Will Happen, Happening, Happened

I have ALFG chapter 40 in the oven, but my sister is using my PC and I haven't uploaded the file to google drive for editing, so...here's a short AT fic I wrote when the finale aired and I died inside. I'll be uploading the fortieth chapter as soon as I'm done editing it. 

Everything hurts.

Which doesn't make it that different from before. Everything hurt before too. He’d felt frustrated and betrayed, by everyone and everything, to the point of anger. He’d thought it was unfair. He’d thought that he was doing so, so well, until he just - just flopped, dinked up, failed. Again and again and again, even when he’d just been doing what he’d been doing before - or at least, it had felt like it. He’d just did as his instincts told him to do before, and fighting instincts came easily to him, they always had. That’s what happens when one is raised in a land where everything can be danger: you learn to fight, you learn to defend, and as you grow up, danger is normal to you. Danger is fun.

This isn’t fun. He can tell it’s not fun for Finn either, which is surprising, but perhaps his first death had hit the boy harder than he’d thought it had. He’d seemed angry, at that time, and had even brought a weed whacker, which had been insulting but, now that he thinks of it, had been perfect for killing him had Finn really been set on it.

He’d probably started out angry enough to do it. It was instinct. It was protocol. It was what he’d always done. What they’ve always done.

Except, that time had been different, somehow.

(“It’s like we’re brothers.”)

It’s different now too. It doesn’t hurt in a way that makes him want to tear his hat stumps out in frustration, it hurts in a way that makes him want to sit down and not move at all, and just close his eyes and...(sleep and never wake up) rest. He can feel himself fading, when he never has before, courtesy of being made of blades of grass instead of actual human flesh, but now he can feel it, when the wind is blowing him away, strip by strip, piece by piece.

This is what it feels like to be unravelling, he thinks.

And then he laughs, because he feels like he’s been unravelling for so long.

He’d really been doing so well. He’d thought he had been doing so well. Maybe if he hadn’t let his anger get the best of him, maybe if he’d just listened to Finn, maybe he wouldn’t be dying now.

(Maybe if Finn had stayed in that room and just died, he could be the one alive, he could be the one wearing human skin, be the hero. He was the true Finb after all. Fern had been the one to get trapped in the sword. He’d been the real Finn the Human, but then when he opened his eyes again, he’d been different, and suddenly the one who had looked like the actual human was the one everyone had paid attention to, and it was unfair, it was unfair, it was unfair - )

He shakes his head. There is no room for that now. He is tired, more tired than he’s ever been and he’s been tired for a long time. Tired of being neglected and forgotten, tired of failing, tired of hatred when he’s fighting his own literal flesh and blood (“It’s like we’re brothers,” Finn says with a smile, but Fern doesn’t smile back) and tired of just being. He wants to stop. He just wants his head to be quiet, and he wants this anger to go away. He wants to see his family. He wants to feel them hold him, and tell him that he’s loved, no matter if he’s Fern or Finn, and tell him that the fact that he’s trying his best in everything is enough.

He wants to hold his mother and father in his arms again. He wants to hug Jake. He wants to pick BMO up and carry them around and play games with them. He wants to throw pies with Nepter. He wants to hang out with PB and with Marceline, but they’ve both probably even forgotten he exists, or if they do remember, they just think he’s some copy of their Finn.

Everything hurts.

But Ooo is being destroyed around him, and Ooo is still his home, no matter who he is and what he is. And he wants to let everything go, just this last time, let this last time be an adventure for him like it always has.

“I’ll fight,” he says, “Until my last blade.”

Princess Bubblegum looks at him and nods, and for a moment, he feels as if he’s a naive little boy again - Ooo’s hero and protector, her highness’ servant and most noble knight. 

Everything hurts, but he’s at home, with the people he loves, and he’s standing alongside them for what might be the last time, for one reason or another.

And that’s alright.

(“I just want to see the treehouse one last time,” he says. He’s done now, now that he knows that Ooo is safe. He’s exhausted, but the fight is done, and he just wants to go to sleep, and with that, he can feel himself fading faster. Maybe he’s been holding himself together by sheer willpower this whole time.

“Okay. We’ll take you to the treehouse,” Finn says. He looks like he’s close to crying, the poor boy. It must be hard for him, seeing someone he considers his brother die in front of him again, after he’s tried so hard to save him.

But Fern knows he won’t get there. And the treehouse is destroyed anyway; he can’t see its outline in the horizon, and he always, always knows where it is, but it’s not there now. Not anymore. 

So he says, “It’s okay.” And he smiles, because he doesn’t want Finn to be sad. Poor boy’s got too much guilt already, and he doesn’t need to carry that for the rest of his life. The tears do roll down Finn’s face this time, and Fern smiles wider and squeezes his hand, with what strength he has left. “Just promise to plant me there.”

He doesn’t get to hear what Finn says, as everything around him gets bright, and soft, and airy, and warm.

And then he feels nothing at all.)

Everything is alright.