The Science of Holiday Spirit

A very unadventurous one-shot for Psychologically DysFUNctional, ie. Luna.

Time

"No means no."

"But we do this every single year!" Jake puffs out his chest to showcase his red and green knit sweater and waves BMO in the air. "Sweaters and secret tapes, remember?"

"Come on, PB," Finn tries again, though she can hear the defeat in his voice already. "You're like a gazillion years old! You can take one day off, right? For friends? Holiday spirit?"

Princess Bubblegum shakes her head. "The recent experiment with Root Beer Guy and the Banana Guards has shown that the Candy Kingdom isn't nearly as safe as it could be. I have a new hypothesis that will triple the efficacy of the kingdom's current security measures—" She stops. "I'm sorry, Finn, I really am. Say hi to the others for me, alright?"

"…Alright." And so boy and dog closed the lab door behind them, leaving her to science.

Intelligence had always been a blessing and a curse.

For one, it made dealing with longevity rather difficult. It takes a certain …something, to be able to handle immortality. For some, it's duty. Hunson Abadeer has a duty, a job to upkeep chaos in the underworld. And until his willful daughter chooses to inherit the family business and take his place he will remain, forever undying, as Lord of Evil and ruler of the Nightosphere. For others, it's love. Marceline loves her music, her freedom, and the joys of life (or in her case, unlife). And there are plenty of distractions in Ooo to keep her occupied for another thousand years.

Princess Bubblegum has intelligence—mathematical formulas and empirical calculations. And yes—she cherishes the sleepless nights where she coats her worn chalkboard with fresh applications of chalk, scribbling out constants and variables. Science is her answer to the problem of eternity.

There was a time when science wasn't enough, of course. She was younger then. She was born with genius but her current brilliance is the product of centuries of trial and error. And before experience gave her the weapons she needed, Bubblegum faced the vast years stretching before her and saw only despair.

Constant

She reaches out to the side without looking, searching for her microscope while she scribbled down more notes, more formulas. It takes her a few moments to realize that her hand is searching an empty tray.

Her first reaction is to dig through the memories of this morning when she last handled the now-missing microscope. She most definitely had left it in its usual place as she always had. Bubblegum enjoys constants and that microscope's home was on that particular section of tray; if it wasn't there, then—

Bubblegum lets out a sigh. "Very funny, Marceline."

The vampire shimmers into view; she's floating above Bubblegum's work desk, balancing her microscope on the palm of one hand. "Missing out on the party for… this?" Marceline waves her hand at the wad of notes and the petri dishes that litter Bubblegum's desk. "I don't even know why the guys were worried. Looks like typical PB to me."

So that's what this is. Finn and Jake had failed to change Bubblegum's mind; now it's Marceline's turn. Marceline, of all people.

"Look, Bonnie." Marceline sets the microscope down. "I know you don't like me, but—maybe for the others? Finn, Jake, BMO? It's the holidays! Even you deserve a break, you know?"

Silence. Bubblegum picks up the microscope and gets back to work.

This time Marceline is the one to sigh. She mutters under her breath—something about Finn and Jake being idiots for sending her to deal with the princess—and floats out of the lab. She drops something behind her—Bubblegum doesn't look up, but she can tell it's something light and gift-wrapped from the rustling—says "Happy holidays, Bonnie"—and leaves.

Everything she had ever done was a choice. She can lay out all 827 years of her life and see that her present self is the product of 827 years of making choices. Given a second chance she'd make them all again, easily.

One of those choices was to cut ties with Marceline.

When she had first sought Marceline's friendship, she had been asking for help. It was after the death of—was it Old Mr. Cream Puff? Bubblegum can't even remember that far back anymore. It was a time in her life when it finally hit her—Bubblegum may not be immortal but she's going to live for a long, long time. Longer than Mr. Cream Puff. Longer than any other Candy person under her rule. Longer than Shoko, even if she hadn't jumped into that radioactive river; she was only human and Bubblegum was, well, bubblegum.

She'd outlive the Lemongrabs. She'd outlive Finn and Jake. But she wouldn't, couldn't, outlive Marceline.

And at a point in her life—before Finn and Jake, but after Shoko and Mr. Cream Puff—she was lost; she needed a constant in her life, a familiar face that would never change for the rest of eternity. She needed a friend to stay with her as she created her eternal kingdom with its un-eternal residents.

But then Bubblegum learned, early on in their unlikely friendship, why Marceline could never, ever be that friend. It wasn't that the two were as different as night and day—what was it they said, of opposites attracting? No, it was when she learned that Marceline was trying to escape a destiny of her own. That Marceline was of a long family line of Lords of Evil and slowly but surely, her father would persuade her to rule over the Nightosphere as he had, as countless past Abadeers had.

If Marceline was running away from her ruling own eternal empire—how could she ever, ever save Bubblegum from the burden of ruling hers?

That's when she made a choice: a choice to end things as they stood. It had to happen sooner or later—and if Bubblegum knew anything about the nature of sadness, she knew it had to be sooner rather than later. Marceline had already lost her friend Simon to the Ice King; why pain her more than she deserved?

Just… we can't be friends, I'm sorry, and that was that.

Her head told her to throw the shirt away, the one that Marceline had given to her as a gift early on in their friendship. It was her last memento of the vampire.

But she held it in her hands and realized just how much she already missed Marceline's company. She could breathe in it and take in the scents of a simpler, better time. They say old habits die hard, and this was one she didn't mind dying with—even as her world with Marceline had already come crashing down.

Hundreds of years had passed since then.

"You never wear the shirt I gave you." I wear it as pajamas, she could have told Marceline, but it wouldn't have changed anything. Nor could she dare tell Marceline that the shirt had been the price for getting Hambo back from Maja the Sky Witch; in a way the trade had been a lesson for Bubblegum—that getting attached to things brought nothing but pain.

"Or do you just not like me?" How funny, Bubblegum had thought, when Marceline had first sang the song in an attempt to open the door of the doorlord. How funny, since nothing could be farther from the truth.

And how sad—because she could never, ever bring herself to tell Marceline the truth.

Relativity

They wouldn't understand, Bubblegum thinks as she returns to her work. Why bother wasting precious time explaining why she couldn't celebrate the holidays? Why bother wasting time on holidays in the first place, when she had science?

That thought should have ended there; the science should have already taken over by then. But maybe it was because of the realization that Marceline was still bitter over past ends, that Bubblegum finds her thoughts wandering to her friends—Finn, Jake, Lady Rainicorn, the others.

It isn't that they didn't understand why Bubblegum had to shut herself up in the lab and work for days on end. They never understood in the first place and they never, ever would.

For the first time in a long time Bubblegum feels that feeling of dread—of loneliness.

She realizes that she's been climbing towards a mountain's peak for the past 827 years. She was born with genius but it wasn't the genius that placed her at the mountaintop. It was… choice. Every choice she made to expand and protect the Candy Kingdom—every choice was climbing further up the mountain. With every choice she would turn around and realize that the people she had left behind at the foot of the mountain—her ignorant citizens, Finn, Jake, even Marceline—looked smaller than before.

She had memorized two hundred digits of pi, she could recall the fundamental constants of physics, and the fastest way to break into Finn and Jake's home. But for all her genius there was only so much room in her brain—and with every scientific breakthrough she'd find that she had to throw out excess knowledge. Cinnamon Bun's favorite food, some words of Korean or even German—they slipped away through her fingers.

No one would ever understand what it was like to be standing on this mountaintop. There was no other feeling like being the most intelligent person in the kingdom, possibly all of Ooo—and of course, no other feeling of looking around and realizing that there is no one standing on the mountaintop with you.

She'd pay regular visits to the orphanage for as long as she could remember. She had come to notice that roleplay was the most popular pastime of the orphans throughout generations. And it made sense; what kind of candy-orphan wouldn't want to pretend to be someone else, even if it was only play-acting? Even back when the Candy Kingdom was nothing more but a few tents pitched around a river of radioactive ooze, the young candy orphans would create fantastical plays in which the orphans were the stars.

It was all kind of cute, actually.

It was about five hundred years of this, though, until she realized that a recurring character was, well, herself. Princess Bubblegum would save the rest of the candy citizens from the Lich. Princess Bubblegum would be captured by the Ice King and she'd free herself by calculating the exact amount of leverage needed to shatter her ice bonds. She was the star of countless stories and always emerged victorious in each and every one.

And as newer orphans were brought in, they too were taught the legend of Princess Bubblegum until they too learned what a hero she was. How perfect, how infallible. Everyone fought to play the role of the heroine.

She never had the heart to tell them the truth. How would children ever understand—that she spent days, weeks cloistered up in her lab, barely even stopping her research for food and sleep, for the sake of science? How could they ever understand what it was like to be surrounded by uneducated, even ignorant citizens who adored her?

So she continued her visits to the orphanage for it was her duty as ruler of the Candy Kingdom. And every time the orphans asked her if they enjoyed their plays, she'd only smile and lie—"Of course."

Perception

"Glob it!"

Bubblegum gets up and resists the urge to fling her microscope at the wall in frustration—it'd probably break, and the time it would take to replace it would only slow her down. But she's hit a wall with her calculations and her thoughts keep wandering back to sweaters and secret tapes.

She recalls something, and walks over to the lab door where Marceline dropped the package. It's wrapped in shiny gift-wrap—hand-wrapped by Marceline herself, if the poor packaging was any indicator. The wrap falls away easily in Bubblegum's hands; she opens up the box.

How does she know?

That's Bubblegum's first thought when she first sees the shirt. It's similar to the old rock shirt Marceline first gave her; the design is different. But she lifts the shirt up to her face, takes in a deep breath, and realizes that it's the exact same as her old shirt in the only way that mattered.

It was the smell of a simpler, better time.

She had chosen this—chosen to be Princess Bonnibel Bubblegum of the Candy Kingdom—and she could never, ever unchoose it. But… was it really too late? It was too late to climb back down the mountain, but perhaps it wasn't too late to take this one day off. To say hello to her friends, to celebrate as they always had. Holidays are constants, after all.

It'll remind her of simpler times. Better times.

She takes off her lab coat, reaches for her phone to call Finn and Jake, and pauses. She hasn't prepared holiday gifts for her friends and there isn't any time, is there? She thinks for a few seconds and realizes that's a dumb question; of course she has enough time. Intelligence had always been a blessing and a curse, but right now it's a blessing—because she knows exactly how she's going to provide heartfelt gifts for every single visitor watching the secret tapes at Finn and Jake's in the next 30 minutes.

She is, after all, a genius.

End

AN: To Luna: Since you were the only fellow of the Adventure Time fandom in LC, I was totes hoping I would roll you for Secret Santa :D And really - three dark prompts and Adventure Time? I knew I just had to write about Bubblegum, since she's my favorite character in the show just because there's tons of 'dark' all around her. I did have to twist the prompts around to have them work but they were dark enough to remind me why I like PB-a lot.

Thanks for reading, and happy holidays to all.