Fionna stared down at the old woman lying in a heap at her feet, the tiara rolling away down the blue walls of the Ice Palace. She hadn't meant to hit the Ice Queen so hard, but she had taken her beloved Prince Gumball again, and it had been a long day. So, when the cranky explorer had come to rescue the prince, she had been in a foul mood. But now that she had beaten the old woman, she looked down and saw her once hard features softening. Sympathy and shame welled up in Fionna's honourable heart, and she decided that she needed to make it right. Deftly picking the frail creature (she was surprisingly light – maybe that's why she could fly so well?), Fionna carried the sleeping monarch to her quarters.

After she had laid the still unconscious Ice Queen on her blue bed, Fionna, had called Marshall Lee to help the heroine look after her new charge. Fionna had known that Marshall and the Ice Queen had a past, but she was still unsure as to what that past included. But she also knew that the vampire king had an intense respect for the other monarch, and so he was the first person to call in such a scenario.

When Marshall arrived, he immediately went over to the Ice Queen, and whispered something into her ear. The old woman moaned, and her eyelids fluttered open.

"Simon?" she asked, her voice much less abrasive. Fionna saw that the older woman was slightly delirious, and felt a new wave of guilt wash over her.

"No, it's me, Marshall. Don't you remember me?" asked Marshall, his eyes pleading with her.

The old woman peered up at the young vampire, as if looking at a point of light in the dark. Which was odd, considering that the room was still very bright.

"I think I do... There was a little boy who needed my help. His name was Marshall Abadeer. But he said he liked my name more. He was a cute one. I wish Simon and I could have had a son like him..." The Ice Queen sighed, and began looking for something, or someone, again.

"Simon...? Where are you my prince?" She seemed to coo into nothing.

Marshall slumped his shoulders just a fraction. He knew it had been a bit of a tall order for her to remember all the adventures they had had together. At least Fionna had knocked some of the surrogate mother he had known back into her. Speaking of...

"Marshall, what on earth is she talking about? Who is Simon?" Fionna asked, putting her small hand on the young vampire's tense shoulder.

Marshall turned and stared at her, ignoring the one tear that quietly snaked down his face. How much can she be told, how much can she know before it starts to hurt? Would she change her opinion of him too much? Would it change her opinion of the Ice Queen? Maybe...

"Marshall?" Fionna's innocent, confused eyes looked up at her, and then Marshall almost laughed at an epiphany he had. From her perspective, Fionna had knocked the Ice Queen into a new level of crazy, making her look for things that didn't even exist. It would have been funny had it been anyone else. So, smiling bitterly to himself, the vampire king decided.

"The woman who Ice Queen was wasn't a batty, evil, or even nasty person. She had been given the crown as a present by her fiancé. All I know is from the rare moments she spoke about it. You see, when I was simply a half demon-half human, my mother had abandoned my father and I in the ruins of a world destroyed by the Mushroom War. My father had long since died, and I was alone. Nobody wanted an extra mouth to feed, especially one as nasty looking as me," Marshall said, grinning slightly as he remembered some of the looks on the faces of the people he approached.

"But then a woman with blue skin and white hair came up to me. She wasn't afraid. She managed to see past my aggressive display that I put up and saw that there was a little boy who needed some affection and someone to help guide him through the mess that was the world. And although she would occasionally lose herself to the Ice Queen, especially when she put on the crown, she managed to keep me alive long enough so that I survived the horrible world.

"Eventually, she told me about her past. Her name was Betty Lee, and she had been engaged to a wonderful man named Simon Petrikov. Now, whilst she had been studying medicine, he had become an antiquarian, and had recently found a priceless intact Scandinavian crown, buried in ice wastes in Norway. He had brought it back, and the two had been celebrating the find, as it was going to make him famous in the antiquarian world. As a joke, he had placed the crown upon her head, and then..." Marshall trailed away, looking over to the Ice Queen, who was now out of bed, and wandering around the room, still dazed.

"And then what, Marshall?" Fionna asked, looking anxiously at the hovering teen. Her eyes were moist, but she knew she couldn't cry, not in front of Marshall, so she fought the tears back angrily.

Marshall shrugged. "I don't know," he confessed.

"Simon? Please Simon, I'm sorry!" The Ice Queen had stopped searching, and had begun to cry. Fionna and Marshall looked at each other, and then went to help the old woman.

"I'm sorry Simon. Wherever you are, whatever I said or did, I didn't mean it! I even found a son for us, my prince! His name was Marshall, just like you wanted! Oh Simon, why did you put the crown on me, and not yourself! I'm sorry Simon, so sorry..." The Ice Queen was wailing, her sobs echoing around the room (Fionna guessed Gumball could hear them back in the Candy Kingdom). Gently, they lowered the distraught woman onto her bed. Almost immediately though, she sprang back up again, looking wildly around.

"Tom boy! Where did you hide my tiara?!" She hissed, the harsh cackle returning to her voice. The Ice Queen was back.

"Oh Betty, I'm sure you'll look lovely in this tiara!"

"Nonsense Simon! Why don't you try it on, and be a dashing king of the land?!"

"I'm not sure about that. Why does the land need more kings? I feel it needs more beautiful, radiant queens!"

"Oh Simon... Alright then! But only briefly, you hear me? And no photos!"

"Hahaha, of course not. Just the one I'll have in my brain for the rest of my life!"

"Betty?"

"You dare touch me?! I who have the powers of ice and snow?! I, who can command the armies of frost! I will make sure you never touch anything again!"

"Ok Betty, the joke's over now..."

"No Betty, what are you-?"

Several hours later...

"Simon? Simon, where are you?"

"Come back Simon! I love you! I'm sorry!"

Marceline stared down at the old piece of paper, hidden in the back of one of Ice King's fanfiction journals. It was much older than the other scraps of paper, and had tell-tale signs of tears splattered over them. Quietly, she snatched them up, and read them.

And the tears ran down her face, splashing over the marks left by an old man, long lost in his frosty labyrinth of ice.