All characters property of Pendleton Ward, Natasha Allegri, and Cartoon Network.

The chamber was dark and quiet, and the smell of soft, decaying paper hung heavily in the cold air. A single candle sat on the dais between the statues, next to an open book, and although the flame didn't waver in the slightest, the pages turned as if in a breeze.

The words were smeared, almost unreadable, and the story was a fever-dream of hallucinations and broken narratives, and yet here it was, almost at its end, with a scene of a boy and a woman on the edge of a cliff...

Marshall Lee piled the sticks into a crude pyramid. His small, clumsy fingers had a hard time placing all the kindling correctly, and it kept collapsing. When it happened again, the boy squinched up his face in anger and kicked at the pile , scattering sticks across the campsite.

Simone laughed giddily, even though it made Marshall glare at her, even though it wasn't even funny. She was so tired, the laughter just bubbled up and overflowed unbidden. The crown had been driving her hard for the last few days, as they moved further inland, away from the deadly clouds that were turning the other side of the Rockies into a twisted nightmare land. There were supposed to be refugee camps in Flagstaff. She'd staked everything on getting there.

There was just the little matter of the Grand Canyon getting in the way.

How long would it take to work their way around and through? Weeks, maybe, and that was if they didn't get lost or fall prey to whatever monstrosities almost certainly lurked in the boiling mist at the bottom of the canyon.

"Simone! Simone!" Marshall cried. "I got the fire goin'! Lookit!"

She turned to see the little boy beaming proudly, the blossoming flames lighting his gray face with hints of amber and orange.

"Good for you," she said tiredly, patting him on the head. They hardly had anything worth cooking; they would be roasting marshmallows and eating the last of the pickles for dinner. When that was gone, they were down to the disgusting MRES, unless they could find another ranger station to scavenge.

And how long until those are gone? said the voice in her head.

"Shut up," she muttered under her breath. "We'll find something."

You'll both starve. Unless you do what has to be done.

"Why are you doing this?" she hissed, holding Marshall close to her, her hands over his ears so he wouldn't hear her addressing the golden crown that sat on her head, a manacle around her brain. "I thought you wanted me alive so I could freeze the world."

I did. You're useless. When you're not playing Mommy with the demonspawn, you're crying over your ex-boyfriend. I'll take my chances. There's a new world coming, and I won't have so long to wait this time...

Simone glanced over at the knapsack. They had so few cans left. Not enough for them both to survive to civilization. But maybe just enough for Marshall.

He pulled away from her. "Simone? Are you talkin' to the hat again?"

"Sort of."

"That hat's a big weenie. Come on, aren't you gonna come and have dinner?"

"You go ahead." She kissed his head of thick black hair. "I'm going for a little walk."

She paused.

"I love you."

She glanced back as she left the campfire behind. He knew something was wrong; his face was frightened in the light of the flickering fire. She turned away and hurried through the darkness.

She barked her shin against a boulder and got something in her shoe, but she didn't care; she made it to the edge, and that was what was important. She kicked off the old sneaker, then the other one for good measure, and watch them plummet into the canyon, two specks of darkness against the roiling fog. She wriggled her bare toes. Those shoes had been worn out anyway, and besides, she'd never need shoes again.

She thought about her ex-fiancee, wishing she knew if he were alive or dead, and her old apartment in the city, rubble now, and mostly about Marshall. She hoped he would forgive her, but more than that, she just hoped he would stay alive. That's why she was doing this, after all. Maybe the crown was manipulating her again, maybe that's all it was, but it made sense, and she was tired of fighting.

She spread her arms and dove from the cliff.

The wind whistled around her ears and flapped her hair like a windsock as she plummeted towards the violet sea of death.

Ten seconds later, Marshall was sitting uneasily by the fire when he heard a sound, rising like a siren, but happy-a whoop of sheer, astonished joy. Thirty seconds after that, cool arms wrapped around him from behind and he found himself being pulled into the starry sky.

"Hold on tight," Simone laughed. "I don't want to drop you into that stuff!"'

"Simone?" Marshall screeched, digging his hands into her ratty T-shirt for dear life. "You can fly?"

"I guess I can," she cackled gleefully. "Think you can grab the pack if I do a loop-the-loop and buzz the campsite? Now that I'm up, I want to stay up. And I think we can make pretty good time!"

"To Flagstaff?" Marshall said. They were already out over the vast expanse of purple, sandwiched between the glowing magical gas and the endless void of space. Simone went faster and faster, grinning her shark's-tooth grin, the wind whipping through her snow-white hair.

"To wherever we want!"

Simone sat straight up in bed, sending penguins scattering. She could still feel Marshall clutching at her, but the feeling faded. Then reality came pouring in.

I'm not Simone anymore. I'm the Ice Queen. I've been the Ice Queen for-

She reeled at the thought of it. Centuries, at the very least. What was she? An immortal? What a cruel joke: eternal life as a madwoman. And a crueler one still, to give her this one moment of clarity. Because she knew, knew with a despair as bleak and cold as the ice fields that were her world now, that it was nothing more than a moment. Already she could feel her sense of herself being covered back up, buried beneath the falling snows.

She paced back and forth frantically. If only she could talk to someone, anyone. If only this creature she'd become was something more than a pathetic failure who cared about nothing more than cruelty and kidnapping princes. If only she hadn't driven Marshall away, so she could talk to him, apologize to him, anything, before she was sucked back into the labyrinth forever.

Her nails dug into the windowsill as she stared out over the silent, frozen peaks.

While she was still Simone, she picked up a pen and a blank book and began to write. She wrote was left of Simone down on the page, but it was wrong, it was wrong already, it was about someone else, someone with a different name, a made-up story. She wrote anyway, careering down a river of darkness on a disintegrating raft of ice, trying to hold onto what was left of her mind as it melted under her fingers, and then she was done writing, and the fading dream that was Simone was gone, and the Ice Queen was back.

Marceline ran her fingers over the final words. The ancient page was yellowed and worn, the binding so old it was almost rotting off. How long ago had this been written? Five hundred years? Six hundred? And what had she been doing at the time? Wandering around, probably, trying to avoid him. He'd been so far gone, even then, she never would have thought...

"Hey, is someone in here?" The Ice King's scratchy voice echoed through the vast frozen cavern. "Finn? Jake? You guys better not be drawing in my books again! Gunther?"

She made herself visible, a lanky gray form standing between the ice sculptures, her dark eyes shiny with moisture. She held the book to her chest.

"Oh, it's just you," the Ice King said. "Come for some inspiration, eh? I guess you can do your own Marshall stories if you want, just remember, they're non-canonical, okay? We're clear on that, right?"

"It's cool," Marceline said. "Um..."

"Yeah?"

"I was just curious if you remembered...if you remembered the time you flew with me." She pushed her hair back nervously. "When we flew over the Grand Canyon."

"Wha? What the heck is the Grand Canyon?"

"Never mind."

She looked down at the last page. It was wrinkled and warped; tears had fallen on it once, long ago. Another tear fell now. It soaked into the page, its moisture combining with the ancient salts.

"Hey, so," she started, trying to keep her voice even, "if it's okay with you, can I borrow this one?"

The Ice King looked at the cover. "Oh, that one? Sure, you can keep it if you want."

"You don't want it back?"
"Nah, I don't like that one. It doesn't even have Fionna and Cake in it."

"I think you wrote this before Finn and Jake were even born."

"What do they have to do with anything?" The Ice King waved his hand dismissively. "Whatever, it's a bad story. Just take it."

"Oh. Okay." She wrapped her arms around the book. "Thanks, I guess."

"What do you want with that stinky old story, anyway? You already read it."

"Maybe I'll write a Part 2."

"What, like the Ice King shows up and he teaches Marshall Lee how to surf? That would be cool."

"I was thinking more like...what if Simone came back? Like, for longer-so she had a chance to talk to Marshall Lee again. Maybe this time they could go both go flying, together."

"Whaaa? Aw, that's dumb. There's not even an arc or anything there. It's just escaping into fantasy."

"Isn't that the whole point of these stories?" Marceline said, fading back into invisibility. "I'll let myself out."