Disclaimer! All fictional characters featured or mentioned in this fan fiction belong to Pendleton Ward; except Sunny/ Sun Princess, whom is mine.

First Adventure Time fic. Hoo-RAH! Also, the first pro-Ice King fic, and hopefully not the only one. Because there are no known canon characters that would demonstrate this much kindness to him (except maybe the Penguins, but I don't think they can talk), I used an OC.

It might be a little early for a fic like this, so most of this stuff about Ice King's background is based on pure speculation.

Ailment

This must be the first Princess who hasn't put up a struggle. Not once. Well, not that it would've done her any good, as he has her trapped in an ice ball, but only because she had been too hot to touch, let alone carry back to the Ice Kingdom in his arms.

A very hot selection, to say the least. Perhaps that alone disqualifies her as a potential wife for the King of Ice. But, she is a Princess, as he infers by the band around her blazing head. If he is to find the perfect wife, he'll handpick through all of the Princesses in Ooo, if he has to.

While reading to her from out of Baby Whooslefut and the Wuttlebugs, he peeks over in mid-sentence to see if she is paying attention, though more importantly, enjoying herself. He worries that she isn't paying a speck of attention to his efforts to woo her due to how she hasn't spoken a word since he'd brought her to his palace. On the one hand, it benefits him, in a way. The less commotion this princess makes, the less likely that meddlesome boy and his magical dog would be to come barging in to "save the day," again.

Still, most Princesses he has brought home would be rolling their eyes or grumbling "Big Nerd" under their dainty breath, by now, if not begging for release. This one—a flame shaped like a Princess—remains sitting cross-legged in her ice prison, flickering like a lantern as she stares back at him through eyes like burning lumps of coal. She doesn't seem terrified or irritated. Rather, she seems puzzled. As though she is observing him, as he is, her.

"What do you think of the story, so far, Princess? It's one of my personal favorites," he says from his place in his armchair, in hopes of, well, breaking the ice.

She still doesn't utter a sound, only blinks.

The thick silence is punctured by the faint drip-drip of water on the floor. The ball is melting.

"There's no need to be shy, Princess," he says in his most coaxing tone. "I don't bite."

Sssssh!

His potential wife spills out from the bottom of the ice ball and thuds onto the floor. A sizzling puddle begins to form in her immediate vicinity upon contact.

"Oh dear!" he rests the book on the arm of his chair and rushes over to the cell, mostly to stunt any attempts that she will no doubt make to escape now that she is free. Gripping the cell bars, he asks her, "Are you all right, Princess?"

She looks a bit shaken on the landing, though with a few nods of her blazing head, she collects herself. She then resumes her cross-legged position, this time seeming to hover about four feet from the floor. How does she do that? Gas, perhaps?

"Ah, very good! I can hear you, now!" she pipes up, smiling contentedly. She has a rather goofy accent for a Princess. But then, he's heard goofier. The Lumpy Space Princess doesn't even sound female.

"You were saying?"

His grip on the bars tightens almost to the point where they snap, as he fights to keep the grin on his face from contorting into a sneer. "So…I take it that you haven't heard a word I've said until this point, Princess?"

She waves her tongues of flames for hands out in front of her, the heat emanating off them nipping his frozen cheeks. "Oh, no-no-no-no-no! Call me Sunny. Do not call me Princess."

What kind of Princess wouldn't want to be addressed as such? For that matter, who is she to tell him, the Ice King, what to do? "But you are a Princess, aren't you? You have the tiara and everything…"

She peers up at the soot-grey band around her head, a simple red gem planted in the center. "Oh, no-no-no-no-no. Dis is not my tiara."

He finds the opportunity to trap her: "A-ha! So you do admit you're a Princess! I didn't bring you here for nothing!"

…

"Right?"

The Princess in question taps her chin, assuming that she has a chin, and hums to herself, as though meditating. After a minute, she answers, "No, I am no Princess. I used to be, but not anymore."

He quirks a bushy eyebrow in question. "And just what do you mean by that?" he demands.

She looks up towards the icicles hanging from the ceiling, gazing at something he can't see. "I am in exile."

He scowls. An exiled Princess? That doesn't sound too good. It certainly wouldn't reflect well on him to marry one of the like. Well, no one is too crazy about him, anyway, but he still has his dignity as royalty to protect, if nothing else. "For what?"

"Pardon?"

"What are you in exile for? What did you do?"

"Oh, it was not so much about someding I did, as it was about someding I saw. I come from de land of Sun—"

"Whoa, whoa, hold on, there! Which 'Sun' are you talking about?" he asks. "That big infernal ball hanging in the sky during the day? Is that where you came from?"

After another minute of meditation, she replies, "Yes-yes, I suppose so. I used to be its Princess."

Good gracious, a Sun Princess? No wonder she hadn't struggled as much as he would've expected her to; she isn't even from Ooo at all! Therefore, she wouldn't know of his reputation. He's picked up a foreigner.

While he tries to imagine what it'd be like to rule both the Sun and the Ice—or if he would like it—he says, "So your name is Sun Princess?"

"Oh, no-no-no-no-no, it is Sunny. Call me Sunny."

Having had enough of being corrected, he raises his fists to form crackling Ice Bolts, glaring at her with his most menacing face. "Don't tell me what I can and can't call you! I'm the Ice King! Don't you know what 'Ice King' means?"

He shouldn't have asked that. Ever since the last time that boy and his dog ruined his chances with six other potential wives, everyone's adopted the new definition for the name as coined by the dog: "a biiiig nerd!" Or an even classier one: "a patoot!"

He waits for her to say them. They would be the last words ever out of her throat.

Naturally, Sun Princess draws back, shrinking a little in what appears to him to be fear. And rightfully so.

Until he hears this, instead: "One who is ailing."

The Ice Bolts fizzle out in his fingers. Well, this is a new one. Not quite as snarky as other responses; he isn't sure what to make of it.

He scoffs, "What nonsense are you speaking, this time? I feel fine."

Sun Princess shakes her head in disbelief. "You do not seem fine. You seem hurt. What ails you, Ice King?"

What ails him, she asks. Feh! What a thing to ask! It's nothing anyone has ever asked him before.

He tries to capture back the conversation: "I've never felt better! Besides, even if something did ail me—which it doesn't—that's not a very interesting topic for conversation, not a fun topic. Let's talk about something fun instead. Like Baby Whooslefut, for instance." He strokes his snow-white beard. "Ooh! Or better yet, something about yourself! Yes, you haven't said much of anything about yourself." His bony fingers cling eagerly to the bars again as his long, pointy nose protrudes from between them, like a spear. "So, you're a Sun Princess, and…?"

Why is she in exile?

"I lived a very good life up on Sun," she admits, "but I left it."

"Wait, I thought you said you were in exile. Now you're saying you left your Kingdom by choice? Well, which is it?"

"I put myself into exile. I saw someding dat I'd never seen before, and in order to learn more about it, I had to leave my Kingdom."

She pauses to collect her thoughts.

"I believe de name of what I saw is 'ailment.' De world below Sun—dis world, I mean—seems to be full of it. You seem to be full of it. Why? What causes ailment? What ails you?"

Well, how dare she! No one has ever had the guts to ask him something like that!

He stomps his foot and thrusts a fist in through the bars to threaten her for a second time. "Who do you think you are, a doctor? Germs cause ailments, everyone knows that!"

She does not shrink away, this time. Rather, she stares into the crackling Ice Bolts dancing in his fingers before her coal-burning gaze drifts into his face. She looks him straight in his icicle-sharp eyes with a mild sadness that deepens, the longer she stares at him. A kind of sadness that is alien to him, that he has no name for.

Neither notices that the room has begun to drip.

"Dere it is, again," Sun Princess mutters, cocking her head as she folds her flames for hands in her lap, if she has a lap. "Why do you do dat?"

For a rambling ember, she is not exceptionally bright, is she?

"What, threaten you? Because you're being unreasonable," he growls. "I don't want to, but I must. Unreasonable people must be made reasonable. I find this particular method to work best."

"Why? Aren't people unhappy when you do dat?"

Again, the Ice Bolts fizzle out. He rolls his eyes at such a sappy proposition. "Maybe," he snorts, "but it gets me my way."

She leans in a bit closer, as though intrigued by his words. "Den, why aren't you happy? If dreats help you get your way, den why do you continue to be ailed?"

By now, he simply has to facepalm. "Look, Princess—"

"Sunny."

He gnashes his teeth in mounting frustration. "Look, I'm just a King who's searching for a wife, all right? Is that so wrong? That's why I brought you here: to see if you were wife-material. Princesses don't come to me—no one does—I have to go out and look. Marriage is a pretty big decision, you know; the least I should do is make it with the right person…"

She continues to stare transfixed, her face so blank that if she were to go on to ask what a wife is at this very moment, he wouldn't be terribly surprised.

"Then make sure that they stay long enough so as to get to know them…so I can hold their attention…"

He trails off without even really knowing it. All life long, ever since he was a boy, he's been chasing after something, something to fill in that inexplicable void he's been carrying with him. He'd started out mildly mannered enough for royalty, and as royalty, he had had everything one could ever want, except for one thing.

He'd always been a pauper when it came to attention, even from his own mother and father. They showered him with material things, but he'd never felt much love attached to any of them, if not none.

Eventually, with enough time and resentment on him, he had come to a horrible conclusion: if no one would give him their love willingly, he would force them to love him, following his father's example that he'd observed after the passing of his mother when he'd been a youngster. The old man had spent a great chunk of the rest of his life seeking remarriage, capturing Princesses here and there because no one would step forward willingly to offer their hand.

Of course, he hadn't been successful, either. In fact, if his memory serves him correctly, his father had perished on one of those escapades. How and when and for who exactly is foggy to him, shrouded in frost he doesn't quite care to scrape away. All he is certain of—or rather, all that matters to him—is that his father's passing secured him the magical crown he now wears on his head. One last gift from either of his parents, as cold, hollow and loveless as everything else they'd ever given him, but imbued with the kind of power one needs if he is to make people give him compensation.

To make them pay attention.

To like him.

To love him.

For some reason, his knees are buckling under him, as though cracking under a weight other than his physical weight. He hangs on to the bars for dear life, because Heaven forbid he let anyone, not even a Princess, see him in a moment of weakness. No one would ever let him live it down.

(Though how much does that matter, really? With witnesses to every time Finn would beat him senseless, everyone in Ooo and their brother's already calling him a patoot, a big nerd, et cetera, et cetera…)

There's a foul substance burning his eyes, as though peeling them away layer by layer like onions. He hangs his head to keep his face out of Sun Princess's view.

No one likes me. No one likes me. No one will ever like me, and if they do, it's only because I forced them…

"Why can't anyone like me?" he whispers under his shuddering breath, a question that may never get an answer. "I try so hard to be likeable, but nothing works…nothing…"

Silence pervades the room, with only the bitter moan of the north wind passing the entrance outside. That, and the constant dripping around the room that still goes unnoticed by either party.

Then Sun Princess speaks up:

"I like you."

It feels as though Ricardio is attempting to escape from his chest again—what a dreadful experience that'd been—upon hearing those three little words. Never in his life has he heard anyone tell him that. So beautiful…

Yet so hollow, like the clash of cymbals on his drum set. How can she say that with such spontaneity?

He waves a dismissive arm at her. "D'oh, stop it," he spits. "You're just saying that so I don't feel like destroying you. Or better yet, so I'll let you out of your cell."

Sun Princess shakes her head. "Oh, no-no-no-no-no. I like you," she reinforces gently. "I like you because you are my friend. And I am yours. I came to de world below to learn how to ease ailment. Please, whatever ails you, let me help you ease it."

What a peculiar thing for a kidnapped Princess to say to her captive. However, that doesn't strike him nearly as much as the fact that someone in general, another living being, has called him a "friend." The word is as alien to him as a word can possibly be alien.

They've only just met. He's kidnapped her, for crying out loud. Is she mocking him? She must be.

He doesn't notice how she reaches a flickering finger out through the bars, creeping towards his cheek with the intention of wiping up the single blasted tear that has managed to break out of his left eye.

He doesn't notice, that is, until her fiery touch—FWOOOSSH!—sets his beard on fire. Anything pertaining to his beard is very difficult for him to overlook. When he sees everything in front of him flash into orange tongues of flames, at least he temporarily forgets his sadness. For he is about to lose something even more precious than his pride or the respect of a self-proclaimed "friend."

"MY BEEEEARD!"

Tearing away from the cell, he prances around screaming cold-blooded murder in circles in the way most folks do when they are on fire, until the smell of burning facial hair and singing skin cues him to stop, drop and roll. So he does, until the entire room—or his head—seems to be gyrating on its own.

Or at least, until he collides into a wall. A wall of freshly melted water, not ice.

SSSSSSSH!

It's all a blur, like he's tumbling straight down the side of the mountain. The next thing he is aware of, he's poking his head through the surface of a vast pool of glacial water at the base of the mountain, gasping for air and barely conscious of anything except of a few penguins floating around like little squawking blue-and-white buoys, as well as several pieces of furniture.

While he scrambles for a small chunk of ice drifting in front of him, he hears her cry overhead: "Sri Lanka!"

She floats down from the summit in what appears to be a small solar flare before taking shape in front of him, hovering cross-legged in midair as she watches him with concern scrunching her face, if she has a face. "Ice King, my friend! Are you all right?"

He peers up at the summit of the mountain…or what's left of it, anyway. What hasn't melted into the pool the two are now floating in the middle of, which, sadly, isn't much more than the foundation.

He squeaks, "My palace…"

The flames from his beard—or what's left of his beard—may have long been extinguished, but he sees more red than ever before. Jabbing a dripping finger in a bewildered Sun Princess's direction, he roars while coughing up water and puffs of soot, "YOU! Insolent Princess!"

"Sunny," she corrects him softly.

"I DON'T CARE! I can't marry a Princess I can't even touch, or who will melt down my entire Kingdom! I'm the Ice King, darn it! I can't be the Ice King without Ice!"

As non-bright as she'd ever been, she extends a crackling hand, as though she is offering something. "B-but why?" She just adores asking "Why?" all the time, doesn't she? "Is a Kingdom really dat important to your happiness? I left mine, and I am not ailing. Maybe if you—"

He doesn't even give her a chance to finish. "You truly wish to ease my ailing?" He points in a random direction, not caring where she'd go as long as it'd be away from him and his precious Kingdom. "OUT! Get out of my Kingdom! Or sohelpme, I will—"

He tries to form Ice Bolts for a third time, but no dice. No matter how hard he concentrates, nothing happens. There can be only one explanation for that.

Unadulterated panic seizes him as he paws the top of his head. "My crown! Where is it? Where is my crown? I'm nothing without my crown!"

His frantic eyes dart back to the Sun Princess. She has the magical headwear wrapped in her arms. She stares down at her reflection shining in the red gems lining the crown with a pensive frown. As though she's holding something dreadful, a poison that will continue to ail the Ice King if she chooses to return it. Just as it has ailed all of its past wearers.

The ice cube he's standing on is beginning to melt under her heat. Is he going to have to force it away from her? Even powerless, he is prepared to do just that. After all, Princesses can't fight.

As his fists clench until they're practically white, she glances back at him, her face again clouded with a kind of sadness that he can't recognize.

She slumps.

She somehow manages a tiny, defeated smile as she places the crown on the ground. Not by his feet, simply on the ground. "Very well. Goodbye, Ice King, my friend. Dank you for de time we've spent. Be well, and find happiness."

That's the only Princess who's been released by the will of the Ice King.

Possibly the one failed match whose fault is not Finn's.

…

He hasn't seen her since. Perhaps she's gone to another part of Ooo to pester someone else. Or maybe she's come to her senses on how ridiculous her "quest" really is and has gone back home to the Sun? Either way, it hardly troubles him. In about two weeks—and about a thousand bags of trail mix—the Ice Kingdom is up and running again (he gives his beard three more weeks to recuperate).

He doesn't need her. There are plenty other Princesses in Ooo to choose from, Princesses who won't set his beard on fire or burn down his Kingdom. Lately, his eye has been focusing on the sweet Princess Bubblegum, in particular. Yes, she'd make an excellent bride for the Ice King.

He will be happy yet. All he needs is a wife to provide him all of the attention he's been lacking for most all of his life. And he will find her. He will fill in the void.

…

Though he has yet to find another who doesn't scoff him. Who calls him an ailing friend instead of a patoot, without having to be threatened.

Who doesn't hate his guts like Sun Princess didn't.

Like Sunny didn't.

END