A/N: This is an AU multi-chaptered medieval-ish story. Each chapter will be 1,000 words exactly unless the author's notes state otherwise, and I'll try to update it every day.
Written for Bekuh on Tumblr. =)
TOWER, TOWER – [Prologue]
Princess Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom is a restless child. To put her to sleep at night, her servants read her stories.
Oh, stories: from the pages of a great golden leatherbound book they come, tales of pirates on seas broader than imagination, driving their ships full of treasure across foaming waves. There are sagas in the book too of thieves with good hearts—chronicles of stolen children and their faerie folk kidnappers, yarns about little girls who hear other worlds in the furls of seashells. There are fables, warnings against pride, vanity, power: there are stereotypes, evil stepmothers and ghastly witches, poisoned apples and sleep-forever spindles. There are cursed princes, talking teapots, wholesome maidens. There are other princesses, wusses who—in Bubblegum's tender young opinion, anyway—need to grow some freaking buns and brains already.
Of all the stories, though, there is one in particular she asks to hear almost every evening.
"Tell me again about Marceline," she insists, digging her cheek into her pillow. "Please, Peppermint?"
Her butler feigns a surprised gasp. "Really? Yet again?"
"Yet again," she reinforces, plucking off her tiara and kneading her toes in her bedsheets. "Marceline! Marceline!"
As he has done countless times before this one and will do countless times after too, Peppermint Butler cracks open the book. Running his thumb down its worn pages, he finds a crease most familiar. He clears his throat—looks sternly at the fidgeting princess. Only when she has calmed does he begin to read.
Marceline: a fierce child—"Much like you," Peppermint Butler always insists, and Bubblegum giggles—who grew into a fierce woman in a kingdom distant by both land and time. "It was a place of darkness," her servant relays, "but that doesn't mean it was dark-dark, no. There were shadows but stars to go with them, bright and winking—and moonshine, and everything was silver for it."
"Like spoons," Bubblegum opines.
"Like spoons and forks," Peppermint Butler affirms.
Marceline: a fierce woman in a kingdom distant by both land and time, yes, who fought to protect the crown. "The king was her friend, you see," says Peppermint Butler, "and she did everything for him she could, because running a realm is not easy, and he was often in danger, and she wanted to help him."
"Like you help me!"
"In a way, yes. But I am your servant—she was his knight. I bring you breakfast." Peppermint Butler lowers his voice to a hushed whisper and conspires, "She brought him the heads of dragons!"
"Cool!"
Marceline, true, brought her king the heads of dragons: the hearts of enemies, sometimes still warm and beating. She made him laugh the loudest of anyone, and prowled the kingdom's borders for him, and guarded him, and when there was war she stood unwavering by his side. Foes quailed at the sight of her, his ferocious champion. For a glimpse of her eyes red as apples, of her teeth sharp as blades, invariably meant death.
"And she would have defended him forever." Bubblegum's butler holds up a finger: taps it to the round of his temple. "But something happened to him that she could not fight."
"What?" asks the princess, despite that she knows already.
"His mind bruised. Blotched. Spoiled, like a fruit. It was no one's fault, not really, but it happened and he became not like the king he had once been. He did terrible things—worse, asked Marceline to do terrible things."
"And did she listen?"
No. Per the story, Marceline refused. "She tried to remain his friend, however. As he fell to ruin, she remembered him as he had been before. She cared for him. She protected him from assassins—even saw to it that he took his meals. And she would have done so forever, but…"
Eyelids drooping, head nodding low, Bubblegum presses, "But?"
"But he ordered people hurt as though it would soothe his own suffering"—and her servant shakes his head—"and Marceline could not allow that."
"So what did she do?"
Knocking the book closed on his knees, Peppermint Butler frowns. "No one is sure she did anything," he admits. "But one night the king was found dead—indeed, murdered—and Marceline was gone too. Some suspected she abandoned him to an assassin's blade. Still more thought she had killed him herself, hoping to save the kingdom the madness of his crown."
"Why did she leave?" Bubblegum demands sleepily. "Why didn't she just stay and take the crown herself? Become the queen? She was a good person, wasn't she?"
"A very good person, but ah, good people don't always stay good, do they? Perhaps she was afraid she would fail as her king had. Or perhaps she thought her realm was better off without a ruler, for tradition in her land stated that whosoever killed the king inherited his throne… and with the king mysteriously dead and no murderer at hand, the crown belonged to no one."
Bubblegum is struggling to keep her eyes open. "So"—she muffles a yawn against her knuckles—"what happened? To the kingdom? To Marceline?"
"The kingdom is still waiting for its monarch. And Marceline, well—they say she's still out there somewhere too, untouched by time. Looking for something or someone to protect again."
"Un… untouched by t… time?"
"Forever." Leaning to put the book away, Peppermint Butler pulls the coverlet up over Bubblegum, drowsing now, and finishes, "Goodnight, Princess."
Princess Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom is a restless child—for a while. Eventually she grows into a teenager who, burdened by responsibilities, by duty, by a crown of her own, falls to sleep without the stories on her shelf. Years pass and she forgets the pirates with their treasure: the thieves and their nevertheless good hearts, the cursed princes and the spindles and the mad kings. She forgets the knights with eyes red as apples, with teeth sharp as blades. Untouched by time. Forever.
Years pass and Princess Bubblegum forgets Marceline.
Almost.
