Of Good and Evil (Fiolee) - Ch.8

“…Then I ran all the way home, balling my eyes out.”

Fionna finished her story quite bluntly; with a certain frankness that caused Marshall to admire her, as opposed to viewing one with his normal condescension.

Marshall sat with his hands behind him, propping himself up in a sitting position with Fionna lying on the ground near his out-stretched legs. Her blonde hair was splayed out behind her head much like her dress, which also lay across the grass around her. They were sitting on a soft, green hill overlooking the Candy Kingdom and all its sugary glory. There wasn’t a tree on the entire hill, allowing for a perfect viewpoint of the stars.

It was late in the night, and the moon was high overhead, illuminating the grass, creating a calming effect. The stars were sprinkled around the sky, and as they sparkled indefinitely in the dark blue above, the unlikely pair of adventuress and vampire gazed up at their beauty.

After Fionna had regained her sanity from her run-in with Gumball, she had apologized profusely. Then she began her explanation from the very beginning of her tale. She started at about the time she had developed a crush on Prince Gumball. The crestfallen girl explained her whole story to Marshall, which included recapping the embarrassing kiss from earlier that day in the garden.

He sat the entire time, listening to her in the cool, placid night. He didn’t interrupt with rude comments or anything thereof. The Vampire King simply nodded every so often to show he was listening. Fionna was surprised with herself for telling all this to a boy she had only met a few days ago. She usually only told these things to Cake and LSP, but she felt oddly comfortable when she talked to Marshall, and she had an inner feeling her story was safe.

“Yeah. I don’t blame you,” Marshall said finally.

Fionna just looked up at the sky with a straight look on her face. Unemotional, unexpressive.  After a moment she spat irritably into the sky with ample emotion. “It was a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake.” Her voice broke at the end, and she was very angry with herself. Reviewing the day’s events was a little too much for her.

Marshall frowned. He pushed himself up so his face was hovering over Fionna, showing her his disappointed face.

“There’s no such thing as a stupid mistake.”

Fionna frowned back up at him. “Oh yeah? You don’t think any of that entire story was stupid?” She gestured widely to the sky.

“Well… Some of it was pretty stupid,” He smiled, “But it wasn’t anything you could control.”

“Really?” Fionna’s eyebrows furrowed. She sat up, shoving Marshall away as she came. They both shifted so her gaze was now level with his. Her eyes glinted in the night. “You think you’re so clever! Seriously?! What have you been through that makes you so full of wisdom?!”

Marshall looked at the verdant grass and chuckled sadly. “Oh, if only you knew…”

Fionna flopped back down on the grass in a very dramatic-teenager way. “You’re impossible!” Although she seemed clueless, she saw something change in Marshall’s eyes when he reflected on the past.

He smiled a bit more, looking at the moon. After a few more heartbeats of tortured silence, Fionna spoke.

“So are you going to tell me your story, or do I have to beg?”

He shook his head, almost laughing at her. “No… It’s not important.”

“You sure?”

“Yeah…” He picked at the grass.

“I’ll listen” She said. “Seriously.”

Fionna sat upright again so she could look Marshall in the eye. But his gaze was still cast down.

He just shook his head, an unspoken symbol to drop the subject.

Fionna sat in the grass, tongue-tied. She wished that Marshall would tell her about what happened to him, but at the same time, she didn’t. The more she thought, she had no idea what he had been through. It could’ve been, and probably is, ten times worse than her boy problems. Then, amidst reflecting on this thought, a question popped into her head.

“How old are you?”

He shrugged. “Eighteen, nineteen. Maybe twenty.”

“You don’t know?”

“Well, I don’t really celebrate birthdays.”

Fionna’s mind worked; gears were turning away in her brain. She had to get something out of him. It’s only fair. She had already spilled her guts to him. So she pressed on with questions.

“Is that how old you really are?”

Marshall shifted uncomfortably, but he didn’t force Fionna to change the subject. She could see the shame and sorrow in his gaze.

“No.” He looked up at her. His dark eyes hoped to find her shocked, or maybe even scared. But she wasn’t. Her eyebrows were raised expectantly. She wanted an answer.

“I dunno. Old-ish.”

“What’s old-ish?”

“I don’t know. Old!”

“Just tell me.”

He let out a huff of air. “One-thousand and three.”

Fionna blinked a few times.

Then a few more.

Then the shock was gone.

Marshall looked at her, hoping she’d run away screaming, although something else in him was hoping she didn’t.

And lo and behold, she did not.

She sat back on her hands. She looked him up and down, her face unchanging. Marshall held his breath, waiting for her to reply. Finally she said “No wonder you don’t believe in stupid mistakes.”

Marshall laughed, letting out the air he was holding in a happy chuckle. Marshall had tried to scare Fionna, but she clearly wasn’t going anywhere yet. He ran his hand through his hair. That relieved him, just a little bit. A very subtle feeling of relief.

But he would no doubt scare her away soon. Soon she’ll be running for the hills. It was only natural.

“But really,” Marshall protested, “What can you say that you’ve done that was a real, true, stupid mistake.”

“Did I not just explain the kissing-and-getting-rejected incident?”

“Yeah, but think about it. If you hadn’t kissed the Prince and it made you angry, you wouldn’t be right here. On this hill. With me.” Marshall finished off with a signature arrogant comment to lighten his statement. “And who wouldn’t want to be with me?”

Fionna shoved him, and he fell back laughing. His sharp canines caught the moonlight as he laughed. She flopped back down so their heads were almost touching, laughing along with him. After their laughing died down, Fionna sighed. Although Marshall Lee was still a mystery to her, she was completely content in hanging out with him like this. And, although she wasn’t aware yet, so was he.

They took the time and cherished every moment looking at the stars. Each one, bright, twinkling, and bold. The stars had never looked this beautiful to Fionna.

“Fionna?” Marshall interjected on Fionna’s inner thoughts. “See all these stars, way up there?”

“Uh, yeah. That’s what we’re looking at, dude.” Fionna said in such a way that reminded Marshall that she was still a young girl, an experienced adventuress yet still naïve and immature.

“Yeah, but think about them. Don’t you ever think, that maybe, there’s some universal force that has our whole life planned out for us? Like who we meet and where we go? I mean, you go on adventures, and you see tons of crazy things. Don’t you even feel like, maybe it’s meant to happen like that? Like destiny? Like everything that is going to happen is set in stone already?” Fionna turned her head, and looked at the outline of Marshall’s face in the moonlight. He stared straight upward, and his eyes blazed. Fionna was surprised at his solemnity, especially for a playful musician. His words carried so much weight with them; he seemed truly sagacious, truly wise. She barely knew this boy, but he was inspiring all the same.

When he finally turned his face towards her, his shadowy eyes were soft and genuine.

“If our life is written in the stars, how can there ever be mistakes?”

-

Fionna and Marshall Lee talked for what seemed like years. The quiet night went on peacefully as they conversed, looking at the sky, and just enjoying the calm of the outdoors.

At times it seemed like Marshall Lee opened up to Fionna more than she’d expect any man, let alone a thousand-year-old vampire. Then there were sometimes when he seemed so distant, so secretive, he left Fionna wanting to know more. She ached to know his past, feeling compelled to pry in a way she really didn’t want to feel at this early stage of friendship. But something about him was so thought provoking. The young adventuress knew that after she went home she would lay awake, wondering, yearning, and longing to know what made him so indifferent. She could already tell this was going to consume her thoughts, and she didn’t like it.

He would tell her things that were not at all relevant. Marshall told her about his old guitar, what he ate for breakfast, the time he scared the living daylights out of a tiny Candy Kingdom citizen who thought he was a candy-hungry bat. He never spoke a word about his family, or his history, or anything that actually mattered. Fionna tried to act nonchalant, but inside she wanted so badly for him to spill. What had he gone through that brought on that speech? What had he gone through that made him so sagacious? What had he gone through that created these multiple personalities?

After Fionna had told her story about Prince Gumball, nothing was said about the kiss for the rest of the night. Fionna liked it that way. She wanted to forget her dumb, yet necessary actions. What Marshall had said about mistakes had healed a portion of the hole created by Gumball’s rejection. In a way, the speech had helped with her emotional recovery, and left a warm feeling in her heart that made her smile.

Although she wanted the night to go on forever, the young blonde couldn’t stop her arms from stretching up over her head as she let out a big yawn.

Marshall patted her head as if she was a dog. “Aw, tired aren’t you?”

“Shut up! Like you never sleep,” She nudged him crankily, and then froze, realizing what she had just said.

Marshall didn’t reply because he could tell Fionna understood. It wasn’t as though a seasoned adventuress like herself didn’t have a basic knowledge of vampires. They are creatures of the night, nocturnal beings. Marshall in particular is the rock star king of the nighttime hours, Fionna concluded from what she had witnessed.

Fionna was quiet. She sat fidgeting for a moment, until Marshall finally broke the silence. “Why don’t I take you home?”

“What?”

“Come on,” He flicked her blonde hair with a lazy smile. “Let’s go.”

“You’re going to—” Fionna’s words were cut off with a gasp when the teenage Vampire King morphed into a bat of epic proportions. He resembled the small bat he shape-shifted into back at the daycare, but on a massive scale, as tall as the distant trees.

He reached down with his scrawny bat arms and flung her up onto his back. She yelped, as she flew through the air and was up on Marshall the bat before she knew it. His big hairy wings stretched out to sickening lengths. “Hold on, girl!”

Fionna clung to the bushy bat hair for dear life, and it reminded her greatly of his fluffy black hair when he was in human vampire form. It was a lot like riding Cake, she noted, but in a flying method of transportation.

Up this high the breeze blew in her face and she looked up, and felt as if she could touch the stars. Marshall flew very fast, he glided above the trees and hills below. It would almost be magical, if she hadn’t been on a big ugly bat.

Eventually, she could spot the tree house in the distance. Her bat friend approached and landed lightly on the roof, much quieter than Fionna expected for a creature that was fifty times the size of a normal bat.

The strange bat-Marshall assisted her in sliding off as he morphed back into the same young teenage boy.

He grinned from ear to ear. He laced his hands behind his neck, rocked back on his heels and asked, “How was that?”

Fionna brushed hair out of her face, which was flushed from the cold nighttime ride while still in a dress. “Well… That was definitely different.” She pondered her experience. “I’ve ridden many things, but not a giant bat, that’s also a teenager, that’s also a vampire—” Marshall cut off her babble by ruffling her bunny ears. He smiled, for he was pleased with the outcome of the night.

“Goodnight Fionna,” He said softly, “I had a good time tonight.” He pecked the top of her head and was off, flying through the night sky like her own personal Santa Claus. She watched, and could even see the black hair atop his head rustle as he flew away, soon to be a tiny form of a teenage boy in the distance.

Fionna blushed profusely, touching the part of her hair he kissed. She was left cold, watching his dark outline drift far into the nighttime air, a dark blue sea full of glittering stars. However, she still replied to the boy that was no longer there. In a breathless whisper she spoke.

“Me too.”