"Ice King!" Finn screeched from the patch of icy ground that held him prisoner.

The old man didn't answer. He just held up a corner of his mumu and delicately stepped over the frozen fire before putting his fists on his hips and staring down his nose at the group of friends. "I can't believe this. My best friend, my future wife, my musical idol, and Jake." The Ice King shook his head in disappointment. Snowflakes fell from his beard like dandruff. "I can't believe you all went behind my back to have a party." To nobody's apparent surprise, tears began to fall from the old man's eyes and hit the ground in the form of small ice cubes. "And you didn't invite me!" The Ice King wiped at his eyes, but the tears kept coming and he was sobbing now. "Friends are supposed to be good to each other!"

"You're right, Ice King," Finn yelled. "Friends are supposed to be nice. So if you're our friend then let us go."

The Ice King scowled, suddenly angry, and sent a blast of ice careening in Finn's direction. It landed on his mouth, rendering him unable to speak. "You had your chance to be nice, and you blew it." With a dull thud, the man sat on one of the logs and picked up the stick that Finn had struck through a marshmallow only minutes before. Finn tried to protest, but his cries were muffled by the ice over his mouth. "Well, you should have thought about that before you decided not to invite me." Ice King poked the frozen fire with the marshmallow.

"Uhh." Marceline cleared her throat, and all eyes darted to her. "Not to be like, out of the loop or anything, but what the heck just happened?"

Marceline had gotten flashes of a few scattered memories as soon as the Ice King showed up, but they had only served to confuse her further. All she could seem to remember was a skinny man with brown hair and small round glasses, which didn't match up with the image of this guy in front of her at all. She also had a sudden massive and chilling hatred toward the crown atop his head, and she couldn't figure that out either.

"Marceline doesn't even have her bass?" Ice King scoffed. "What kind of camping trip is this anyway?

"Sorry, Marcy," Bonnie piped up with a roll of her eyes. "This is the Ice King. He likes to imprison princesses and he thinks Finn is his best friend. You might know him as Simon?" Bonnie, Jake, and Finn all leaned forward in anticipation of Marceline's answer, but she just shrugged. Everyone sighed, and Marceline couldn't help but feel like she had let everyone down, though she wasn't sure why.

Ice King jumped from the log and into the air with a hurt expression on his bearded face. "Marceline knows who I am. We jam together all the time, right Marcy?"

"She doesn't remember you, Ice King," Bonnie said before Marceline had a chance to answer. "Her memories have been erased."

An odd look passed over the Ice King's face, and the clouds over his eyes cleared along with the clouds in the sky. "Her… memories?" He frowned, like something important was tugging at his mind, something he couldn't quite grasp, but then he noticed an extra-large snowflake and jumped at it, distracted.

Finn tried to say something around the ice covering his mouth, but he couldn't form coherent words. Marceline guessed it was something about how cold it was. He started rocking back and forth in frustration, and Marceline turned her head to face Bonnie.

"How does this usually end?" she asked the princess, who was staring at the ground in concentration.

"We always get out of it eventually," she said, glancing at Jake.

Marceline shot a look at the dog as well, then looked back at Bonnie with raised brows as realization dawned on her. Jake was stretching his back flab into an extra arm behind the ice, obstructed from the Ice King's view. Smart dog, Marceline thought.

Finn started making noises again, more insistently this time, and everyone looked in his direction. The Ice King swooped closer to Finn with a glare that could freeze the sun. What was this kid doing? If the Ice King got any closer to Jake, he would see his arm and it would all be over.

Finn made something close to a screeching sound and stared at Marceline. She opened her mouth to distract the Ice King: to tell a joke or a story or something, when Bonnie swore colorfully beside her. "Ice King, let us go. Now." Marceline shivered at the commanding tone. The princess was done playing prisoner, it seemed.

The Ice King crossed his arms over his chest and pouted. "You need to be punished for being mean to me," he whined. "How else will you learn your lesson?"

Bonnie groaned, exasperated. "We don't have time for this." She struggled against the ice that bound her to the earth. "If you don't let us go, Marceline is going to die."

Marceline raised her brows. Wasn't Bonnie taking it just a bit too far?

But then she saw it, what Finn had been trying to tell them all this time: the darkness of the forest was receding, what had looked like murky shapes in the trees were becoming clearer; leaves were revealed; shadows ebbed.

The sun was rising.

Marceline hissed almost involuntarily. She was protected from direct sunlight by the trees, but only for so long. Despite how strong she was, this magic ice was much stronger. Surely this Ice King guy wouldn't let her die like this.

Would he?

All at once, Jake's newly made arm shot toward the Ice King in a stream of blurred orange. With a cry of surprise, the old man managed to deflect Jake's attack with a blast of his own, but Jake came back at him from the other direction. The Ice King staved off that attack too, as well as the next few attempts Jake made.

Jake was making a valiant effort, Marceline had to hand it to him. But she didn't have enough time to wait for Jake to win. The sun was already cresting the horizon; she could tell by the way the sky was turning from pink to pale blue.

Think, Marceline. Think.

"Marcy, you can shape-shift," Bonnie said. Her voice was even, but there was a slight waver at the last syllable.

"I can?" Marceline pursed her lips, and tried to picture herself transforming. Panic gripped her again. "Into what?" she yelled.

"Anything, I think." Bonnie was struggling against the ice too, but she wasn't making any progress either. "Just picture what you want to become—something large to break through the ice." Bonnie continued to struggle futilely. "Do it now, Marcy!"

Marceline closed her eyes in concentration, breath ragged. She could do that. She could picture something. She could do that.

But panic held her in its grasp, and she couldn't think. She began to feel warm, but she didn't know if it was the presence of sunlight or her own terror washing over her skin.

Nearby, Jake continued to attack while the Ice King dodged. Marceline tried not to watch, but it was hard when she knew that the outcome of this fight might be literal life or death for her. "Jake, wait, stop!" the Ice King yelped, "the sun is ri—yeargh!" Ice King jumped away as Jake continued his relentless bashing and Finn made screeching noises to the side.

"Ignore them, Marcy. Look at me."

Marceline forced herself to focus on Bonnie, on her fierce eyes and her steady gaze. Marceline felt herself calming down, but she still didn't know how to shape-shift. It was like that part of herself was locked away, impossible to reach.

"Bonnie, I can't. I don't remember how to transform." Marceline felt angry tears prick her eyes. "I'm weak. I can't—"

She must have looked as lost as she felt, because Bonnie closed her eyes and sighed softly. "When we were young, I thought it would be brave if I tried to climb the rock candy mountains alone, do you remember that?" The princess didn't open her eyes, but Marceline shook her head anyway, confused. "I didn't want you with me, because I wanted to prove something—whether it was for you or for myself I still don't really know. I went out early in the morning so you couldn't follow me, but there was an earthquake, and I was trapped under rubble and debris for hours."

Something tugged at the back of Marceline's mind, but the memory wouldn't come forward.

"I didn't tell anyone where I was going." Bonnie dipped her head, eyes still closed. "I thought I was going to die."

Marceline wanted to speak, but she stopped herself; she trusted Bonnie to be going somewhere with this.

"As soon as the sun set, you found me anyway." A corner of Bonnie's mouth quirked and she opened her eyes. She stared at the ground. "You came bursting in and you punched the rocks off of me and you were so mad. You kept saying 'how could you be so stupid?' 'What were you thinking?' And I cried the whole time you carried me home, thinking I was weak for needing your help. But when you finally set me down, you were crying too. I hadn't noticed before.

"I apologized for being so weak, and you looked at me like I was speaking a different language." Bonnie chuckled, even as the sunlight met the edge of the forest clearing. "You told me there was nothing weak about me, and I couldn't believe it. I didn't believe it for a long time. But when you said that, when you told me I was strong—" Bonnie shook her head. "—I never forgot it. I was only able to handle myself as a princess because of those words you said to me when we were children. Sometimes I'm still unsure, but then I think of you."

When Bonnie's eyes finally met Marceline's, it felt like she had been set on fire.

"Whenever I feel like I'm losing myself, I think of you," Bonnie said. "Because you thought I was brave, I was finally able to be. You did that, Marcy."

Marceline's eyes widened, and the memory became real in her head just like it had always been there—a spread of large membranous wings across her back, strong claws curled like talons, Bonnie's tears glistening in the dark.

"There is nothing weak about you, Marcy," Bonnie said. "Nothing."

Marceline could picture it now, the creature she could shift into at will, and she took a deep breath.

Bonnie was right. No matter what life she was living, Marceline was strong. She could feel that strength in her bones as they grew larger and the ice cracked beneath her. She could feel that strength in her core, in her heart, in the fire that had been ignited within her by Bonnie, by her friends who cared enough for her that they would go to such lengths to protect her.

Bonnie let out an excited, somewhat relieved whoop! as Marceline grew to her full height and punched the Ice King right in the face. He fell to the ground with a thump, instantly unconscious. Marceline allowed herself to feel bad for only a brief moment before turning to knock the ice out from under the rest of her friends.

Free at last, Bonnie rushed to knock the crown off the Ice King's head, and the rest of the ice began to melt.

"Dang Marcy!" Finn pumped his fist and jumped up and down. "You were like whoosh, then you were like pwchoo, then you were like yaaaa!"

She smiled and slowly returned to her own form, wincing slightly.

"We have to get out of here," Bonnie said, staring at the sky. Marceline followed her line of vision.

"How?" Jake asked. "There's nowhere we can go that she'll be safe from the sun."

Bonnie and Marceline looked at each other, then they both looked to the grimy tent they had set up.

"Glob dang it," Bonnie said. "I knew we should have washed that thing."


In the end, Finn and Jake had offered up their tent to Marceline while they returned to the Candy Kingdom to deliver the Ice King to the dungeon for the time being. They promised to come back with a shroud or an umbrella or something that might cover Marceline up completely, and Bonnie suggested she stay behind with the vampire.

The tent was small—smaller than Marceline's by quite a bit—but the two girls had pushed it into the forest where the sunlight couldn't fully break through the treetops, and Marceline felt better after they had both lay down. Much less jittery.

She yawned, stretching as much as she could in the small space.

"Watch yourself, Marcy," the princess shoved Marceline's outstretched limbs away from her, but there was no malice in her voice.

Marceline laughed. "You're cute when you're grumpy."

"Shut it," Bonnie said crossly, but Marceline noticed the blush that crept up the girl's neck.

"In all seriousness, though," Marceline said, letting her smile drop, "thank you for what you said. It—It helped." She ran a hand through her mop of hair, wishing she knew how to say more.

Bonnie smiled and closed her eyes. "You're welcome."

Marceline stared at the top of the tent and watched a tiny ant walk around in circles.

"I feel you," she said to the ant.

Bubblegum turned her head. "You what?"

Marceline chuckled. "Nothing."

Marceline could feel Bonnie's eyes on her, but she forced herself not to look at the princess. Even though she was tired, she was still buzzing with the excited energy of her transformation, and she thought if she looked into Bonnie's eyes again she might explode.

"I meant it, you know," The princess said softly. "I meant every word."

Marceline smiled. "I know."

She could hear the frown in Bonnie's voice. "I didn't tell you how I felt enough, you know, before. I don't think you knew how much—how highly I regarded your opinion of me."

Marceline surprised both of them by laughing. Bonnie—Princess Bubblegum—sometimes she tried too hard to be formal. "I think I probably knew," Marceline said, although she really had no idea.

Bonnie put her hand on Marceline's cheek and forced her to look into her eyes. For a reeling, wild moment Marceline thought she might kiss her. But Bonnie only patted her skin like she was a child and rolled back over. "Try to get some sleep, Marcy."

There was no way in heck would she get any sleep now.

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I'm sorry that it took me a hundred years to post this!

I'm taking a creative writing class this semester, and my first draft for my final is due this week. I've been working furiously to finish it and had to put this off because I'm an incredibly slow writer.

Thanks for waiting, and thanks for reading!