preform the trade, her manner just as unsuspecting as the gnomes as she quietly handed him off the bag of butterflies before he produced his end of the bargain.

“Two bags of fairy dust, just as we agreed,” he said, turning over two small pouches of the glittering substance.

“Where do you get this stuff?” Grenda shook her head, glancing between the dust and the gnome.

“Everyone likes sausage, but no one likes to know how it’s made,” the gnome smirked as he peeked into his bag of butterflies.

“You disgust me.”

“Hey, you got your poison; I got mine. We made a deal.”

“Yeah, well, the deal’s OFF!” Grenda shouted, blowing a whistle to summon an entire squadron of gnome policemen from the nearby woods. The arrangement with the cops had been an easy enough one to make, one that resulted in a meticulously planned-out sting operation that was already unfolding exactly as planned.

“Freeze!” the chief shouted as the first gnome was heavily pinned down by the other cops, his butterflies quickly swiped away from him. “You’re under arrest!”

“These butterflies aren’t mine! I swear I’ve been framed!” the gnome cried, sending a harsh glare to Grenda and the other girls as they came out of the bushes to join her.

“Tell it to the adorable owl we’ve dressed as a judge,” the chief scoffed as the gnome as hauled away for sentencing. “My cut?” he held his hand out to Grenda a beat later, and she handed him one of the two bags of fairy dust, just as they had agreed upon.

“Has the gnome criminal justice system always been this corrupt?” Connie asked with a somewhat concerned frown over these shady proceedings.

“Oh believe me, they have,” Pearl remarked, crossing her arms knowingly.

With the butterfly bust complete and a full bag of fairy dust still in hand, the group wasted no time in hurrying back over the unicorn’s glen, taking care to not let Mabel spot them as she remained at her spot near the stream, still trying in vain to come up with more good deeds to accomplish. With Celestabellebethabelle distracted with reading as she was, she didn’t even notice as they all slipped into her magical domain, filing in behind a row of rocks and trees so they wouldn’t be seen as they prepared to carry the final steps of their daring plan out.

“Oh, sure, I wish I could travel, but its just not feasible in this economy!” Celestabellebethabelle huffed to herself as she read through her copy of Whinny, Prey, Trot. However, it was only a moment later that the unicorn was struck squarely in the face with the full bag full of fairy dust as a result of Candy’s accurate aim. “W-what the hey-!?” was all she really had time to say before the magical substance did its trick, knocking her out cold. Her attending faun witnessed all of this with apt horror, but as he tried piping out an SOS on his panflute, Grenda was quick to slip out of the shadows and cover his mouth with a towel dosed with a healthy amount of chloroform.

“Sleep now!” she hissed as the faun slowly went limp and unconscious as well. “Sleeeeeep…”

“Alright,” Pearl said as the others hurried over to the fainted unicorn. “Let’s get this over with.”

“Right,” Wendy nodded, pulling out a pair of scissors and a sizable lock of Celestabellebethabelle’s multi-colored hair. And yet, before she could make the decisive cut, their plans all too quickly fell through when they were unexpectedly discovered by the very person they had been trying to keep their ambitions a secret from in the first place.

“No, wait!” Mabel gasped, standing in the entrance of the glen only to see the others about to outright steal some of the unicorn’s precious hair. “Stop! What are you guys doing?!”

“What does it look like we’re doing?” Pearl asked in a careful whisper, glancing over at the still unconscious Celestabellebethabelle. “We’re taking what we deserve, whether that uppity unicorn likes it or not!”

“Yeah, seriously, Mabel, keep it down!” Wendy cautioned, moving her scissors in to clip the hair. “You’ll wake her up!”

“But this is wrong, you guys!” Mabel exclaimed, swiftly taking the scissors away from the cashier.

“But protecting the shack and the temple is good,” Wendy rationalized, trying to take the scissors back. However, before she could, the unthinkable happened as Celestabellebethabelle suddenly began to stir from her momentary slumber only to spot Mabel and the scissors she was unintentionally gripping the very moment she opened her eyes.

“What?!” the unicorn gasped, quickly rising to her feet. “Doth mine eyes deceive me?! THIEF! You shall never be pure of heart!”

“N-no!” Mabel cried, instantly dropping the scissors as she looked to Celestabellebethabelle pleadingly. “Y-you don’t understand! I-I wasn’t… it was… P-please!” she ended up begging, tears falling from her eyes as she made one final, desperate plea to the outraged unicorn, even though she knew it likely wouldn’t help her now. “I-I just wanna be good like you!”

Celestabellebethabelle was more than prepared to fire off a harsh retort at this, however, right as she was about to, this intense confrontation was suddenly interrupted by a very unlikely pair. “Whoa, whoa, whoa, you’ve gotta be kidding me,” a male voice said, coming from one of the two unicorns that had just emerged from the other side of the glen, one red, one blue, and neither of them looking that amused with Celestabellebethabelle in light of what they’d just witnessed. “Yo, C-Beth, are you seriously pulling that whole ‘pure of heart’ scam again?”

“That is messed up, man,” the other unicorn added, shaking his mane disapprovingly.

“Wait… scam?” Mabel asked, exchanging a confused glance with the others.

“Listen, kid,” the blue unicorn began rather dryly. “Unicorns can’t see into your heart. All our dumb horns can do is glow, point towards the nearest rainbow, and play rave music.” To prove his point, his horn began to somehow play a bout of upbeat techno music, which he could easily switch off at ease.

“Yeah, the whole ‘pure of heart’ racket is just a line we use to get humans to leave us alone,” the red unicorn said with a knowing scoff.

“Guuuuuys…” Celestabellebethabelle whispered nervously as her entire scheme began to fall apart. “Shut uuuuuup…”

“Wait, so… it was a lie all this time…?” Pearl spoke up before breaking out into a bout of triumphant, albeit somewhat unhinged laughter. “Ha! I knew it! I knew she was a fraud! All these years and I was right! It really was just a cruel trick to tear others down all along! Oh, if only Rose was still around to hear this, I bet she’d feel just as vindicated as I do right now!”

However, despite the white Gem’s zealous excitement, not everyone was as elated to hear the truth of the unicorn’s malicious gambit. “All this time…” Mabel began, her voice low and practically shaking with rage as she crushed her list of good deeds in her hands altogether. “All this time I thought I was a bad person, but you’re even worse than I am!” Her anger reached its mounting height as she threw her notepad down hard, her hands in tight fists as she glared at Celestabellebethabelle, refusing to let the deceptive unicorn be the judge of her any longer.

“Ok, fine,” Celestabellebethabelle huffed haughtily, knowing she’d been caught. “So you learned our secret. We’re jerks, ok? We have more hair than we know what to do with, and we keep it to ourselves just to tick humans off. So, what are you gonna do about it, huh? Huh? What are you gonna do-”

The unicorn was abruptly cut off the moment one of Mabel’s fists made brutal contact with the side of her jaw, instantly drawing some of her sparkling, rainbow-colored blood. Just about everyone gasped in shock in light of this sudden attack, and even Mabel herself was stunned by it as she looked to her own blood-covered hand, one that quickly turned back into a fist as she sent Celestabellebethabelle another hateful glare.

“Woo! Go Mabel!” Wendy cheered, already pulling her axe out of its hoister to join in on the fight.

“Join the dark side!” Grenda yelled, grabbing a nearby log to use as her weapon.

Mabel did just that as she fiercely tore the unicorn stitched onto her sweater off, making it quite clear that her former admiration and respect for the hypocritical mythical creatures was all but completely shattered right then and there. This sentiment of righteous fury carried throughout the rest of the group as well, with Wendy, Candy, and Grenda cheering for the no doubt oncoming fight as Connie swiftly drew her sword and Pearl even went as far as summoning her spear.

“You know, I usually don’t believing in physically harming any of the magical creatures of Gravity Falls,” the white Gem began as her expression slowly changed into a vengeful smirk. “But in this case, I’m more than willing to make an exception.”

“Oh, so it’s a fight you want, huh?” Celestabellebethabelle growled, digging her hoof into the soil below her as her fellow unicorns prepared themselves for the inevitable brawl. “Well, then it’s a fight you’re gonna get!”

Without any further hesitation from anyone, both sides rushed each other, meeting in a violent clash that quickly devolved into boundless chaos. Mabel was initially kicked back clean in the face by one of the unicorn’s hard-hitting hooves, though Connie was quick to swoop in for retribution, slamming the dull edge of Rose’s sword against his head in a decisive move. Grenda had landed one of the other unicorns in a headlock, repeatedly punching it in the face as Candy jumped onto his back and pulled on his hair as he let a heavy neigh of protest. Wendy was the first to get the jump on Celestabellebethabelle herself, only to be nearly trampled underfoot as she reared up high. Even so, she quickly fell back to the ground as Pearl landed a swift, elegant kick to her gut, one that was followed up by Mabel coming in for another punch to her snout. As intense and wild as this scuffle was, none of the girls could really deny that it was cathartic as could be; with each blow or beating they inflicted upon the deceitful unicorns, it felt as though there weren’t just taking out their anger in some much-needed revenge. It felt as though they were righting a grave wrong, breaking out of molds that they saw no reason to belong in any longer, and rising above unattainable standards that never truly existed in the first place. And most of all, they were proving, not just to Celestabellebethabelle, but to themselves, that the content of their characters was no one’s call but their own.

A feat that in and of itself would have been rewarding enough; though socking a sickeningly snobbish unicorn clean in the jaw only made that reward all the better.

As Ford had said, Project Mentum’s mental encryption process worked at an incredibly slow pace, something that Dipper and Steven realized more and more every time they stole a glance back at the screens behind them, which, even several hours later, still only showed its minimal progress at a mere 15%. In fact, it was taking so long that Ford had ended up falling asleep amidst pouring over his notes, leaving the boys to keeping themselves entertained during what was certainly a very lengthy, very boring endeavor.

“Ok, its my turn,” Steven grinned as he carried on the rather one-sided game of ‘I spy’ they had playing. “I spy with my little eye something… blue!”

“My vest,” Dipper answered immediately, clearly far from invested, especially when compared to the young Gem.

“Oh yeah, you got it!” Steven cheered brightly. “Then again, that one wasn’t that tough since there aren’t a lot of blue things in here.” The young Gem chuckled lightly at this, though his humor died down somewhat as he glanced over to far less enthusiastic friend beside him. “Um… Dipper? Are you ok?”

“Huh?” Dipper sat up a little at this, glancing over to Steven briefly. “Oh yeah, I’m fine, its just… we’ve been at this for hours now and it really doesn’t seem like anything’s actually happening.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, how do we really even know that this thing is actually gonna keep Bill from messing with us anymore?”

“Well, Mr. Ford said-”

“I know what Ford said,” Dipper sighed in growing frustration, especially as he glanced over at his sleeping great uncle a few feet away. “But how does he know? Why does he have to be so mysterious about Bill anyway? The Gems told us what they know about him, so why won’t Great Uncle Ford? He knows we’ve dealt with Bill before, which means whatever he’s keeping from us, I can handle it! I-I mean, we can handle it.”

“Maybe… he’s just not ready to tell us about it yet?” Steven suggested, largely respecting the author’s call on this. After all, given just how brutal and horrific the Gems’ past was with Bill, it only made sense that if Ford’s previous encounters with the dream demon were anything of the sort, that he’d be hesitant to discuss them. Dipper, on the other hand, was not so easily allayed.

“Hm… or maybe…” he trailed off, his sights still set on the author as his thoughts, made audible by the machine he was still connected to, filled in for him. “Maybe you should just use the machine! It’ll show us his thoughts!”

“H-huh?” Steven glanced behind him, somewhat alarmed to see and hear Dipper’s thoughts once more, especially as Dipper himself hardly seemed to pay them any mind. “Dipper, I… don’t know if using the machine on Mr. Ford is such a good idea…”

“Yeah, you’re probably right, we really shouldn’t…” Dipper said in apparent agreement, though his thoughts clearly said otherwise. “Great Uncle Ford won’t have to know. He’s going to tell you anyway.”

“Y-yeah, I’m sure he will!” Steven interjected anxiously. “Which is why we should probably just respect his privacy and let him tell us when he’s ready! R-right?”

“Right, right,” Dipper nodded, closing his eyes pensively as his thoughts continuing unveiling the truth. “No, not right! The more you know about Bill, the safer you’ll be! The more you can help!” “But then again… it could show us something really useful. You never know.”

“W-well, I do know that I think this is a bad idea,” the young Gem shook his head, his dread growing more and more by the second in light of his friend’s rather concerning thoughts, especially as they began to take on something of a more frustrated tone.

“Easy for Steven to say, he wasn’t the one who Bill tricked and possessed and nearly killed like YOU were!” Dipper’s expression darkened at this recollection, something that made Steven’s heart and stomach both sink in worry and fear alike. And those feelings only spiked as Dipper slowly removed the helmet, his stream of consciousness finally going silent as he kept his resolved sights on Ford and nothing else. “I’m sorry, Steven,” he said, his voice almost unnervingly quiet as he rose to stand. “But I have to know.”

“B-but-”

“It’ll be just a quick peek, I promise,” Dipper assured, casting a brief final glance back at Steven before carefully and quietly putting the helmet on his still-sleeping uncle. “What are you hiding about Bill…?”

The moment that Dipper finished securing the helmet onto Ford was the moment he got his answer. And that answer was much more horrifying than anything either him or Steven could have expected. For as soon as the device began to read the author’s thoughts, none other than the menacing image of Bill Cipher himself appeared on all of Project Mentum’s many screens, floating amidst a background of his iconic, sinister blue flames and cackling like the madman he was absolutely known to be. Unified gasps of equal fear rose up from both of the boys as Steven shot out of his seat, rushing to Dipper’s side as they watched with wide eyes and racing hearts as Ford’s slumbering thoughts told a story that neither of them ever thought they’d see.

“Where are these ideas coming from?!” A much younger McGucket yelled to a younger Ford, harshly shaking his shoulders as he gave him a look of complete and utter distrust. “Who are you workin’ with?!”

“Stanford, you HAVE to tell me what’s going on!” Another screen switched to Rose, her expression rife with worry as she spoke to the author just as urgently. “Who is ‘he’? Why won’t you let me help you instead?!”

“Because I don’t NEED you as long as I have him!” Ford shouted back, quite furious with the pink Gem for whatever reason.

The other screens were just as active as they flashed with an array of alarming images. Ford restlessly tossing and turning in his sleep, lost in an apparent torrent of unseen nightmares. Him writing “I’M LOSING MY MIND!” and “TRUST NO ONE!” into journal 3 in frantic, erratic script. The portal, sparking to life as nothing but sheer darkness and devastation lay beyond its otherworldly light. And throughout all this, several different voices joined in, weaving into this disjointed, frightening narrative each in their own unique, disconcerting way.

“My brother is a dangerous know-it-all…” Stan warned, though Ford himself soon cut him off with a warning of his own.

“He would trick or possess anyone-” the author had said and Steven and Dipper hadn’t doubted him. And yet the next scene they saw was more than enough to make them both doubt everything Ford had every said to them.

“Then it’s a deal,” Ford smiled, young and clearly confident as he held his hand out in offering. “From now until the end of time.”

Bill’s eye flashed with some unknown intent as he also extended a hand, one that was aglow with blue flames as he spoke with faux amicability. “Sure thing! Just let me into your mind, Stanford!”

“Please,” the author’s smile widened, completely oblivious to the danger the dream demon posed as their hands met in a solidifying shake over their ‘deal’. “Call me… a friend.”

The very next thing the boys saw was the result of this deal, Ford himself possessed by Bill, his eyes dark slits against piercing yellow and his voice mingling with the demon’s as they both cackled wickedly together in perfect, awful unison.

While Steven was largely stunned into silence by all this, Dipper only managed to get a few words out himself, even despite his own immense panic as the demon’s telltale maniacal laughter rang in his ears just as much as it had when he had been pulled out of his own body weeks ago. “N-no…” he choked, his voice barely a whisper as he shook his head in disbelief, hoping and practically praying it wasn’t true. “No, i-it… it can’t be… Ford a-and… and Bill?!”

Another sharp gasp rose from both boys as a sudden clamor rose from behind them, and as tense as they already were, they quickly spun around only to find that Ford himself had finally woken up at the very worst possible time. “You shouldn’t have done that…” the author said, his voice low and dark as he slowly stood. By his expression alone it was clear he as tranquilly furious, even though his eyes were obscured by the screens’ bright reflection off his glasses, which only served to make him even more admittedly intimidating as he towered over both of the terrified boys. Even still, Ford hardly seemed to note their obvious fear as he roughly took the helmet off and tossed it aside in his anger. The helmet just so happened to strike one of the many sheets covering the walls as it landed, easily pulling them down to reveal something that only made the boys’ palpable horror skyrocket exponentially.

Hidden behind both layers of curtains and secrets was what could only be defined as an all-out shrine to Bill Cipher. Several statutes prisms and statues of the demon were tucked away into the shadows, almost like twisted idols paying homage and reverence to someone who both Dipper and Steven knew to be an absolute monster worthy of no such honor. But worst of all, the walls were covered in detailed murals depicting Bill’s triangular over and over again, all of his painted eyes seeming to stare down at the frightened boys below them.

“W-what is all this?!” Steven asked, his entire body trembling as he forced himself to look away from the depiction of the demon who had haunted his dreams just a few hours prior.

“W-why… why were you shaking hands with Bill?!” Dipper exclaimed, quickly turning back around to face Ford, quickly glancing around for some means of defending himself and Steven, just in case. Fortunately, the Sword of Seasons was sitting on a table close by, largely since Ford had been tinkering with the invention a bit earlier, and even though the thought of drawing that blade against his own uncle made him sick, Dipper grabbed it nonetheless, as well as the memory erasing gun lying right next to it. “Steven! Grab the rift!”

Steven sucked in a sharp breath at this but he didn’t argue, quickly grabbing the rift off the table next to them, though amidst his rush to summon a bubble to further protect them, he nearly dropped the precious tear altogether.

“Careful!” Ford scolded harshly, his glasses still reflecting gold as he reached out to grab the rift, though he couldn’t get too close thanks to the bubble now surrounding the pair as they began to carefully back away. “Hand me the rift! Now, boys!”

“N-no!” Dipper retorted, trying to sound as brave as he could amidst his mounting fear. “You said Bill could possess anyone so he could get this, but—but you made a deal with him! How do we know you aren’t Bill right now!?”

“Now, just calm down, p-”

“Pine Tree?!” Dipper instantly cut Ford off, finally aiming the memory gun at him as opposed to his sword as memories of constant sleeps plagued with endless nightmares where Bill taunted and teased him with that very nickname flashed through his mind. “Is that what you were going to call me?!”

“I was just going to say please, kid!” Ford rationalized, but even so, his tone was still harsh and cold. By now, the boys had essentially backed themselves up into a corner, leaving them trapped with only Steven’s bubble serving as their only real defense against what could very well be Bill Cipher.

“Great Uncle Ford told me to protect the rift!” Dipper shouted, glancing over to make sure that Steven was still holding it close and tight. “And I’m not about to let you get your hands on it or on Steven’s gem! Get one step closer and I’ll shoot!” He aimed the memory gun up a bit higher at this, with the full intent to fire it off even despite knowing full well what its effects could be. “I’ll erase you right out of Ford’s head!”

“It’s me, Dipper!” Ford yelled hotly, his severity hardly calming either of the boys down whatsoever. “It’s your uncle!”

For the briefest moment, Dipper hesitated at this, his hands shaking as he tried, so very hard to believe that it really was just Ford, that Bill wasn’t using him as his own twisted puppet just as he had been weeks ago. And yet, he knew he couldn’t; because doing so could very well put himself, Steven, and even reality itself at risk. And that was a risk he wasn’t about to take when it came to Bill. Not again, not ever again.

“Steven, drop the bubble,” he said starkly, his tone every bit as shaky as his arms were.

“W-what?” Steven’s longstanding fearful silence finally broke at this, his eyes wide as he clung onto the rift and looked to his friend in disbelief.

“I said, drop it,” Dipper repeated, still not tearing his hardened gaze off of Ford, especially as the author threw his hand down onto the bubble’s pink surface out of anger.

“B-but that’s-”

“I know.”

“But if you shoot him, t-then his memories will-”

“I know, Steven!” Dipper shouted back fiercely, finally looking to the young Gem and allowing him to see just how much panic, rage, and sorrow were all mingled into his expression all at once. “Just drop it already!”

At this final, harsh command, Steven found he could no longer argue as he instead pulled the rift even closer to his chest, closing his eyes tightly as he slowly let the bubble disappear, leaving nothing between them and Ford. Nothing that is, safe for the memory gun that was brightly sparking with its erasing light in Dipper’s hands.

“T-trust no one…” he muttered to himself, tears starting to well up in his eyes as he prepared to squeeze the trigger. The author’s own mantra rung true, certainly in a moment like this, when even the person who wrote it himself couldn’t be trusted. And while Dipper had failed before in upholding it, he knew that he wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice, not when so very many things that mattered so much to him were at stake. “Trust no one! Trust-”

“Hand it to me!” Ford demanded, and it was at that moment that Dipper knew he had no choice. On a beat of sheer terror and impulse alone, he squeezed the trigger, the bright beam firing off directly at the author as both boys were knocked back by it. Miraculously, the ray struck Ford clean on his glasses, which reflected it perfectly and sent it bounding across nearly every surface in the entire room. Steven was quick to protect himself and Dipper from it by way of his shield, though as soon as the beam struck it, it ricocheted upwards towards the many screens of Project Mentum, where it finally met its end by breaking every single one of them in the process.

And yet, this brief bout of chaos only gave way to another one. Both Steven and Dipper were quick to act on sheer panic, knowing that Bill could very well still be in control of Ford and out to get them both. Dipper quickly dropped the memory gun and took up the Sword of Seasons instead, yet before he could do anything with it, Ford suddenly grabbed him by the back of his vest, easily hoisting him up into the air. He nearly latched onto Steven’s arm as well, though the young Gem had the wits about him to pull away just in time and run, taking the rift with him. That is, until he heard Dipper’s fearful struggle against the author holding him.

“L-let go of me!” he cried, weakly swinging his sword about in moves that showed no signs of hitting Ford, as far out as he was holding him.

“Dipper!” Steven gasped, stopping dead in his tracks as he hurriedly set the rift aside and ran back towards the action. “W-wait! Stop!” The young Gem cried, completely panic stricken as both the events of a particular puppet show as well as his own haunting dreams the previous night came rushing back to him in an oppressive torrent. “I-I’ll give you my gem! Just please, don’t hurt him again!”

Both Ford and Dipper froze at this, surprised gasps escaping both of them as they looked to Steven with what seemed to be horrified shock. And yet, for as shaken as he was, Dipper used this brief distraction to his advantage, finally landing a blow on the author’s arm with the very tip of his sword. It wasn’t too large or deep of a cut, but it did cut through his coat and sweater and break the skin just enough to catch Ford off guard and force him to drop his nephew entirely. Steven quickly rushed over to him, summoning his shield and tightly grabbing Dipper’s free hand as the two of them stood together, more than ready to defend themselves against the demon who had caused them both so much pain and devastation.

Or, at least they would have been if Bill was actually present there at all.

“N-now, now, just calm down,” Ford advised, his tone much softer as he adjusted his glasses, finally allowing the boys to past the reflective glare. “Look into my eyes, both of you. It’s me, not Bill, I promise you.”

Upon seeing the lack of telltale signs of Bill’s possession, Steven and Dipper both finally let out the heavy breaths they had been holding in, yet even so, they hardly relaxed. Dipper in particular quickly picked up another round of hyperventilating, especially as he caught sight of the bleeding wound torn across Ford’s arm. A wound that he had inflicted.

“I-I… I tried to erase your memory…” he began, quickly dropping the Sword of Seasons as he pulled his hand out of Steven’s. “A-and then I hurt you! I hurt you with the same sword you made for me!”

“Dipper, it’s just a scratch, it’s fine,” Ford tried to reassure as he covered the relatively harmless injury, though his nephew was having none of that amidst his massive wave of guilt and anguish.

“No, its not fine!” he practically shouted, his tears quickly starting to return as he pressed his hands to his head in remnant terror. “I messed up so badly! I used the machine on you without even asking you about it because I couldn’t just wait for you to tell us the truth about you and Bill for yourself! And then I just had to go and make it even worse just by being dumb enough to believe you were possessed by him!”

“Dipper-” Ford attempted to interject once more, only to be drowned out by the boy’s ongoing hysteria.

“W-what was I even thinking?!” Dipper yelled, his hand now pressed tightly against his chest as his breathing grew even more short and frantic. “How could I be so stupid?! Every time I try to convince myself that I actually stand a chance against Bill, I only end up doing is ruining everything and it just keeps happing no matter how many times I try to fix it! B-but… but there just isn’t any way to fix this… There’s no way to fix me…”

Dipper had just about broken down into a remorseful, painful sob, yet before he could fall apart again, Steven quickly rushed in to help hold him together. He stilled, letting out an almost inaudible gasp as the young Gem suddenly hugged him from behind, wrapping his arms tightly yet securely around him in a steadying, comforting embrace. “You don’t need to be fixed,” Steven assured, his voice a gentle, warming whisper as tears started to well up in his own eyes. “You don’t need to fixed because you aren’t broken. You’re gonna be ok someday. We’ll be ok. I promise.”

As overwhelmed by his own many mingling emotions as he was, Dipper didn’t offer too much of a response to this reassurance outside of the small, somewhat weak sob he had been holding back. All the same, he did slowly reach up to place his hands over Steven’s, more than grateful for his support and solidarity in a moment such as this. While he wasn’t entirely certain that he’d actually ever truly be ok as Steven had said, what Dipper did want to believe that he did at the very least have a chance at someday moving past all of this lingering fear and dread. And, with someone like the young Gem standing beside him to keep him standing hopeful and strong, that was a belief that he didn’t have too many difficulties holding onto.

Ford let out a long, remorseful sigh as he watched the boys’ embrace slowly break apart, but even so, he largely averted eye contact with either of them, even as he hesitantly spoke up. “Dipper, Steven,” he began rather pensively, clear shame leaking into his tone as he continued gripping his injured arm. “I… deeply appologize for what just happened. I never intended to frighten either of you. But, I can say that if I really had been possessed by Bill, then you both would have done great, especially you, Dipper. I only wish I had been more like you when I was younger…”

Of course, given everything that had just happened, Dipper was quite surprised to hear such praise coming from the author himself. But Ford’s proud smile and comforting hand on his shoulder was indeed finally enough to put an end to his already fading panic attack once and for all as it gave him the realization that, perhaps this time, he hadn’t really made as momentous of a mistake as he at thought. “T-thank you…” he said quietly, somehow smiling in spite of it all.

Ford returned his nephew’s smile briefly, though all too soon it vanished into a look of shame as he glanced up at the countless images of Bill on the walls surrounding them. “I was a fool to hide all this…” he said, a hint of bitterness in his tone as he shook his head. “The reason why I’ve been trying to prepare you boys for Bill’s tricks is because Bill tricked me. It’s the biggest regret of my life. Bill wasn’t always my enemy, you know. In fact, I used to think he was my friend…”

1981

For six years, Ford’s ongoing research of Gravity Falls and its incredible anomalies had been going strong and steady. With the invaluable help of the Crystal Gems, he had unearthed discoveries that would certainly boggle the mind and ensure him a coveted spot in the scientific community once he one day published his findings. Yet even despite this success, the young researcher still craved to know more; he wanted to know exactly why Gravity Falls was such a hotbed for strangeness, where did all of its bizarre creatures and landmarks originate from, how did such unbelievable things even exist in their world at all?

And yet, for all his wondering and all his theorizing, these were questions that Ford never seemed to find the answers to on his own.

Even despite the Gems’ vast knowledge on the oddities of Gravity Falls, they themselves were plagued by the same questions of their origins as well. Which was why, when the collective group had dedicated themselves to uncovering those answers, they all too quickly hit a stark and heavy roadblock in their research. Weeks of intensive thought and pointless leads had gotten them nowhere closer to discovering the truth, and even despite Rose’s warm encouragement and reassurance, Ford was starting to become rather frustrated by his own lack of any concrete findings. If he couldn’t discover just why Gravity Falls was so strange in the first place, then what was really the point of any of his hard-earned research at all? Without a strong and proven theory to back it all up, certainly no one would ever believe his accounts of the paranormal, downright mythical sights the town had to offer. He might as well have packed all of his things up and headed home, a thought he had considered as his hopes running dryer and dryer by the day.

Until…

In order to clear his jumbled thoughts, Ford had, almost randomly, decided to take a break from his research to go on a calming walk through the woods. Bereft of the Gems by his side as he usually was, the author casually decided to venture down an unmarked path he had never taken before, only to happen upon a mysterious, somewhat darkened cave that had never showed up on any of his maps of the surrounding area whatsoever. Curious, Ford ventured inside, with only his lantern light to guide him, only to find something that left him reeling with amazement. The entire cave was covered in ancient markings that likely dated back thousands of years; though they it was somewhat hard to make out, the writing described a powerful being who possessed the answers to all of humanity’s wonderings. And yet, despite such miraculous claims, the cave markings were also quite grave, with dire warnings against summoning this being lest impending doom and disaster strike. All the same though, Ford was desperate; certainly, if such a being did exist and was as wise as these carvings claimed, then perhaps they might be willing to finally provide him with the truth he so intently craved.

And so, with only slight trepidation, the young researcher read the summoning inscription aloud, only for nothing to apparently happen as a result. Disappointed with what he assumed was nothing more than ancient legends and folklore, Ford left the cave, eventually deciding to take a brief rest under the shade of a tree not too far away. Of course, the young researcher hadn’t expected to doze off in the warmth of the afternoon sun, but he did all the same; and as he did, his dreams provided him with what he believed, at least at the time, was nothing short of a miracle.

Needless to say that Ford was quite amazed upon opening his eyes only to find himself floating amidst a vast, peaceful space-scape, one littered with countless stars, notes, lab equipment and even journals quite similar to his own drifting all around him. The young researcher had no idea what to make of any of this as he began exploring this intriguing space, only to be met by something, or rather someone even more bewildering.

“Hiya, smart guy!” Ford spun around with a gasp upon hearing this unexpected voice echoing through the void, but who he saw was the last thing he could have ever expected. It was a being that was, simply put, a triangle, bright yellow in coloration with only a single slitted eye to emote with and thin black limbs to over the young researcher a friendly wave of greeting. “Whoa, calm down there! Don’t have a heart attack, you’re not 92 yet!”

“W-who are you?” Ford asked, his initial alarm turning into immense curiosity at such a bizarre being.

“Name’s Bill!” he introduced himself brightly with a cordial tipping of his long tophat. “And your name’s Stanford Pines, the man who changed the world! But I’m getting ahead of myself; let’s relax! Care for a game of interdimensional chess?” With a simple snap of Bill’s fingers, a translucent chess board appeared out of midair, along with a comfortable chair on each side of it. “Have a cup of tea!” he exclaimed warmly, materializing a teapot and cup to pour into, one that floated directly over to Ford, who was more than fascinated by this point.

And thus, their friendly game of interdimensional chess was underway, and through it, the young researcher was able to learn a good bit more about his new acquaintance. According to Bill, he was a muse, one who chose to inspire one brilliant mind every century with his boundless knowledge and wisdom. And with apparent excitement in his tone and a playful wink of his singular eye, he cheerfully informed Ford that, impressed by his zeal in researching Gravity Falls, he had selected him to be the one to receive his otherworldly insight next. Of course, the young researcher was elated by such an incredible offer, and, without really thinking at all, he gladly accepted it on the spot.

From that point on, Ford wholeheartedly considered Bill to be his research partner just as much as he did with Rose and the other Gems. And yet, for as excited as the young researcher was by this new alliance, Bill gently cautioned him against informing the Crystal Gems of it, mostly to keep from arousing any distrust or suspicion on their end. While Ford was somewhat confused by this warning, he decided to uphold it nonetheless, for certainly the Gems, as stuck in their rather alien ways as they often were, wouldn’t understand the contract between himself and a higher being such as Bill.

Even so, right from the start, Ford saw the immediate benefits of his newfound deal with Bill. Not too far into their regular meetings within the dreamscape, the triangular being unveiled the very thing the researcher had been looking for: a way to finally answer his longstanding questions concerning Gravity Falls’ weirdness. According to Bill, all of the town’s strangeness leaked into it from another dimension entirely, and the key to discovering that dimension would be by way of a grand gateway, a portal to another world entirely. To this end, he even provided Ford with complete schematics to such a seemingly impossible machine, one that he gladly allowed the researcher to add his own ideas and equations onto to improve it even more. After all, it was as Bill told him: this was how genius happened, and all as a result of a little help amongst friends.

And, for the longest time, that was what Ford fully and fool-heartedly believed.

So construction of the portal began, with the Crystal Gems and Fiddleford to aid Ford on the corporeal end of things while Bill continued to provide his unseen yet very impactful assistance through his dreams. As weeks turned into months, Ford’s determination on the project grew even more determined and intent, especially as Bill regularly reminded him that the portal would certainly give him all the answers he had ever hoped for and then some. To further lend his aid, Bill even volunteered to keep work on the portal going, even when Ford himself was too physically exhausted to persist. By simply allowing his muse to come and go through his mind, possessing him as he pleased, the young researcher saw his productivity practically spike tenfold, pushing progress on the portal along even faster. What Ford didn’t notice amidst his enthrallment with the invaluable help his muse was providing him with, however, were the worried looks Fiddleford often sent his way, the confused whispers between the Gems as they wondered exactly what was going on, the general, unvoiced dread between his other partners in general as they questioned whether or not they were the only ones working with the author on his mysterious portal after all.

And all too soon, they all were quick to discover such worries were not unfounded, in perhaps the worst way possible.

The moment that Ford and the Gems hurriedly pulled Fiddleford out of the finished portal after he was accidentally sucked into it was the moment the author began to suspect something was wrong. However, his alarm only grew when the mechanic and the Gems all angrily quit the project in a huff, leaving him alone with his anxious pleas to Bill, pleas that were only answered by quiet, sinister laughter and a single, ominous message: “The door is open…”

Desperate to know exactly what went wrong, Ford ventured back into the familiar dreamscape him and Bill often met in, determined to get to the bottom of exactly what path his supposed muse had led him on. “Bill!” Ford shouted hotly, rushing towards the triangular being as he lingered before a tear in the space-scape, one filled with vague silhouettes of countless untold nightmarish creatures. “You lied to me! Where does that portal really lead?!”

“Hoho, looks like Mr. Brainiac finally got smart!” Bill laughed deviously as he turned around to face the author, no longer masking his malicious intent. “Let’s just say that when that portal finishes charging up, your dimension is really gonna learn how to PARTY! Right guys?” he asked his apparent ‘friends’ inside of the otherworldly tear, who all simply roared and cackled in a chorus of wicked triumph.

At first, all Ford could do was let out a gasp of shock as he realized just how much of a monster Bill truly was. But blinded by flattery and charming games as he had been, the author had never once considered that the demon planned on tricking him, had been using him as nothing more than a foolish pawn to meet his own destructive ends all along. “N-no!” Ford exclaimed, resolved to fix this incredible mess he had mad. “I… I’ll stop you! I’ll tell the Crystal Gems everything and together, we’ll shut that portal down once and for all!”

“Ha, as if!” Bill rolled his eyes, clearly not taking the author seriously. “You really think Quartzy and those Crystal Chumps are ever gonna trust you again after all this, then you’re gonna be sorely disappointed! All the same, a deal’s a deal, Sixer! You can’t stop the bridge between our worlds from coming, but it would be fun to watch you try! Cute, even!”

At that very moment, Ford awakened with a stark gasp, his eyes wide and his heart racing as he reeled with everything he had just heard. Bill had betrayed him, that much was clear and there was no undoing the massive mistake he had made by even trusting the insane demon in the first place. Which meant that the only thing he could do now was try to minimize the damage before things could get any worse. Acting quickly, the author shut down the portal in the hopes that it would never be active again, lest Bill gain access to the Earth as he so eagerly wanted. From there, Ford quickly filled what he could of his third and final journal with frantic and paranoid warnings concerning the demon and his tricks, even though he planned to hide his research so no one could ever finish the demon’s treacherous work.

And yet, despite these valiant efforts, Bill had been right in the fact that his deal with Ford still very much stood. No matter how much the author tried to protect himself against the demon, Bill still had complete access to his mind, just as they had agreed years ago. Just about any time Ford happened to slip into the depths of slumber, even amidst his growing panic and insomnia, Bill was more than happy to take over, littering the journal with his own inane coded ramblings and even going as far as to injure his pawn just for fun. In fact, it was in the midst of one of these wild spells of possession that Rose herself happened to discover just how much Ford had really been hiding from her all along.

“Stanford?” the pink Gem called as she entered into the author’s secluded study one chilly autumn day months after their own partnership had ended. “Are you in here? I-it’s been a while since any of us have heard from you and I’m starting to worry if-”

Rose cut herself off with a sharp gasp as she finally spotted Ford, digging a knife into his upper arm as he slowly looked back at her with a huge, uncharacteristic grin of sheer, sadistic glee. “Oh, I wouldn’t worry about Sixer here, Quartzy!” he quipped in a voice that the pink Gem immediately recognized. A voice she had never wanted to hear ever again. “In fact…” His smirk widened as he pulled out the blood-soiled knife. “I’d say he’s doin’ A-ok!”

“I-it… it’s you…” Rose shook her head in disbelief, her voice but a stunned, genuinely fearful whisper.

“Yep, it sure is me!” Bill exclaimed brightly as he began to walk over to the terrified pink Gem. “Right here in the flesh. Or, I guess in Fordsy’s flesh, but since he did decide to let me in whenever I want, I guess you could say it is mine after all!”

“B-but… but how did you… when did you-”

“Oh, it looks like Sixer really did chicken out about telling you after all, huh?” Bill asked with a knowing glint in his slitted yellow eyes. “Turns out I’ve been the one pulling his strings all along! Dumb old ‘Brainiac’ here let me give him the plans to a certain gateway that I remember someone else promising to build for me way back when. A gateway that’s gonna give me a one-way ticket to your perfect little planet, Quartzy.”

“M-my… t-the portal?!” Rose gasped, overwhelmed with shame and terror at the thought. “N-no… no, you… you tricked him! You tricked all of us, just like you did before! If I had known that you were behind all of this, I would have never allowed Ford to-”

“See, that’s just it, Quartzy!” the demon interupted smugly. “You didn’t know. No one did, and all because it was so easy to get him to do whatever I wanted. Now that I mention it, that sorta sounds like you, doesn’t it? In that case, you really do belong down here with these dumb old humans seeing as how you’re just as empty-headed as any of them are!”

Rose practically had to fight back the urge to draw her sword upon hearing such callous remarks, reminding herself exactly who the demon was possessing at the moment. “G-get out of him,” she ordered as sternly as she could. “Right now.”

“Oh, don’t worry, I’m leaving,” Bill shrugged casually. “But only ‘cause Fordsy’s about to wake up. In the meantime, have fun dealing with the fact that you’ve basically doomed your precious planet over several times over. See you and that rock you still owe me next time, Quartzy!”

And with that the author’s eyes fell shut, his entire body growing limp as he slipped into unconsciousness. Rose barely managed to catch him before he hit the ground, healing tears already spilling down her cheeks to work on the several injuries Bill had left behind as Ford slowly, painfully awakened.

“Hm… R-Rose?” the author groaned as he opened his eyes to find the pink Gem anxiously hovering over him.

“F-Ford…” the pink Gem whispered, holding back a sob. “Why didn’t you ever tell me a-about… about him…?”

Ford quickly looked away from Rose at this, knowing exactly who she was talking about and not even having to ask how she found out about him. “B-because…” he began, deciding to finally be honest with her. “I was too ashamed to tell you about the terrible mistake I made…”

“No,” Rose corrected, offering a hand to help him up. A hand that seemed to offer so much more than that and then some. “It’s a mistake we made…”

And it was a hand that Ford only barely took. For even though he immediately came clean to Rose about his deal with Bill as well as the demon’s inevitable betrayal right then and there, he still hesitated to trust her any further with helping him in the matter. After all, he had trusted Bill and had seen where that had gotten him. How could he trust Rose, or anyone else for that matter after such a cruel and immense deception?

But in time, he did decide to trust her again, though only for the sake of helping him hide his final journal away. Later he would wish he had only trusted her more, for perhaps if he had, it could have saved him from all of the tragedy and woe that had began following him like a shadow. And yet, he didn’t, deciding to walk alone in his fear and anger and carrying one, single sole resolve all the while.

To stop Bill Cipher’s twisted ambitions. No matter what the cost.

Present Day

“Bill’s been waiting for the gateway to reopen ever since,” Ford finished his lengthy tale, his tone still quite grave as Steven and Dipper tried to take it all in. “All he needs to do is get his hands on the rift. To Bill, its just a game, but to us, it could mean the end of our world…”

“Oh man…” Dipper sighed, shaking his head with immense worry. For so long now he had been preoccupied with the threat that Bill potentially posed to himself and his friends that he had never really even considered just how destructive and devastating the demon’s ends really were. But now, it was clear; if Bill had his way, then certainly nothing would survive, a fact that only served to make both him and Steven alike fear him even more than they already did, if such a feat was even possible.

“Oh man, indeed…” Ford nodded with serious agreement, briefly glaring up at one of the many images of Bill on the surrounding walls. “I know that I might never truly be able to compensate for the foolish error I made in trusting Bill, but I’d still like to think that preventing him from getting that rift is a start. Unfortunately though, I don’t think I’ll ever be able to make up for the brief time I actually decided to trust him over Rose…”

“Why not?” Steven asked with a worried frown.

“Well, simply because I never got around to making amends with her,” Ford sighed rather sadly. “I was so consumed by paranoia and dread at the time that the thought never really crossed my mind to just… appologize to her for all that went wrong between us. I chose Bill over Rose and I completely ruined our partnership and our friendship as a result. I’d easily count that as my second biggest regret because now… well, I doubt I’ll ever get the chance again.”

The three of them were quiet for a long time after this, all of them feel rather small under the scrutiny of the eyes of the effigies of dream demon on every wall around them. In time, it was broken, again by Steven, whose voice was small, but sincere as he addressed Ford once more. “I think she would have forgiven you…”

The author couldn’t help but finally smile in spite of this, knowing that, even if that forgiveness hadn’t come from the pink Gem herself, it still felt genuine and comforting all the same. “Thank you, Steven,” he said, choosing to believe that if Rose herself was still around, then perhaps she would have said the exact same thing.

An air of solemnity hung between Ford, Dipper, and Steven as they went upstairs, largely since Project Mentum was no longer a viable option to safeguard them against Bill. Their thoughts and worries were still largely on the dream demon, even as they unanimously decided to take a much needed soda break around the kitchen table in what was initially fretful silence until Dipper ended up breaking it.

“Ugh, I’m still so embarrassed about earlier…” he said, clearly bothered by his burst of blind panic in the study. “I’m such an idiot.”

“No, you’re not!” Steven chimed in earnestly. “You were just scared, we both were! At least this time, if we really had been up against Bill, we would have been able to fight him together. Just like we will next time, right?”

“Right,” Dipper said with a small laugh, truly comforted by the young Gem’s continued reassurance.

“Dipper, I can assure you, you have nothing to be ashamed of,” Ford added just as sincerely. “From now on, no more secrets between us. We’re not the first ‘idiots’ to be tricked by Bill, boy. But if we all work together, then we could be the last. And the same thing goes for you too, Steven. For now, I suggest following what the Gems said to protect your gem from Bill at all costs. I’m still not sure how him getting his hands on it would factor into his plans, but we can only assume that if he did get it, the outcome would not be good.”

Steven simply nodded at this, still resolved to do what he could to keep his gem out of the demon’s possession. Even if he did still secretly wonder if his own mother really was the one to promise it away to him or not…

“But… what about Bill?” Dipper spoke up anxiously. “I broke the machine! Now we have no way to protect the shack or the temple!”

“Did somebody say unicorn hair?!” Mabel shouted as she suddenly burst into the room, slamming down a fistful of shimmering, rainbow-colored hair onto the table. Pearl, Connie, Wendy, Grenda, and Candy all filed in behind her, all of them looking much worse for wear with torn clothes, bruises, scratches and various multicolored unicorn fluids covering them from head to toe. Even so, they all wore bright, satisfied smiles, their mission accomplished and their vengeance against Celestabellebethabelle and her deceitful tricks achieved.

“Um… no actually,” Dipper frowned, pushing Mabel’s hand away as she playfully waved the hair in his face.

“Oh. That would have been perfect,” she shrugged before quickly perking up again. “Either way, we got some unicorn hair!”

“Also some unicorn tears, unicorn eyelashes…” Candy listed before Grenda continued, holding up a large, ornate chest.

“They finally gave us this treasure just to get rid of us!” she proclaimed, dumping the contents of the chest onto the table to reveal a massive horde of gold and jewels.

“Not to mention we got to put a very irritating, very unethical unicorn in her place,” Pearl said, crossing her arms with a smug smirk. “So all in all, I’d say it was a very successful day.”

“Also, a pretty weird one, what with that butterfly sting operation and our all-out brawl with the unicorns,” Connie added, rubbing some unicorn blood off her arm.

“Whoa, that’s so cool!” Steven exclaimed, stars in his eyes as he looked to the girls. “I knew you guys could do it!”

“It… can’t be!” Ford exclaimed, just as amazed as he looked to the plentiful clump of unicorn hair Mabel had gathered. “This is a great day, girls! With this unicorn hair, we should be able to completely shield both the shack and the temple from Bill’s mind reading tricks!”

“Is it ok?” Mabel asked, her tone hopeful as she handed the hair over to her uncle.

“Its better than ok, its perfect!” the author laughed warmly as he placed a proud hand on his niece’s shoulder. “You’ve protected your family and your friends. You’re a good person, Mabel.”

“Aw, thanks, Grunkle Ford,” Mabel smiled, glad to hear it. After all, she’d much rather have the approval and support from those she cared about then some uptight, uncaring unicorn any day. “But today, I’ve learned that morality is relative!”

Before anyone had the chance to question her on this somewhat bizarre life lesson, Stan suddenly rushed into the room, hurrying past the treasure-laden table and grabbing a plentiful armful of it in his wake. “MONEY!” he shouted wildly as Amethyst ran in after him, grabbing yet another load of treasure with a rowdy laugh and another bout of her somewhat botched Spanglish.

“Viva larga CHASH MONEY!”

Not wanting to waste any more time to risk subjecting themselves to Bill’s tricks any further, Ford and Dipper got to work, Steven and Pearl both volunteering to join them in erecting shields around both the temple and the shack. It was a lengthy, somewhat dull process in gluing the long strands of unicorn hair around the foundations of both structures, with the temple in particular proving to be something of a challenge given its large perimeter and odd structure. Even so, as soon as they were done, a magical shield, covered in mysterious protective runes and symbols, bloomed around both buildings before fading back into invisibility, ensuring that them and everyone within them, would be in no danger from the dream demon’s tricks.

“Perfect!” Ford grinned as they finished up on shielding the shack. “This should protect us from Bill. As long as we’re inside either the temple or the shack, our minds—and gems should be safe.”

“What a relief!” Pearl sighed as she placed a hand on Steven’s shoulder. “If only we had something like this 24 years ago. It would have saved us a lot of trouble, to say the least.”

“Well, who knows?” Steven interjected with an encouraging smile. “Maybe now that we have these barriers put up, there won’t be anymore trouble!”

“Yeah,” Dipper agreed, unable to hold back his own allayed grin. True, Ford had said that the protection spell was only a safeguard and not actually a way to vanquish Bill once and for all. But if it truly could give them a much-needed reprieve from the demon’s mental games and relentless tormenting, then for now, it would be enough. “No more trouble. I’d say that sounds like a pretty good deal.”

Unbeknownst to the group standing outside of the shack, they were all being watched by a familiar, singular eye, one that was carefully observing their every move from his home deep within the unimaginable depths of the horrific Nightmare Realm itself. Bill couldn’t help but let out a mocking laugh as the motley crew celebrated their success, success that he knew was only going to be very short lived if he had anything to do about it.

“That’s what you think, Pine Tree,” the demon remarked, hands held behind his back as he finally looked away from his peek at the shack. “Still, I guess if I can’t possess anyone inside the shack or the temple, then I’ll just have to find my next pawn… on the OUTSIDE…”

At this, the demon’s eye rolled back, a variable roulette of people and Gems alike, either in or around Gravity Falls: McGucket, Lars, Candy, Pacifica, Jenny, Tyler Cutebiker, Mr. Smiley, Lazy Susan, Manly Dan, Sadie, Soos, Onion, Peedee, Greg, Robbie, Lolph, Dundgren, Barb, Jamie, Durland, Blubbs, Kiki, Sour Cream, Preston, Priscilla, Toby Determined, Mr. Fryman, Malachite, Nanefua, Lee, Nate, Ronaldo, Blendin, Connie, Shandra Jimenez, Kofi, Kevin, Grenda, Vidalia, Mayor Dewey, Gorney, Tambry, Yellowtail, Buck, Bud, and Wendy. As far as Bill was concerned, any of them would make excellent puppets to use in furthering his sadistic schemes along.

And fortunately for him, he already had the perfect pawn in mind…

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