Marceline and Princess Bubblegum were friends, once upon a time. Bubblegum supposes they still are. They just... stopped for a while. Marceline wanted her to loosen up and have some fun. Bubblegum wanted Marceline to just stop every once in a while, and THINK. Think beyond herself.
"Do you ever take anything seriously?" Bubblegum asked once. She was trying to repair ancient texts and use them to reconstruct something called a gunne. The book was full of trebuchets and lasers and eyes that could see across oceans. Marceline was trying to get her to go and race penguins to the cove where the monster koi slept.
"Do I ever-" Marceline paused. Without looking up Bubblegum knew that she was still floating. A whoosh of air was the only warning she had that Marceline was moving, and the book was ripped from her hands. "Do I-" Marceline's head was bowed slightly, hair falling across her face, obscuring everything but her right eye and the corner of her downturned mouth. There was something serious in her visible eye, something in the way her fingers clenched at the edges of the book that reminded Bubblegum of how much older and "grunge" the other girl was, and Bubblegum started to lean in, whilst brushing away the heavy, dark hair back from Marceline's face and behind the point of her ear.
The book bursts into flames.
"My book!" Bubblegum can't stop herself from shouting, running for water as Marceline drops the flaming mass of fluttering pages to the floor.
"Leave it," Marceline says, smacking the glass of water from her hand. Bubblegum darts her eyes from the burning book and up to Marceline, and her words die in her throat. Marceline's eyes are dark and sharp, her cool fingers, still around Bubblegum's wrist, are tight.
"But-"
"I said leave it."
And they stand there as it burns. There are so few things left from before the Mushroom War. Or there are many things left from before the war, the rusted metal carriages that dot the landscape and video tapes and machines whose purpose hundreds of Candy scholars could devote their lives to arguing about. There are so few things of use left from before the war, though. Things that explain or describe or recount history. It's almost as if someone wanted to destroy them, but she can't understand why anyone would do that to knowledge.
"We're better off without that," Marceline says, her hands tightening around Bubblegum's wrist.
Bubblegum feels herself pull back from the pictures and words that had been inside the book. There is something in Marceline's face that both softens and frightens her. "It was one of kind," she says softly, because who knows what she could have found. What knowledge was in that book is gone forever.
Marceline releases her wrist and floats back. Bubblegum's skin feels hot where the cold pressure is gone. "You're right," Marceline says, grinning wildly, but choking on her words as if she was trying to hold tears back. "I am completely incapable of taking things seriously."
"That's not what I –"
"Always have been."
Bubblegum wants to know what she's missing. It's easy to figure out what's bugging her subjects. If they're hungry or cold or unsatisfied with their jobs, if they were born marzipan when they wanted nothing more than to be meringue. Marceline is a Vampire Queen without any subjects, who laughs at ghosts and people who cringe away from her in fear, who blows off parties and plays awful pranks and still hasn't forgiven her father for eating her fries.
And Marceline shrugs, and she's just Marceline again. "I'm going to go and try to tame the monster koi," she says, pulling out an umbrella as she pushed out the window to float outside in the sunshine. "I haven't been waterskiing in centuries."
It's another one of those things that doesn't make sense to Bubblegum, that she hasn't found in any book, like bungee jumping or -
"You wanna come with?"
And it's only then that Bubblegum realizes that Marceline is waiting for her, hovering outside the windowsill expectantly. "I-I can't. You know that."
Marceline shrugs and she's suddenly so very far way. "Your loss."
"I have responsibilities. You know that."
"Whatever," Marceline says, twirling the umbrella to catch the sun as she arcs off into the bright blue sky.
"I don't understand you," Bubblegum says, staring after her, ash at her feet. She wonders if Marceline could have heard her say that. "I don't understand you at all." It makes her uncomfortable, uneasy.
Her wrist is still warm.