WHO: Marceline Abadeer & Neal Cassidy WHEN: After this WHERE: Dino Island WHAT: Neal threatened Marceline with a pie to the face. They talks instead. WARNINGS: It's got a hint of the sads
______________
The truth was that Neal wasn't a fan of islands, portals or magic. And yet, here he was, holding a pie tin in the palm of his hand and pressing his fingers to the bracelet that his younger self's friend had orchestrated with magic, allowing it to teleport him almost similarly in manner as a portal to an island; all so he could see Marceline and possibly bring a smile to her face. He'd been fairly specific in his thoughts with the bracelet, thinking 'Dino Island, Marceline's place,' and found himself both grateful and mildly impressed that Ronan's bracelet was able to take him somewhere Neal had never once seen. He'd been willing to go regardless of his feelings about islands but it simply hadn't happened yet. Emma and Regina had wanted to go if Henry was going to visit, and Neal supported that, but it just hadn't happened yet.
He dropped down on the deck of the tree house. "Marceline," he called out, not to try to find her, but so she had a moment of warning before he moved to step inside.
Given how hard it had been to get her (former) boyfriend to come to the island, she was not expecting Neal to come. And yet he did, without her ever having that hard to try to. His voice caused her to freeze. Marceline turned her face toward the doorway and watched it, half expecting it to somehow be a mistake.
Luckily she couldn’t see the way her animated eyes sparked, or she might have been embarassed by her cartoon circumstances. Not knowing how long she was going to be stuck with eight fingers, she had been trying to reteach herself to play. The axe sat lifeless in her lap.
He'd waited just enough that it wouldn't feel rude to just step inside of her second home. As promised, there was a pie tin resting against the palm of his hand, which he had turned upwards towards the sky. He barely seemed to acknowledge the hastily and cheaply made dessert. Instead, he let his eyes fall upon the girl who seemed so incredibly young but was centuries older than nearly anyone else in Tumbleweed. He noted the way her eyes sparkled but did not bring any reference to it.
"You made this way too easy, kid," he told her, trying to get a smile. He'd threatened her with a pie. He didn't necessarily know if he was going to follow through. It might end up being a prop. What was far more important was that she stop being so down on herself. He approached her and gave her the lightest smile. "Last warning," he added.
In a better mood, she might have turned invisible and hit Neal with his own pie. It would have been funny. Instead, her eyes returned to their normal size, being two black dots that occasionally turned to small curved lines when she blinked. Marceline deflated with a sigh.
“I didn’t think you even had a bracelet,” she said. Knowing that did make her feel better. Neal had given her the impression, last time they spoke about it, that he wasn’t going to get one. Marceline hadn’t brought up the topic again because she knew it upset her and her screaming didn’t seem to move or impress him much. Setting her bass to the side, Marcy hovered upwards like a spectre and closed the distance between them to wrap noodle like arms around him in a hug. She’d always been skinny but now there was a boneless quality to the way she was drawn.
“Thanks for coming,” she said quietly.
"Didn't want one," he commented, because it wasn't something he had hidden, but he'd conceded on the portal in his apartment. It felt like he could concede on the bracelet. It made more than just Marceline feel better about his safety, after all. And while magic in all forms made him uncomfortable, he had his exceptions, and if Regina trusted Ronan, he trusted Ronan.
He was observant enough to notice her shifting to move, so he bent down, setting the pie on the wooden floor. He was standing straight by the time she reached him and when she hugged him, he easily returned it. "You're welcome," he replied, with no malice or sarcasm. He'd a feeling she needed a friend just about now.
“Baelfire said I made him feel like a drop in the bucket. I didn’t mean to. I don’t want to make anyone feel like that.” Marcy pulled away frowned. “I was just trying to tell him how I felt. I was trying to talk like he wanted, and then he wanted to break up with me. It’s stupid.”
Marceline wiped the tears that formed under her black eyes but had not yet dropped. “And then I was hoping this cartoon junk was just some evil wizard I could beat up but when I went into town, he didn’t even want to see me. Ugh. It’s so stupid! This whole place is stupid! It makes feel so crazy like everything I do is wrong."
Neal didn't release her from the hug as she began to unload. His gaze did, however, drop down to study the wooden floor boards as she spoke. He was in an uneasy position when it came to Baelfire. He didn't need the younger man to tell him that he made him uncomfortable. He could see it without him having to say a word, and he'd understood why. It made complete sense to Neal and so he largely kept distance; barring family gatherings. Even then he kept a wide berth and let Baelfire move around him as his own leisure. But Marceline had been insistent and somehow managed to snake her way into his orbit, until he felt something akin to care for her. It was a conundrum.
But it also meant that he knew some of where his younger self's thoughts came from. Sometimes. "Hate to brake it to you, Marceline, but sometimes I make poor decisions. Same for him," he said, gently. "Did he mean about the immortality thing? The bucket?" He asked, quietly, though he likely didn't need to. He was fairly certain that was what it meant.
He frowned some and pulled back to look at her. "If this had been an evil Wizard, beating him up would have been the right thing to do. Just wasn't in the cards this time." He said, trying to encourage her that it wasn't actually everything she did that was wrong.
Marceline nodded at the first question. “I was trying to explain how I felt. That when you live a really long time you see patterns other people don’t live long enough to see. Stuff repeats. I don’t want people to think I’m dumb or overreacting. Even if they don’t feel what I feel. I just want them to understand.” Her shoulders slumped.
Marceline may have been a thousand years old, but she was also forever a teenager, “And then I was in town and he was like, ‘You’re in town?’ and I was like, ‘Yeah’ and he was like, ‘Be safe.’ I thought he wanted to see me, but I guess not. Whatever. I don’t want to see me, either.”
He brought his hand to rub at the back of his hand. This wasn't necessarily a skillset he had. Henry was just now starting to break into the teenage emotions. He figured he had a few more years before he was having similar talks with his son, even though Henry had begun dating by this point. He let his hand drop and motioned his head in the direction of where her bass was, so they could seat.
He dropped down onto the floor but kept his eyes locked on her. "Sounds like he needed to listen to what you were saying a bit more," he offered up. "But, for what it is worth, I don't think people find you dumb. And I get it. The patterns." Not necessarily to that degree, or on that subject, but Neal Cassidy was more than aware of recurring patterns. He just tended to notice with specific people.
He rubbed at the back of his neck, frowning. "Why? 'Cause of the toon thing?"
Marcy sat down on the floor next to Neal and shrugged. “Probably because of everything.” She sighed. “Maybe he’ll talk to me when gets a new mortal girlfriend or something. I don’t really have a lot of breaking up experience.”
"I didn't mean Baelfire," he said quietly. His frown hadn't gone away. "Why don't you want to see you?" He shift, leaning back on his hands, but keeping his gaze on her. "Baelfire and I don't talk. I don't know what's going on in his head. But...have you tried telling him you want to talk?"
Marcy shrugged again, not willing to commit to an answer of why she didn’t want to see herself. Instead, she shrank a little against the wall behind her. “Neal, the last time I tried to talk to Baelfire he dumped me. I’m over it. I’m over talking in general.”
Her arms crossed over her chest. “Why can’t there just be more monsters to fight? Or cursed objects to destroy? Or princesses to try and boss people around? Why can’t there be talking animals? Or mutants that are actually mutants? And unicorns? And all that other stuff? Why does everything have to look so… boring? Ugh.”
"Didn't mean serious talk. Meant talk in general." He shrugged in return and was willing to let his other question go unanswered. He wasn't going to push her.
"'Cause we're basically in the land without magic, sans portal and all of us," he commented. Tumbleweed reminded him so much of that realm. He had an inkling that Marceline likely would have loved the hell out of the Enchanted Forest, Wonderland or Neverland.
“Talk in general for Baelfire is like, Be safe.” Marceline rolled her eyes. Or tried to. When they were black cartoon dots, they expressed emotions slightly differently. “Like first of all, it’s me and second of all, it sounds like the thing you say to someone when you don’t know what to say to them and don’t want to say anything to them.”
Marceline thought Neverland was pretty. She never did get what was really so dangerous about it, but then she wasn’t mortal and there hadn’t been a Peter Pan to face or his shadow henchman.
After a moment, Marcy looked up at Neal, her thin line of a mouth still able to convey a thoughtful frown. “Neal? Thanks for being my friend.”
He flashed a glance in her direction at that. Even without having lived here and seen what Baelfire had experienced, that didn't surprise him. He had lost plenty of people in his life, just like Neal had, and concern for their well being was always at the forefront of his mind. To him it sounded like Baelfire still cared, but who was he to offer that up? Especially if he was wrong? He pulled in a breath and gave a shrug of his shoulders instead.
But he caught the look and there was a nod of his head in response, before he shifted to rest against the back of the wall too. His arm moved and slung around her shoulders, giving her a half squeeze of a hug. "You're welcome, kid."
Marceline shifted against Neal, resting her head against the inside of his shoulder. “I feel like I’m better off just hiding myself away here, where I’m not bothering anyone. If anyone wants to come see me, then I guess it means they actually want to.”
Like the way Neal came. Without being guilted into it or becoming resentful about it. “Ronan did. You did.” She shrugged.
"Sounds awful lonely to me," he said quietly, with his hand moving to rest against her shoulder. He moved it up and down slowly in a calming gesture. "And you shouldn't let anyone push you to having to do that."
He nodded his head. He had come and he was glad to hear others had too. "I'll come more if you decide you don't want to come back but still don't think you ought to hide. Spent my whole life hiding. Not great."
“It’s not really hiding if everyone knows where to find me. It’s just… I have space here. I can play my music whenever I want. I don’t belong living around a bunch of mortals. It’s just better if it’s one on one, or whatever.” Marceline picked up her bass and set it in her lap, playing a few strings together in a discordant soundtrack to her mood, while she tried to work around the missing fingers.
“I like my job though. I like listening to music and recording. I don’t mind that part,” she said. “I used to play a lot of gigs back on Ooo but I think that’s just because it didn’t really have as much to offer musically speaking.”
"You said hiding yourself away," he pointed out, but with her explanation, he gave a nod of his head. He watched as she snatched up the bass. He supposed it was a decent distraction. He slid his arm away from her shoulders and crossed it with his arm over his chest. "If you don't think it's hiding, then probably fine, especially since Rogue gave you permission and the like."
He nodded his head. "You should try to do more gigs here. Might have a lot of music options but there still aren't that many bands from the sounds of it. Local, anyways."
“I know, I just,” Marcy frowned, “I don’t want to be around people all the time.”
It was hiding and it wasn’t. If she lived on Dino Island and Baelfire never came to see her, well it was Dino Island. That made sense. He hated that place, even if Neal didn’t seem to. Marcy’s feelings wouldn’t have to be hurt. But if he did come to see her, Marcy would know it was because he really wanted to. The same went for anyone else.
“All my music is on YouTube,” Marcy said. “Even some of my private songs are. I should deck Finn if he ever gets here, that’s all his fault. I can write more songs but like, I don’t know. I’ll do it for work but I don’t really feel like people need them here.”
He didn't say anything else to that other than another nod. He'd hidden himself away from people as best he could for close to a century. Once he was thrust back into the Realm without magic, people had been inescapable and it would take him another decade or so before he'd been afford the luxury of a closed door to get away from them when he felt the need.
"People go to concerts all the time for people whose music is on youtube," he pointed out, as a counter. Drawing in a breath he shook his head. "People always need music, Marcy. That's a universal truth."
Marcy pulled her knees to her chest and buried her face dramatically. “Maybe later. Playing music when I was upset was what got me into trouble in the first place. If I played a gig and Baelfire showed up, he’d know how I feel. And if I played a gig and he didn’t show up, it’d be like getting rejected either way.”
He turned his head to look at her and watched for a moment. "Maybe later then," he agreed as a hand swept back to push through his hair. Then his face scrunched up slightly, the way it had a tendency to do, before he shifted to reach into his pocket. He pulled out his phone and shifted, nudging her with his shoulder.
"Here," he said, gently, before launching spotify. He thumbed through his artists for a moment before clicking on Velvet Underground. It began to play the start of Pale Blue Eyes and he set his phone down between them, before leaning his head back against the wall. "Just listen," he said.
Marceline listened, turning so she could lay on her side, curled up on the smooth bamboo floors of her house, using the crook of her arm as a pillow. Her eyes were locked on the phone, and her pointed ears grew a few inches in length to hear it.