A/N: This part is 2,500 words. =) Happy reading, lovelies.

TOWER, TOWER - [Part XIII]

When Peppermint Butler returns with an armful of bandages and a bowl of ointment, Bubblegum is muttering crossly into her closet as she shrugs out of her nightgown. Marceline, looking chastised, has taken up a ginger seat at the monarch's desk. Glancing between them, the servant sighs and marches over to the singed vampire. Despite that most of Marceline's wounds are all but gone now, he sets about dabbing thick white paste onto her arm and informs the knight, voice waspish, "I hope you're quite proud of yourself. She'll be in a sour mood all day thanks to you."

Hackling, Marceline protests, "It's not like I intended to fry myself that much, okay? You saw it—the curtain pull stuck—"

"The demonstration as a whole was completely and utterly unnecessary," Bubblegum fumes. She balls up her nightgown and hurls it at the vampire, scowling around the closet door. It slaps Marceline square in the face. "A simple affirmation or negation would have sufficed, but no—you had to be dramatic and hold a cooking seminar!" She adds a hissed, "Ooooh!" for good measure before whipping back to her wardrobe.

"You are quite lucky she has nothing else to fling at you," opines Peppermint Butler.

He is proven wrong when Bubblegum's underwear smacks into Marceline's cheek.

Peeling the garment free, the vampire dangles it between scorched thumb and forefinger and provides, "Well now, Princess! This is a new record even for me—we've scarcely known each other a day and you're already throwing these my wa—OW! Hey!" Marceline glares down at Peppermint Butler. "Did you seriously just whip me with that bandage?"

"I did, you fanged hooligan, and rest assured I will perform the task twice and again if I must!" With a fearless glower, the servant smears more ointment along the knight's other arm and leans up to snatch away Bubblegum's underwear from her too. "Tame yourself unless you'd prefer the task fall to me. I will not," he growls, tucking the underwear into his belt, "allow you to disrespect my princess."

Marceline opens her mouth with a reply ready, nevertheless shrinking back as Bubblegum stomps a foot to interject, "And I will not allow you to fight with him, Marceline!" She steps from the closet more or less garbed, fussing with the ribbon on her bodice's fore. "Further that," she mutters, tugging said ribbon, "I will not allow you two to fight one another either. Peppermint, you are my most loyal and trusted advisor—you have been always." She folds a hand over the butler's brow. "Marceline," the princess murmurs, gazing intently next at the vampire, "you are my protector now and stand high in my regard as such. It is imperative you two cooperate. And it would be nice," she stresses, "if you could also be civil to each other."

She looks expectantly between the pair. Following a moment's sullen silence, Marceline sighs and grumbles, "Yeah, uh. Mr. Peppermint. I like your, uhm… your thing." She wiggles a finger over the divot of her own collarbone. "You know. The little twist."

The butler blinks. His face floods with startled pleasure. "Why, this?" He tweaks the queer little knot at his vest's head, unintentionally smearing it with ointment. "They call it a bowtie! It's a trend in the Fire Kingdom, I've heard—probably next month no one will remember it, but an acquaintance of mine there told me of it and I thought I'd try it."

"It's classy, sir," Marceline admits. "It suits you."

Suddenly it's hard to tell where Peppermint Butler's stripes begin for the crimson staining his shell. "That's kind of you to say, Lady Knight."

"Marceline," insists the vampire. She affords the servant a wink. "You've seen me in my underthings, Mr. Peppermint. I think we're on a first-name basis now."

Much as he'd probably rather not, Peppermint Butler smiles. After wrapping the knight's forearm, he allows, "In that case, address me as the princess does." He looks at his patient askance. "Marceline."

"Honor's mine, Peppermint. Ssst—not so tight, hey?"

"My apologies." He loosens the wrap. "Is this better? Yes? Good—now." Passing Bubblegum's underwear surreptitiously back to the princess, Peppermint shifts his supplies aside and asks the knight, "I'd like to not see this happen again. Do you have suitable daywalking attire?"

Bubblegum makes an astonished noise. "You're able to discern it that easily, Peppermint? Marceline's… ethnicity?"

The vampire laughs and Peppermint Butler shrugs. "Strange as it is, it seems there is no alternative. Not terribly many kinds of people fly, much less burn so badly in the sunlight. And there are those rather conspicuous marks on her neck."

"What?" The monarch leans in to look. Marceline tips her head obligingly—a shadow slithers down her throat's well and pools at its base, not quite dark enough to obscure the two faint circular scars there. Before she realizes quite what she's doing Bubblegum finds herself touching them, covering them with the tips of her index and middle fingers. Under her touch they quiver with an odd, ethereal heat, a shivery not-quite pulse, and not until Marceline swallows does Bubblegum look up into her knight's face. "I didn't see these before," she confesses, feeling foolish.

"Yeah, well." Marceline's voice has fallen to a hoarse whisper. Her cheeks are flushed too, almost purple. The bitemarks must be tender, realizes Bubblegum. She wonders fleetingly whether the new ones on her arm will be the same. "It was dark," the knight continues, "and the tunic had a high collar besides. No matter—you know now." A brush of Bubblegum's thumb across the marks sends the vampire's eyelids shuttering low. She blows her breath out through her teeth—strains forward into the princess's touch.

Inserting himself forcibly between the two women not a second later, Peppermint Butler huffs and tells Bubblegum, "Majesty, you've forgotten your stockings."

"Oh!" She checks. "Ah—so I have." Stifling a stab of surprising reluctance, Bubblegum withdraws and returns to her closet. She hears her butler tersely ask Marceline again about daywalking clothes.

"I don't have any for this day," Marceline disagrees. "The princess mentioned a smithy. I'll need to commission them as soon as possible for custom armor—my last set's still stuck in a dragon's molars somewhere." She waves a hand. "Most likely they have a helmet I can borrow in the meantime. That will suffice for temporary protection."

Bubblegum emerges with a set of stockings in time to see Peppermint Butler frown disapprovingly. "No disrespect meant," he offers, "but your particular vulnerability, Marceline—it's rather limiting, isn't it? It would take but for someone to knock off your helmet to grievously wound you. How do you expect to protect our kingdom during the daylight hours if the sun harms you so?"

"Peppermint!" Taking a seat on her bed's edge, Bubblegum leans down to pull on the stockings and chides her advisor, "I never said she had to be perfect!"

Marceline gifts Bubblegum a smile that does something strange to the inner workings of the princess's chest. They tighten and tremble at once, and Marceline says, "Thanks, Bonnibel, but he's right. I'm only so much use to you during the day." Abruptly she rises. For a moment she flexes her arms, testing the give and pull of the bandages there—next she returns her gaze to Bubblegum. "But I won't be protecting your kingdom alone, so that's not a worry."

"What do you mean?" asks the monarch. "Who else—"

"You told me last night before you fell asleep that you have a militia already." Bubblegum flushes—she remembers telling Marceline no such thing. Grinning, the knight resumes, "Presumably they aren't up to par now, but mark me! After a few weeks under my tutelage, heh, they'll be the best in Ooo."

"And until then?" presses Peppermint Butler anxiously.

"Until then," Marceline supplies, "my squire will guard the castle and the princess by day when I am unable to do so myself."

The vampire steps across the room to Bubblegum's closet, where she shamelessly pilfers a purple tunic and a set of darker leggings to go with it. The tunic's revealed to be a bit short on her after she wriggles into it, exposing the start of her hip's terrible scar. Bubblegum determines quietly, "Armor and a wardrobe for you, perhaps. You have a squire?"

"Hmm." Wrangling the leggings up over her hips, Marceline acknowledges, "Perhaps the term squire is too generous. Leech is more apt. But"—and she tugs at the garment's hem—"he's a good leech, make no mistake. Capable. Zealous. Good with a shield—better with a sword. I've met no one else more willing to throw their whole being into a task, and trust me, Princess, I've met lots of people."

Peppermint Butler persists keenly, "And you think he's up to this task?"

"Sure he's up to it!" Marceline's smile is all teeth. "He's on his way. I asked your Lady Rainicorn to retrieve him last night—he should arrive this evening sometime, I imagine. If they get a good headwind."

Bubblegum takes a moment to absorb this. Wondering just what else her knight got up to while she was sleeping, she queries, "Why wasn't he with you in the gorge?"

The bed bobs as Marceline drops next to her. Their shoulders rub—their knees, their ankles. "I can't teach him all he needs to know," says the vampire. "He wasn't far—in a village over the mountains east of me, apprenticing under a blacksmith. Taking lessons. Things like that."

A thousand other questions occur to the princess instantly. She prepares to ask the next when Peppermint Butler clears his throat and suggests, "Majesty? Forgive the interruption, but since Marceline has been tended and you are both dressed, perhaps it would be wise to prepare a kingdom address? Last night's panic has not entirely subsided."

Bubblegum climbs to her feet. "Indeed—I should confirm to my citizens that I am still alive. Not to mention introduce you, Marceline. Both will inspire calm, hopefully. Peppermint"—she smiles at her friend—"would you check the smithy for a helmet while I send runners to announce the address?"

"Of course, Majesty."

At noon and after a breakfast wherein Marceline sucks the color from every vaguely red object at the table, Bubblegum presents her knight to a packed town square just beyond the walls of her palace. Yellow pennants fly around the platform, commemorating her slain regent—a ribbon of the same color flutters softly in its twine about the handle of Marceline's great axe. "Never again will there be such a death as Lemongrab's," Bubblegum promises her people. "Lady Marceline is here now to protect us."

Eyes of hundreds shift toward the aforementioned lady, and to the crowd the vampire makes a short bow. She is the picture of wild, deadly elegance: her hair streams from beneath the helmet in a stormy black torrent; her hands, gloved again, rest upon the brunt of her weapon's hilt. As the entirety of the kingdom watches, she lifts one of those hands and curls it over Bubblegum's shoulder.

Thoughtlessly the princess reaches to feather her own fingers through Marceline's, realizing what she's done only when, in the midst of the crowd's cheer, her knight tweaks her thumb and whispers through the slats in her visor, "Here to protect them, yes—but especially you, Bonnibel."

The remainder of the day slips by in a rush. The blacksmith takes Marceline's measurements. Bubblegum crafts a private, personal memorial for Lemongrab at sundown, planting his seeds in the same castle garden from whence he was grown by her hand years prior. "He was my first alchemic experiment," she tells Marceline quietly, gazing down at the small plot of soil. Tears blur her vision. Scrubbing them away, she finishes, "He was flawed in many ways, yes—but a fine friend."

Evening is creeping over the land now, stretching purple fingers as shadows through the courtyard. Overhead the sky simmers a fainter mauve. "You practice alchemy?" Marceline murmurs. She pulls off her helmet, tucks it under her arm—shakes out her hair. For the second time in their short tenure together, she passes Bubblegum a handkerchief. This one's blue but sports the same spidery M on its corner as its predecessor.

"Mm? Oh—yes, I do. Thank you." Taking the cloth, Bubblegum blots at her cheeks. She glances aside and finds Marceline looking at her curiously. "What? Are you surprised?"

The night will be cold if the breeze is any indication, and it stirs Marceline's hair into rumpled spikes. The vampire smiles. "Mm. Alchemists are fairly straight-minded, usually. Fond of numbers. Equations. Puzzles." Reaching to pluck her handkerchief back from Bubblegum's fingers, Marceline steps close. She wets the cloth on her tongue: palms the monarch's chin. Gently wiping the remnant tears away, she observes, "And yet you turned to a children's book for answers."

The smooth surface of Marceline's glove crinkles against Bubblegum's cheek. Turning her face into it, the princess replies, "I am more than just an alchemist, Marceline."

"Yeah, I'm getting that vibe." The vampire leans in—tips up Bubblegum's face. They are close now, the tips of their noses nigh touching. Marceline smells of the strawberries that constitute her protector's fee. Disjointedly Bubblegum muses that she is quite fond of strawberries. "I look forward," Marceline professes, "to exploring more of you."

A shadow whips over them suddenly. Marceline jerks back and has Bubblegum behind her in a moment's measure, a hand on her axe's hilt. The precaution is unnecessary, though. Lady Rainicorn touches down at the courtyard's edge, coiling the length of her iridescent body around a belt of shrubbery to avoid disturbing the season's last fading flowers.

Her rider dismounts with a graceless thunk and hurls himself across the garden toward the princess and her knight. "Marcy!" he shrieks. His voice rings high. "Marcy, MARCY!"

He tackles the vampire at full speed. They go down in a tangle of limbs and laughter—Marceline rolls her axe off her arm and away just before the creature hits her, Bubblegum notes, so he's in no danger of cutting himself on it. He belts his arms shamelessly about the knight's neck, driving his round pink face into her collar. His teeth are snaggled in his mouth. A tuft of dingy straw-colored hair crowds from beneath the brim of his headwrap, that an odd-looking once-white thing with two rounded tufts on its crown. A battered bronze sword and a rucksack equally as abused jounce between his thin shoulders.

Following a brief struggle, Marceline heaves the creature from atop her, rocks aright, and thrusts him forward. He's got the bluest eyes Bubblegum's ever seen and a homespun tunic to match them, the latter so frayed at the sleeves it's a wonder it hasn't fallen off him yet. He comes up to the princess's shoulder, maybe.

"Bonnibel," Marceline attends, "I'd like you to meet my squire, Finn the Human."