Part Four of the Season Title: "The Danger, the Duo, and the Dance in the Dark"

(A note from the Author: This is definitely the most heart-wrenching chapter of anything I've ever written in the history of my writing career... I need to snuggle with my Marshall plushie before I go onto the heartbreak of the next chapter...)

Endless winter has come. All that anyone in Aaa can do is cling to their loved ones and pray for a good existence in the afterlife. Feelings and memories come to the surface to make the most of the last days, as extinction's icy fingers grasp all life across the multiverse.

"Symone! Symone where are you!" Marshall Lee cried as he flew into the window of the home mountain of the Ice Queen. "Symone!"

"I told you to quit calling me that!" The Ice Queen growled as she emerged from another room with a dark frown. "And who said you could just waltz into my crib, man?" She was rendered silent when Marshall bolted forward and hugged her tightly around the waist, burying his face against her shoulder. She raised an eyebrow. "… What're you doing?"

"It's over, Sy… the Lich won…"

"The Lich? As in the Lich Queen? Wasn't Prince Gumball calling for help to fight her?"

"Yeah… but we couldn't stop her… she went to a Wish-Master and wished for the extinction of all life… the moon exploded, Symone. The earth is gonna get thrown out of orbit and we're all gonna freeze to death soon." Marshall lifted his head to see her entirely skeptical expression.

"… I wondered what that weird voice was earlier. Listen, bat-boy, I'm the Ice Queen. I'm not gonna die. Everyone else, maybe, but my penguins and I will be perfectly fine."

"You don't get it, Symone," Marshall Lee's hands balled into fists in her collar. "Everything is going to die. All the plants, all the animals… if you do survive the cold, you'll starve to death or suffocate when all the food and air runs out, not to mention all the meteors and how the seasons will go crazy! The planet could fly into the sun instead of drifting away!"

"Whoa…" Symone stepped away from Marshall to sit down in her icy recliner. "So… why'd ?"'/you come here, then?"

"You don't remember a thing… you don't even remember the song we made a few months back?"

"Oh, that cheesy 'I Remember You' song? Yeah I tried that on Wildberry Prince, he was horrified…" Symone sighed in exasperation.

"It wasn't a song for you to use to flirt with Princes!" Marshall Lee growled. "It was about us! It was the letters you wrote on the back of pictures, especially the picture of me when I was little! I came here to spend time with the woman who became my mother when I was lost!"

"Dude, I don't remember any of that junk. Now shoo. I have food to stockpile," she rose to head for the window, but Marshall Lee caught her around the waist from behind, burying his face against the middle of her back. "Let go, weirdo!"

"Please… Symone… come back… just for a minute…" Marshall whispered. "I'm scared…" He felt tears coming to his eyes, and the Ice Queen turned to face him. He pulled back, and for a moment, Ice Queen saw a flash of a little boy in tattered blue overalls and a red shirt, tears streaming down his face as he clung to a pink teddy plush. Her eyes grew wide as she realized it was a young Marshall Lee. But as quickly as the vision had come, it was gone, and Ice Queen was left confused and a little… heartbroken.

"… What happened…? Back then?" Ice Queen asked quietly and Marshall Lee could almost smile. Maybe if he helped her explore her past, he'd get Symone back for a moment before the world was thrown into chaos.

Prince Gumball quietly returned to his kingdom, gathering all his people despite the late hour. Taking a deep breath, he came out to his balcony. He had to tell them… no matter how badly it hurt. He looked up to the sky to see Lord Monochromicorn flying off to join Cake, and then he looked down at his tired people gathered below. Stepping into their view, he raised his hands to gain their attention.

"Citizens of the Candy Kingdom! … I'm afraid I come to you with the gravest news of all. The Lich Queen, the sworn enemy of all life, has found a way to destroy our world." The people below gasped and began to panic, but Gumball called over them, "I'm afraid there is nothing that can be done, my dear people… So I suggest you all take this time to be with your families… Those of you who have no family are welcome to my palace to share your time with friends. No one should be alone in our last days… I'm sorry…" He drew his crown from his head, setting it on the balcony railing before disappearing back into the palace. The only one who would be alone would be the Prince himself.

Fionna hugged Cake tightly as tears coursed down their faces. She looked up as Lord Monochromicorn landed nearby, and Fionna drew back to look at Cake. "Go on… be with your family. I had you for a whole eighteen years. They should have you for the last days."

"But… but, Fi…" Cake sniffled.

"I love you, big sister…" Fionna whispered as she had when she was a young girl, embracing her sister one last time.

"I love you too, baby…" Cake finally drew back and Fionna kissed her cheek before doing the same to Monochromicorn in farewell. The two disappeared into the night sky, Cake waving back, and Fionna was left alone with Flint stepping up behind her.

"What're we gonna do, Flint?" Fionna asked softly, looking to her boyfriend of only several short weeks. "With so little time left…"

"Follow me," Flint told her softly. The two made their way southward, toward the Fire Kingdom, and after the long trek, Flint sought out Flambi the flambit.

"Yo, don't youse guys know the world's endin'?" The sassy flambit spat as Flint called her out to meet them. "I'm spendin' time with my boyfriend, man!"

"I'm sorry, Flambi. But… can you cast the fire protection spell on Fionna?" Flint asked softly.

"I can do youse one bettah." Flambi disappeared into her home once more before returning with a blue crystal necklace and tossing it to Fionna. "There. That's permanent, long as ya wear it. Now go away!" Flambi disappeared back inside as Fionna donned the pendant. Enveloped in a blue shield, Fionna suddenly found herself in Flint's arms. He felt warm, but pleasantly so, and all Fionna could do was hug him as tightly as possible and cry. Her tears sizzled against his chest and felt like needles, but Flint didn't care. He took her back to the grasslands, to the hill in front of the treehouse, and he sat with her in his lap for the first time, watching the sunrise until they both fell asleep together in the grass.

Days passed, and the world grew steadily colder until the people of Aaa constantly saw their breath ghosting into steam. Then, when the first snow fell, it froze the entire landscape. Lakes and rivers were already freezing, and after a week, they were frozen solid straight through, and the oceans began to freeze too. It was zero degrees constantly, and the only way anyone survived was by staying in barricaded homes with roaring fires. The first to die were the homeless on the streets in each kingdom, but the first mass of deaths was in the Fire Kingdom when everyone was simply snuffed out. Flint, however, survived thanks to Fionna, hiding away in the treehouse now that his flames were too low to set it ablaze.

In the Candy Kingdom, the people never saw their ruler again. His crown froze on the balcony, and rumors began to circulate that he'd locked himself away and died of thirst. No one had the energy nor drive to find out if that was true.

In the home of Monochromicorn and Cake, the little family huddled together as food ran out and water froze. Like Gumball, no one ever saw them again, but it was generally rumored that Monochromicorn and Cake had been the first to go thanks to going without for the sake of their children.

At the treehouse, Fionna began to burn furniture and belongings to keep Flint ablaze, until finally, it was too cold to start a fire and Flint began to fade. His body turned pale blue as he lay in the now-bare living room. Fionna joined his side as tears coursed down her cheeks and froze. She lifted his head, and pressed their first and last kiss to his lips, and he faded away with a gentle smile. She would fade eventually too, frozen at his side.

In the Ice Kingdom, Marshall Lee weakened while the Ice Queen gained power. They spoke constantly about the Ice Queen's past, studying artefacts she'd kept without realizing they were memories. Marshall told her the whole story she'd told him, and how she'd cared from him and saved him from certain death by way of illness. He told her about the last time he'd seen her, and how he'd made his own way with what she'd taught him. They shared their lives after they'd been parted, and Marshall told Ice Queen how often he'd thought of her. But as the second week ended, Marshall Lee became so weak that he couldn't even speak. He lay in his makeshift bed, struggling to breathe the beyond-freezing air, and Ice Queen sat at his side crying icy tears. Even if she didn't remember the little boy she'd saved as Symone, she loved this boy dearly as her closest friend, and had considered him as such for far longer than their meaningful two weeks of past-searching. She held his hand as his eyes closed for the last time and the cold literally froze his body from the inside. Slowly, she felt a deep rage building in her chest.

"LICH!" She roared as she exploded out from her mountain home, Marshall Lee's guitar clenched in her hands. "I'LL KILL YOU!" She cried to the heavens, but then she felt a strange sensation as the far-off sun disappeared below the horizon. Was it… cold…? She landed in the snow, Marshall Lee's guitar dropping from her hands before her. She looked down at her hands, and saw her blue skin cracking and bleeding. With one last enraged burst, she lifted her hands to the sky and summoned up all the snow and wind she possibly could.

"AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!"

The blizzard whipped into a frenzy and surrounded Ice Queen with a white veil that, eventually, settled over the entire Ice Kingdom. She fell to her knees, her tears freezing in her eyes, but as she managed to open her eyes once more, she saw the vision of the little boy she'd loved so much, hugging his teddy Hambo tight and approaching her. When he reached out a hand, she gladly took it.

"It's okay, Symone," he told her with a sure smile. Symone… Yes. That was her name.

"I know it is, honey," Symone answered back softly as her vision was filled with a grassy field and a rising moon beyond, her pack sitting on the ground beside little Marshall. "Let's go… and find… those… new shoes… for… y-…"

Blackness engulfed Symone's freed mind, and warmth filled her body as she fell to her side in the snow. In her mind, though, that blackness filled with stars as she looked up to the sky, pointing out constellations to the dear little boy who was beginning to nod off against her shoulder. He was right… It's okay…

The cold raged for months on end, until finally, the Earth fell into a wobbly orbit just ahead of Mars. Only one thing still lived on the whitened planet, deep underground, alone, as he spent his last days before his fire died. He wrote on his typewriter until his fingers bled, recorded video and audio until his voice failed, and even resorted to drawing on the walls with charcoal from the fire until he'd finally completed his memoirs, and every detail he knew of the dearest people that he'd ever known. Cake the Cat, Flint the Flame Prince, Lord Monochromicorn, Marshall Lee the Vampire King, and Fionna the Human. They were the ones he focused on. With a final stroke of a makeshift charcoal pencil above his mantle as the fire died and his fingers began to freeze, Gumball looked up at the full portraits he'd drawn of his friends and himself, and with the last ounce of strength in his body, he locked his written and recorded memories into a solid stone safe and fell before it, finally able to give in.

Gumball stared at what would have been himself if he'd left the Time Room, but he found he was not at all surprised by how it had ended for him… Even if all life had ended, he would've held out hope that life could return someday to another planet, and one day, someone would come to the frozen earth and, if only by sheer luck, come across the stories of the beautiful friends Gumball loved most.

"I…" Marshall began slowly as tears filled his eyes. "I have a wish."

"Carefully considered, I hope?" Prismo asked with a sad sigh.

"Yeah… I wish I'd had the power to defeat the Lich before she came here."

Prismo sighed again. "Alright…" He opened another portal, and as Marshall Lee stepped in, Gumball stared up at the screen that was centered on what would've been his future self as it went black, fading to a little boy setting out on his own after he was abandoned by his last friend with nothing but a pink teddy.

Augh... my... my heart... Oh Glob, and it's not gonna get any less painful. Have I torn out your hearts yet? I know I tore out my own... Let me know what you guys think in the reviews... ugh... I need to lay down...

P.S. The 'duo' here is actually a trick. It's every duo mentioned in the story. However, poor Gumball doesn't get a partner for his own pair. Poor guy, all he had was his memories...

-Taiylor Wallace... or what's left of her.