Simon awoke to the sound of gentle sobbing, with something soft pressing down on his chest. He opened his eyes to see that night had fallen. Marceline was kneeling on the ground next to him, her arms folded over his chest and her head bobbing slightly as she wept into them.

Simon groaned slightly as he sat up, making Marceline jump. Marceline looked into Simon's open eyes and her own widened in amazement. Slowly, the shock on her face was replaced by joy. She bore her fangs in a gleeful grin and leapt at Simon, forcefully hugging him.

"Simon! It's you! It's really you!"

Marceline trembled with relief and delight, and didn't let go of Simon's shoulders. Simon was confused by Marceline's reaction. While it had certainly seemed like Simon was done for, it wasn't the first time he'd passed out after using the crown, nor was it the first time he made Marceline take precautions, in case he did loose himself.

Wary of Simon's silence, Marceline leant back so she could look into Simon's eyes again. "It is you… isn't it?" She dared to ask.

Simon returned the hug and stroked Marceline's hair, reassuringly.

"Of course it is, sweetheart. Why on earth wouldn't it be?"

It was Marceline's turn to be surprised. "You don't remember any of it?" Usually, Simon remembered hazy fragments of his actions as the Ice King. "You started flying around in the air, shouting 'It can't end like this!' 'I am eternal!' 'Hashtag Ice King forever!' You had the crown on for, like, ten minutes!"

Simon tried to remember, but none of it was even vaguely familiar. The last thing he could remember was putting on his crown to deal a final blow to…

"The monster!"

Simon jumped to his feet, causing Marceline to collapse clumsily to the ground. He spun around and noticed, next to the hill where he was standing when he blacked out, a giant ice sculpture of the horrific creature. After helping Marceline to her feet, the two of them ran over to it, cautiously slowing down as they approached. When they were close enough, Simon realised it wasn't a sculpture at all. The creature was just covered in an extremely dense layer of ice. Even though it was a reasonably warm night, the ice showed no signs of melting any time soon. The ice covering its eyes glowed a threatening green.

"What is it?" Marceline asked quietly.

"A Lich…" Simon remarked. He had had time to analyze the beast when he was sizing it up before attacking, earlier. "It's the final stage of necromancy… A point where a warlock can use their powers to animate their own… Well… They become really powerful."

"Their own corpse?" Marceline finished, rolling her eyes while still smiling. "You're not gonna scar me with the C-word you know, Simon."

Despite everything he had seen in his long life, Simon had never believed in such fantastical creatures as liches, zombies or vampires, but, as a hardcore realist, he didn't waste time insisting they couldn't be real when one burst out of a pond of goo and lifted him into the air.

"Will it bust out of there?" Marceline asked nervously.

"I don't know… But what do you say we don't stick around to find out?"

Marceline giggled. "Yeah!"

Simon patted the side of his belt, and then looked around his feet.

"Marcy, where's the crown?"

Marceline's eyes shot over to where the crown sat in the dirt, twenty meters from where they stood, and back to Simon. She didn't answer the question.

Smiling, Simon made his way over to it.

"Simon, wait!" Marceline pleaded.

"Don't worry Marceline, I'm just living up to a promise I made." Simon smiled.

Marceline's face lit up. "Really!?" Marceline ran over to Simon and met him at the crown. "What happened to it?" She asked, her confusion at what had happened, temporarily overruling her excitement.

"It's broken…" Simon pointed out. He picked up the crown and turned it, so the moonlight emphasised the large crack down the red gem in the middle. "The Lich must have damaged it. Left just enough shazam for me to finish it off."

"I thought the crown was indestructible." Marceline remarked. She would know. She had tried to destroy the crown on several occasions, after stealing it from Simon while he slept, and never put so much as a scratch on it.

"I guess not…"

As Simon looked at the broken headgear, he realised that the constant chatter of voices in his head was beginning to subside. For the first time in years, his mind was clearing. Simon was confident that if he put the crown on now, it would have no more effect than any other hat in the world, not that he was about to test that theory.

Simon took Marceline's hand and smiled at her. Just as he promised her, the two of them walked toward the pond at the top of the hill. When they got there, Simon held the crown in front of him, within Marceline's reach.

"You wanna do it together?" Simon offered.

Marceline had always been wary of the crown. Despite being inanimate, it was Marceline's own personal bogeyman. Shaking off her uncertainties, Marceline grinned.

"Yeah!"

With both of them holding it, Simon pulled the crown back and forth, counting as he did. "1… 2… 3!"

On three, the crown was hurled forwards into the still bubbling green liquid. It sank slowly. The gold metal and the gems seemed to melt as it did. As the crown was completely submerged, a feeble wisp of icy air coughed out of the sludge.

Simon and Marceline smiled at each other, but cruel reality taunted them both, all the same. From now on they would have to step twice as fast, to avoid situations that would require the crown in the first place. Although Simon would never be distorted and broken, good old-fashioned death awaited them all the more eagerly…

The world had just got a great deal more black and white.

Later that night, Marceline and Simon slept blissfully in their camp. Their latest campsite was a small clearing in the overgrown park in the heart of the city neighbouring the bombsite. Simon and Marcy's backpacks rested against a tree and the two of them lay peacefully in a makeshift nest of sleeping bags and blankets. While Simon had always been content to zip up his sleeping bag and sleep, Marceline, a somewhat more restless sleeper, elected to lie on top of her unzipped bag, under a small heap of blankets. As usual, this had resulted in Marceline rolling over to Simon in her sleep, and using him as a comfort pillow.

Near the two of them, a campfire smoked gently, under the spit on which they'd cooked that night's dinner- a large rabbit Marceline had killed and skinned herself. It was a skill Marceline had mastered purely through practice, because Simon had downright refused to teach her, which was mostly due to the fact that he was too squeamish to do it himself, except when there was simply no other option.

Simon was experiencing the best night's sleep he had had in over a decade. Free, not only from the nightmare he faced 24/7, of him loosing himself and abandoning Marceline, but also from the mental torment the crown had exercised over him since the moment he put it on. Not even Marceline's loud snoring awoke him, but eventually, something did.

Simon was gently lulled from his pleasant dreams by the sound of a guitar. He lay in his warm sleeping bag, idly enjoying the pleasant music for a couple of minutes, before it dawned on him that there was no reason he should be hearing it. He spun his head round to face the source, not wanting to wake up Marceline until he knew there was danger.

Sitting on a log by the campfire (which had been lit up again), was a humanoid figure. He was dressed in a light cream suit with a matching stetson, and a leather fanny pack rested at his side, hanging from a strap, which reached over his shoulder. The hands with which he played the instrument in his lap were human, albeit devoid of skin or flesh, and under his hat was the menacing skull of a jackal. Although a description of the creature would have sent shivers down the spines of the bravest people, coming face to face with it put a sense of ease in Simon's heart, which he couldn't explain. Also, with no help at all from his life of research and study, Simon knew at a glance, exactly who and what the creature was.

"Death…" Simon breathed.

"Heyy Simon. How've ya been?" Death's voice was deep and charismatic.

Simon eased himself out of his sleeping bag, supporting Marceline's head from inside it as he did, and then gently rested her on the ground. Marceline rolled over and screwed up her face.

"Simon…" She mumbled quietly. "Don't go…"

Simon knelt down and kissed Marceline's cheek. "I'm right here, Marceline. I'm not going anywhere." He whispered reassuringly. Satisfied, Marceline smiled and hugged her blankets closer.

Joining Death at the campfire, Simon asked, "Why are you here? I can't be dead."

Death chuckled. "You know, for near enough ten billion years, every single dead dude has told me just that. In all that time, you're the first one who's actually right."

Simon paused, waiting for Death to answer his question. After a couple of seconds, he prompted him to do so with a shrug.

"Oh right. Well the thing is, a fella don't actually have to be dead for me to take 'em, so long as they got good enough reason to die. It's a loophole, you see? And just now, you had a supernatural force torn from your noggin without too much delicacy. Not many people who could survive a trip like that, and hate to tell you dude, but you ain't gonna be one of them. It's nothing personal."

Simon frowned, it certainly sounded personal.

"Then why are you taking me, if you don't have to?" Simon doubted he could talk his way out of dying, but he was damn well going to try.

"Hey man, I got a quota to meet! You have any idea how long it's been since a human being died?"

"Ten years?" Simon asked, assuming he had been the only human to survive the apocalypse. "You must have been busy during the war."

"Well six, actually, but that's the idea."

Simon shot to his feet. "There were other survivors!?" He exclaimed.

Marceline moaned in protest to whatever Simon's outburst had made her dream about, and rolled over beneath her blankets. Simon sat down and made a mental note to keep his voice down.

"Yeah man, these two guys in Finland got trapped in a bomb shelter before junk went down. Survived for four years and then killed each other over the last can of beans… Sad really."

Simon didn't respond. His head was abuzz with the possibility that every decent bomb shelter on the planet had the potential to contain other human survivors, maybe even children Marceline's age. Of course, that wouldn't mean anything if he allowed Death to take him away from Marceline now.

"But anyway…" Death continued. "Since the war, I have been bored like you wouldn't believe. All the reapers are. There's talk of the individual departments being discontinued and myself being promoted to be in charge of the death of all living things, but that kinda paperwork doesn't just happen, you know? So… in the mean time, I take what I can get, and right now that means you. Sorry Simon."

Before Simon could even stall for time, Death shot to his feet, his guitar disappearing in a puff of purple smoke as he did. He stepped across the fire and plunged his hands into Simon's belly as if he were made of jelly. As Death's hands withdrew from Simon, a blue, transparent doppelganger of Simon began to come out with them, but Death's hands moved slowly, far more so than they did going in. Simon was completely immobilised, and could only watch as Death attempted to tear his soul from his body.

Death's eye sockets narrowed and he grunted, as he seemed to struggle with extracting Simon's essence. Eventually Death stumbled backwards across the campsite, and Simon's soul shot back into his body, like a retracting rubber band. The shock made Simon stumble too, and he tripped backwards on the log he had been sitting on.

"Oh, you gotta be kidding me!" Death loudly complained. "This is gonna be Shakespeare all over again! And don't even get me started on that two-timing Lincoln!"

While he was certainly interested to hear what William Shakespeare and Abraham Lincoln had done to annoy death, Simon was more concerned with the issue at hand.

"What happened?" Simon asked, decidedly rattled.

"You ain't dead!" Death angrily pointed out. "You ain't even dying! Hell, man. You can't die!"

"What…?" Simon barely breathed.

"The crown, Simon!" Death prompted Simon to remember. "You destroyed it before it could jank up your rad personality, but you got left with the immortality. Best of both worlds!"

Death's tone made it clear that he wasn't happy for Simon, and Simon didn't feel too great himself, because now a new nightmare filled his head, of him outliving Marceline, and then spending at eternity with the burden of hers and Betty's deaths in his heart.

"Well… congratulations, Simon." Death reluctantly admitted, and with that, he got up and began walking into the trees.

"Wait!" Simon called, quietly. "What if I were to forfeit my immortality? Willingly?"

Death turned around, his eye sockets widened in surprise. "You would do that?"

"Not right now, but say we struck a deal?" Simon offered.

Death cocked his head to one side, displaying his interest.

"You can govern death, and its causes, correct? Not just reap souls when it happens?" Simon guessed, groundlessly.

"You know it." Death confirmed.

"Then here's the deal. You ensure that Marceline lives a long life, and that nothing but old age finishes her off…" Simon shuddered at the thought. "And the day that happens. No. The second that happens… you get my soul too."

Death ground his teeth together in thought. "Not as sweet a deal as you'd think, Simon. First of all, that's a half-demon sleeping over there, the first of her kind. There's a legal case going on as we speak to decide who gets that girl's soul, us or the Nightospherean Reapers. Been going on since the day she was born. And even if we do get her, it won't be for a long old while. She may look human, but she sure won't age like one, not once she hits her mid twenties. This isn't gonna be a deal I'll cash on any time soon."

Simon said nothing. This wasn't the first time he'd negotiated with a tough opponent. Granted, most of his previous haggling had been over historical artefacts, not souls, but the game was still the same, and the important thing Simon had picked up on, was that Death hadn't said no.

"How about I get back to you once the case is closed?" Death offered. "Won't be easy to protect that girl when another company has dibs on her death."

"One time offer, I'm afraid." Simon responded with a sly smile.

Death growled quietly. Eventually, he held out his right hand, without a word. Simon took it, and immediately felt a shiver run up his body from his toes.

"Simon Petrikov." Death announced formally. "Do you swear to forfeit your eternal life, the second Marceline Abadeer dies of old age?"

"I do." Simon responded, gruffly.

Suddenly, a golden band of light materialised around Death and Simon's hands, and converged on them, fading away as it made contact. Death loosened his grip, but Simon didn't let go.

"And Death, do you swear to fully utilise every power you have at your disposal to ensure Marceline's long life, regardless of your entitlement to her soul?" He demanded.

Death gritted his teeth. He had hoped Simon wouldn't have the nerve to add his own terms to an agreement with an all-powerful being. Of course Death hadn't mentioned that he had every right to.

"I do…" Death reluctantly accepted.

Another band of gold light enclosed on the two hands. Again, Death tried to release his hand, but Simon held on.

"And you recognise that, should Marceline… die…" Simon choked on the word like he was having trouble saying it. "…by any other means, then this contract is void?"

"Yes!" Death snapped, and a third golden band followed the example of the last two. "Are there any more conditions?" Death demanded, testily.

"That's all." Simon smiled.

"Then we're agreed?"

"Agreed."

Simon and Death shook hands and, with a flash of white light, Simon was left alone, standing in the campsite, with an unlit fire.

Does it seem like Death is overly eager for Simon's soul? If you ask me, I think he hates immortal people, I know I would if I were Death. Also, I trust you'll all get what I was referencing with the magical handshake agreement thing.