TOWER, TOWER – [Part V]

"What did you say?"

Marceline turns. Her tunic flutters in the night's low breeze; her hair undulates, tendrils of it quivering aggressively midair. The moonlight catches the flare of her eyes as they narrow, the slick of her smile as she smirks, a terrible twist of lips over teeth. She laughs, just once: lifts a hand to cup it around her ear.

"Sorry," she revisits, "but I think I might've misunderstood you, Princess. What did you say to me just then?"

Princess Bubblegum is a calm, collected individual on any given day. Typically she is slow to anger—she is hard to offend and even harder to vex, and when her temper does ignite she is often rational enough to bite down on her bile and maintain her discipline. Her borders are peaceful as such, her neighbors courteous, her alliances strong.

Every single shred of civility Bubblegum was ever taught, however, dissolves at the sight of Marceline's leering little sneer.

"A thousand apologies," Bubblegum demurs. "I mumbled. How rude of me." Clearing her throat, she scowls at the other woman and enunciates with painstaking clarity, "I called you a coward, Marceline."

The legend gapes at the princess. A feeble cloud scuttles over the moon and away again just as quickly, scissoring the pair in shadows.

Holding up the storybook, Bubblegum shakes it and admits as she strides toward her audience, "This was read to me again and again in my youth, you know, because I begged to hear it, and when the story was over I always asked why you left your kingdom." She hurls the tome to the gorge floor just beneath Marceline's feet: not because she bears it any ill will but because she is trembling, all the fear and anger and frustration of the past day boiling up into her mouth, and her fingers are too nerveless now to hold it. As black dust mushrooms up around her childhood relic, she hisses, "My butler insisted you made your exit because you thought the kingdom could rule itself better than you, maybe—or that you disappeared because you were worried the crown would twist you the same way it had twisted your king. It's a shame"—nigh seething, Bubblegum jabs a finger into Marceline's stomach—"but now I know he was wrong."

Flames dance in the former knight's eyes, oranges and bronzes and slow, licking reds. Bubblegum has the comet-stray thought that they're quite pretty, those eyes with their embers, before Marceline licks her lips and drops with a soft shup to the ground. She leans in. Close enough that Bubblegum can feel the cold breath on her brow, the taller woman purrs, "You really are a loudmouth. Button it, baby. That's my first and last warning to you."

Bubblegum ignores said warning and proclaims, thrusting her finger into the opposing collar this time, "You were afraid." She sucks in a shivery breath and repeats, "A moment of need arose and you were afraid and you ran, just like you're running now. You useless, spineless coward."

Stillness: sweeping. Throughout the canyon nothing moves—for a few scattered seconds, anyway. Next Marceline lifts an arm and curls her hand around the hilt of the axe strapped across her shoulders. "I am going to seriously enjoy maiming you," she confesses. "I mean, wow. You have no idea."

No one should be able to lift an axe that size with the effortless grace Marceline does. Beneath her tunic her bicep uncoils; her elbow snaps and the weapon slips from its harness with a gentle snick. Tossing it to her other hand over Bubblegum's head, Marceline scrapes the axe's blade down the canyon wall. Blue sparks erupt in a shower, in a torrent, in a geyser and Bubblegum, who knows she should be terrified, feels still only deep, resentful anger. Tears prick the corners of her eyes.

"Perfect!" she observes furiously. She shifts a step back and throws her arms wide. "Yes! Go on, then! Take a swipe at me! You can't possibly miss, can you? Here, how about this—why don't I just make it a little easier for you?" She tears off her tiara: lowers her head, bending at the waist. Her hair falls aside and the breeze stirs her bare nape, coaxing gooseflesh to life along arms, her torso. Clutching hard at her crown, Bubblegum finishes in a snarl, "Add another monarch's death to your conscience!"

She closes her eyes, the tears in them spilling frigid over her cheeks, and waits for the axe to fall.

And waits.

And waits even longer.

When finally her back has begun to protest the awkward angle, Bubblegum glances aright and finds Marceline not brandishing her weapon but leaning on it, her face pointed skyward. The princess slowly straightens and squints up too, trying to discern what's captured the other woman's attention so. The heavens are full of stars and stippled clouds and the great yawning moon, just the same as before, and Bubblegum is gazing at them curiously through her breath's muzzy fog when Marceline sighs, "You're the first not to run."

Blinking back down at the former knight, the princess frowns. "Excuse me?"

Marceline shrugs, smiling. It's a wry expression—resigned, almost. "That damn book," she mutters. She drops a boot onto that very manuscript and allows, "It gets around. You're not the first to come here, Princess—not nearly. But in almost five hundred freaking years, sheesh, you are indeed the first not to run."

Bubblegum's anger begins to falter, replaced by fatigue and puzzlement. "I don't understand what you—"

"You'll get there," Marceline interrupts. Sliding her hand down her axe's hilt, she flicks her gaze to Bubblegum's—holds it as she folds to one knee on the gorge's dark floor, her other foot propped on the storybook still. Her gloves creak as she reaches to take Bubblegum's fingers. She draws them to her mouth. Kisses them. In the moonlight her teeth are silver, like spoons.

"Milady," she agrees.