BREATHE | bubbline ✓

" what changed? "

BONNIBEL STILL SMELLS the smoke, hears the condemning yells, feels the pain and her wounds taking a toll on her.

She breathes out forcefully, and flashes of that...that dream come back. But it felt so real — there was no way it was...or was it?

"Had a nightmare worse than seeing my father in the flesh?" Marceline's voice scoffs. "He has an even more grotesque form."

"Where—"

"No globbin' idea," Marceline grumbles. She's curled up against the wall, arms pulling her knees close to her chest. "I'm getting sick of this."

Bonnibel found that she didn't know what to say for a while. She just sits there, staring, at Marceline; at how, in another world, she had...known her? It was a feeling of recognition, of something deeper. Intimate.

And now that she was back here, Bonnibel felt like something in her had changed.

"Of getting one-upped by your dad?" She groans as she pushes herself up with a hand.

Marceline mellows and blows a raspberry, "I honestly should've expected it." She manages a glance at Bonnibel, who was now in pretty much the same position as Marceline was. "Feeling okay?"

"I should be asking you that," Bonnibel frowns, recalling the fight. "How's your head?"

"Healed," Marceline says flippantly. "Everything else has."

Bonnibel nods in acknowledgement, opting to lean back against the wall. "Alright." She doesn't know what to say, to do — this scenario...it felt too dissociated with what she felt.

Shaking her head, Marceline does the same, sighing as her back hit the wall. "What are we doing here—no, what am I doing here?"

Flashes of the dream-yet-not-a-dream flood Bonnibel's memory once more, and in them, she sees the helpless look on Marceline's face, the spattered blood on her skin, the unruly, raged glint in her eyes. It was...it was—was it real? It had felt so, like someone had showed her photocards from her youth; the same nostalgia, the same feeling of—

"I'm sorry I dragged you into this," Bonnibel twiddles her thumbs. "I'm...I don't usually rely on other people like this."

Marceline nods. "No, you don't." She tilts her head. "So what changed this time? Why did you ask for my help? Why did I wake this year, of all years, to find you? And why, on Earth, was I born a half-demon, half-vampire?"

Bonnibel recalls it. "I...I had a dream, but it felt more like...a memory. Something distant."

Marceline raises a brow. "I was going on a monologue and you interrupted me to tell me you had a dream? Go ahead, big shot."

"Oh, shut up," Bonnibel grumbles. It felt important to tell; it was as if...if she were to keep it in, she'd burst. "I had a dream about you...and this other person. You called her Phoebe."

Marceline's jaw drops.

"And...And she was dying. She had been tortured — her limbs were gone, her house was up in flames—"

"—Stop." Marceline's voice is barely above a whisper, but it echoed clearly all the same. It's strangled, pained. "Stop."

"Oh," Bonnibel looks away. She had said too much. "Was she the friend you told me about?"

Marceline sighs and turns to face the other side of the wall, silent for a beat.

"Yes. She..." Marceline raises a hand and drops it heavily, pathetically. "She didn't deserve to die the way she did."