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It's been a long time since she's thought about…well, a long time ago (or so it seems to her, because she's only eighteen-and-half, and she's only just getting to the point where a year doesn't feel like forever).
But then that pesky door lord just had to come and steal her sleep shirt (the one that still smelled just faintly of cinnamon and…well, red, if that makes any since at all), and Marceline the Vampire Queen just had to get bored and tag along.
Under different circumstances, she might admit that it's almost funny, how the smallest, most insignificant of choices end up dictating the future.
Does it matter which dress she wears to the annual Gumball Ball?
No.
Does anyone really notice if she locks herself away from the world for weeks on end in order to create her psychologically super-powered, mentally unstable brain-child?
Why would they?
But can a simple statement ("Marceline, that's too distasteful!") change the mood of what could otherwise promise to be a perfectly normal day (at least, as normal as days ever get here)?
Of course it can.
Can the result of that simple, thoughtless statement reverse the clock and make her feel things that she'd sworn she'd forgotten how to feel so many years ago?
How could it not?
And now here she lies on her baby-pink bed, curled up in a most unsightly manner and clutching at a ratty old rock t-shirt as if it's her last lifeline.
It's a well-known fact that Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum is near-impossible to romance, and not just by Finn the Human and his puppy love.
Something that isn't quite so well-known is that the candy princess has actually taken the time to teach herself not to want or need anyone else. She finds that she prefers her test-tubes and equations to the multitude of hopeful suitors she's met over the past forever or so. Math never changes—math can go on forever, if one has the patience for it, and there will always be a problem with a firm, tangible solution (but then, there are always problems remaining, no matter how many you solve).
Love, Bubblegum has found, doesn't quite follow the same rules.
Love changes—feelings change. People want more, people want less. People love a person more than anything until they love someone else more than that.
And then there are the people who simply don't care who they hurt along the way, as long as they can see their goal at the end of the tunnel.
They're the worst.
She knows this because just a few years ago, that used to be her. She was only confident until the fork in the road, and then she was just another scared teenage girl who just wanted a way out so that she could find that same, predictable path again. And when she had realized that Marceline wasn't quite as strong and carefree as she made herself out to be, she was terrified and she'd just run.
She'd run back to her kingdom—back to her test-tubes and her math, and she began to take pleasure in learning, because whatever sort of problem can be found in books always has a clear answer. There are never any forks—never any compromises or choosing one love over the other.
And Bubblegum had just managed to convince herself that she didn't ever want to love a person so dearly again, because things just got so globbing complicated, and she was just so certain that love brought more pain than it did happiness.
Only there are always flaws in every theory—errors in every equation. And for Bubblegum, that error is (always) Marceline the Vampire Queen.
Because as much as she's convinced herself that she is happier devoting all of her love to her people, there's still some stupid part of her that wishes she could do it from Marceline's arms. She almost wants to be angry at Marceline (more so than usual, at least) for being such a butt and provoking her in the first place, because she never would have had these doubts if it weren't for that stupid song.
But she can't.
She can't, because in that moment, she'd felt that Marceline's love still existed—that it was there and as stable as any of her favorite equations—and it made her feel safer than she can ever remember feeling.
Bubblegum tires of ruling a kingdom, sometimes.
Sometimes, she wishes that there were someone to look over her.
And sometimes (but only in the dreams she refuses to acknowledge), Bubblegum wonders if maybe it only hurt so much because she was so young, and still growing into everything she'd been expected to inherit. Sometimes, she wonders whether the problem really was that she couldn't trust Marceline to catch her if she fell, or if it was the knowledge that Marceline would catch her if she fell.
Really, when she thinks about it, Marceline the Vampire Queen is a lot like math—she's lived a thousand years, and she'll live a thousand more. She's proven just today that she still loves Bubblegum, even after all this time. And Marceline never seems to be trapped—she's always slipping out of one sticky situation just to dodge another the next minute.
Not like Bubblegum, who sometimes feels as though she's nothing more than a puppet in a tiara.
Math never ends—math never changes.
Neither does Marceline.
So, if it's so easy for her to trust her formulas and equations, why can't she bring herself to trust Marceline?
In the end, she decides that it's really a matter of principle—math, she can do with her mind. Bubblegum trusts her mind completely. It has never once let her down.
It's just that her heart isn't quite as sensible and rational as her mind, and she isn't entirely sure she can trust it with anything.
A/N: Please review if you want to see more—reviews are like stocking stuffers, guys—I love getting them and they're great motivation :) I read this one article for an assignment for English 121 and according to this one copy editor/blogger, most people can't write—or at least, most professional writers. So naturally, this freaked me out right as I'd FINALLY gotten over my writer's block—so really, if you did enjoy this, please let me know!
