"Soooo," her voice crooned, rolling the words around in her mouth like a noble taste-testing a very expensive wine, "Who's going first?"
"'scuse me?" Cake replied. "First at what?"
"Oh you know," the queen continued with a flick of her wrist. "Telling sob stories, apologizing profusely, deep-hugging our troubles out, promising for a better tomorrow through tears of reconciliation, all that faux-romantic fakey drama they do in movies and such."
"I ain't apologizin' to you," Cake said with a nasty sneer. "And you can bet your triple-X undies my stories don't have a single sob in them!"
"Oh come on, don't be like that. Fionna wants us to make up, and we should respect and honor her wishes."
"Don't think I can't hear your sass, Your Travesty," she said, crossing her arms. "I know you don't really give a hoot about makin' up, and neither do I. We ain't got jack-daniel to talk about!"
Ice Queen huffed and rolled her eyes. "How typically feline. You're in denial, there's plenty to discuss."
"Then discuss it with my butt," Cake grumbled, turning away.
The queen stared silently at the invisible wall erected between them for a moment. She had, of course, expected this. She had counted on Cake clamming up and shutting her out. Yet even for completely expecting it, she now found herself unsure of how to respond.
"Okay Cake's butt," she said, doing her best to roll with the situation. "Ask Cake a thing for me."
She only received a curt 'poot' sound in response.
"Ask her how she wants to spend the time we have until Fionna gets back. Ask her if she's going to just stare angrily at that wall until she develops heat vision and burns a hole right through it."
"Beats talkin' to an ice witch like you," came the mumbled reply.
Ice Queen snorted and felt her hands ball up. "Frankly Cupcake, you're no bowl of rainbow ice cream yourself."
"I told you to stop calling me Cupcake," the cupless Cake growled, glaring back over her cold shoulder. "That ain't my name."
"Fine, fine," the queen said, putting up her hands. "So we're just...not talking to each other at all?"
"You can shut up or I'll shut you down."
Ice Queen pursed her lips and exhaled. Her mind was already buzzing like a beehive with prepared snappy retorts and snarky quips, all lining up in the back of her throat, waiting to fly free from her lips. Her mouth opened and closed once or twice, but something was holding them back. She instead swallowed the words and slowly sank against the wall into a sitting position.
Well, this is bizarre, she thought, eyes on the ceiling. I'm never at a loss for words. Words are one of the most powerful weapons in my arsenal. Sarcasm and wit have always been at my forefront in conversational warfare, and yet I can't seem to use them today. They'll just bounce right off that wall of hers and have no effect. If I'm going to talk to her at all, I'll need a different approach…
"...I'm going to make waffles," she said at last, pulling herself back up and wincing as the scars on her calves burned.
"Waffles?"
"I'm still hungry," she continued, cracking her neck and biting back another twinge of pain. "And it beats trying to make chit-chat with your stinkier side."
There was a faint snort from Cake. And then, after a short pause, "...make some for me too, then."
"Mhm."
She tossed back her hair and strode into the kitchen with her head high. It was a habit she'd never given up, even if it hurt now. As a queen, she felt obligated to show regality whenever possible, for to show any less than complete autonomy of herself would be to show weakness.
Her body grumbled that it would be fine with showing weakness in exchange for more rest.
Honestly, why do I care whether or not Cake will talk to me? she pondered as she rummaged in the cupboards for a mixing bowl. That ungrateful little beast doesn't care about me. She hasn't cared about me in years. I don't even know if she ever cared about me at all. So am I trying to make up with her just because Fionna wants me to? Since when is the bunny rabbit in charge of me?
Cold air puffed and steamed out from her nostrils as she tightened her grip on the spoon, mixing furiously. Who is she to give orders, anyway? This is MY domain. I am the queen of the ice and snow, I should be calling the shots here!
...so why does talking to Cake feel like the right course of action?
She filled a waffle mold made of thick permafrost with batter and flicked the knob on her science-defying stovetop, watching as the temperature dropped further and further below the degrees measurable by most scientific instruments, until the blue flame froze so hard that it began to burn and bake.
Maybe Fionna was right...maybe there are things we need to talk about. But Cake is as stubborn as a bear in hibernation, there's no way she'll wake up and talk to me. Not willingly. I'll need to pry around. There has to be a cracked link in her chainmail somewhere…
"It's really too bad we can't talk, Cake," she said aloud, icing the last word a little thicker than the rest. "Fionna will probably be quite upset with us when she returns, only to see that we haven't done any making up at all."
"So what then, let her be upset," Cake replied from the other room. "She's always upset about somethin' or other these days. Girl's got a whole math test full of problems in her head already, somethin' insignificant as this ain't gonna kill her."
"...wow, that's harsh."
"What do you know, anyway?"
"Well I know that sounds pretty selfish," the queen said, peering out from the kitchen doorway.
"Selfish nothin', Fionna's a fighter!" Cake said, raising her voice as she glared back over her shoulder. "Give her some problems and she'll tear 'em apart! She lives for that sorta thing! No, you wanna talk selfish, let's start with YOU!"
"...who, me?" the queen asked, pulling a finger out of her nose and wiping it on the wall.
"You're the biggest glompin' problem to come along in her whole entire life!"
She waited a moment to respond, and it was the usual sarcasm that finally came out. "...so should I take that as an achievement, or an insult?"
She was met with a sudden, stinging slap across the cheek. Cake slowly reeled her arm back in, hissing, "Who do you think you are, hag?! Look what you're doin' with your life! Torturin' this poor girl's mind with your sick romance and your manipulation and your...nasty eyebrows! What are you tryin' to accomplish? You know, you're gonna get yourself KILLED if you keep pushin' her buttons like this!"
"Nice to know you care," Ice Queen replied sorely, rubbing her cheek. "I've got nothing to worry about though, Fionna won't kill me."
"You sound pretty sure about that."
"What, I've got reason to suspect she would? Or even could?" the queen replied from within the kitchen, pouring batter for another waffle.
"I'm just sayin', watch who you cheese off, Ice Queen," Cake said with a wave of her hand. "You talk big, but you got a giant bullseye painted right on your weak spot. And my baby's a champion bullseye-crusher!"
"What weak spot?"
"That stupid tiara of yours!"
Immediately, her hand reached up to touch it out of sheer instinctive habit. It was indeed still securely affixed to her head. Its cold frame resonated with familiar and reassuring echoes through her fingertips, whispering tender words of crystalline fortitude into her brain.
"Not like it's a big secret or nothin', Queenie," Cake continued flatly. "We've known since like forever that you get your powers from that thing, and all we gotta do is ploop it off your head like a ketchup bottle to turn you into nothin' more than a weak, sick puppy."
"IF you can even get close enough to my head in the first place," the queen added with a huff. "As you said, it's also the source of my powers. Which, need I remind you, are nothing to scoff at!"
"Puh-lease," Cake groaned. "We scoff at 'em all the time! Did you forget that my baby's had you totally floored and beggin' for your life before? More than once, even! You were at her flippin' mercy, and she was red-hot mad! And you still think she couldn't kill you if you go and push one too many buttons?"
"Just because she is capable of killing doesn't mean she'll actually do it," the queen said, brushing the hair from her face as she filled the waffle mold again. "She's far too much of a goody-goody to kill someone. Anyone."
"Didn't stop her from helpin' you snub the Flame Prince…".
"That was different."
"How though?!" Cake yelled, throwing her hands in the air. "How was that any different, and how does that prove me wrong? Fionna's got the skills, she's definitely got the motive, and she's already proven she can kill! What makes you think she won't do it to you? What makes you so invincible? Geez, it's like you don't even care about the danger you're puttin' yourself in!"
"I do care about the danger!" Ice Queen shouted back, pounding a fist on the counter. "That's the point, you lunkhead!"
For a moment Cake remained silent, her face slowly scrunching in and out of several different emotional configurations. Finally, she responded with: "...you sayin' you got a deathwish or somethin'?"
There was a muffled, disapproving snort from the queen, followed by a hesitant but forceful: "Life isn't that much without one...".
Slowly padding her way into the kitchen, Cake stared the queen down and asked in a slightly more somber, but every bit as serious, voice: "...you WANT to die?"
Her lips tightening and her eyebrow twitching, the queen said, with some forced patience, "I just...I want to live my life like I MIGHT die at any minute. Understand?"
The words hung in the air for a few moments, possibly stilled by the cool air, or maybe by the inescapable chill of her tone. Muted, shuffling penguin noises emanated from behind them. The smell of burning pastry finally cracked the moment.
"No, I'm confused," Cake started again. "What's your angle here? You think you're gonna die soon or something?"
Taking a deep breath, the queen stood up tall and tugged her robe back into place, tossing a burnt waffle into the trashcan under the sink. "I'm not going to die. I'm just old."
"Yeah, no poop. What are you, three hundred and eighty-seven?"
"Don't mock me," the queen growled. "Three hundred and eighty seven years would fly right past you too if you were the one wearing this tiara. After so many years, numbers just stop meaning anything."
Cake smacked her lips. Then her eyes narrowed in thought. "So what then, you're even older than three hundred eighty seven? Like four-hundred and fifty six? Is that even a real thing? How can anyone live that long?"
"Ice."
"Pardon?"
The queen pointed to the tiara, sitting ever neatly at the crown of her head, and enunciated slowly, "Ahhhh-eeeeee-ssssss".
"I heard you before! Make sense this time!"
The queen sighed dramatically and motioned toward her face. "Look at my face. This face looks like an old face, right? We can probably agree on that, I look old. But I don't look like an ancient mummy from a sarcophagus, do I?"
"Myeeeeehhhh," Cake meowed, turning her hand back and forth.
"Oh shut up," she griped, turning the waffle over. "If I'm really as old as I know I am, then my body should have withered up and crumbled away a long, long time ago, and I shouldn't even be able to remember a thing. I should be nothing more than a sack of husky wrinkles, muttering shakily about breakfast to the voices in my walls."
Cake's mouth opened, ready to automatically spill a cocky response, but stopped short when it was immediately blockaded by a barrier of freezing fingers.
"I said shut up!"
She slapped the cold hand away and spit on the floor, rubbing her lips with her arm. "Don't touch me."
"I'm as old as the mountains," Ice Queen continued. "But my body is still rocking the cougar look. Why do you think that is? Let me answer that for you: it's ice."
Eyes pulling back into deeper thoughts, she gestured to the burning ice stove beside her. "Ice is a very mystical thing, Cake. It's a complex web of interconnected water crystals that bond together due to a lack of interference from heat or air. It's what happens when each drop of water cloisters up and melds into one hard, thick piece."
Cake yawned in response, tapping her foot impatiently.
"Ice traps things inside itself. It forms a crystal cocoon around the natural processes of life and keeps them in an eternal state of detachment from the rest of the world, or even reality, while still allowing them to function on the inside. Ice shuts down the flow of external time within its walls. So even though my body is still living in the real time stream, the ice is all but halting the flow of that same stream behind its barriers altogether."
"And where does this ice come from, Cake?" the queen asked, turning to face her as she added the final waffle to the breakfast plate. "It all comes from this very tia-HEY! You're not even paying attention!"
"Of course I'm not," came the groaning reply from the floor. "Geez, you're as borin' as Prince Gummyballs with your science talk. I can't stand listenin' to all that jumbo!"
"I just gave you a free demo on Ice Theory 101, and you act like all I've been doing is flapping my cheeks!"
"It's ICE, you dumbnik!" Cake shouted. "Cold water that got real hard and cold cause nature told it to! I don't give a tail's swish about how it all works, I ain't no scientologist! I just asked how come you're so old, and why you're talkin' about dyin' and stuff! If I wanted a science lesson, I'd just invite the pink prince over for tea with my boyfriend!"
The queen crossed her arms and frowned. She had been looking for a good opportunity to teach Ice Theory for years now (quite a lot of years, if her alleged age was any indication), but just as she'd always suspected, nobody cared. The sheer scientific and magical scope of her entire preserved existence, the boundless pool of intriguing discoveries she'd amassed through hundreds of years of practice and perfection...nobody ever cared about the things she thought were cool, even in the literal sense of the word.
"You wouldn't understand anyway…" she finally grumbled, half-heartedly.
"I wouldn't CARE anyway," Cake corrected her, crossing her own arms.
"Of course you wouldn't," the queen sighed. She carried the plate back into the main room and set it out on the table. "You're such a selfish little kitten."
"Selfish, huh? YOU wanna lecture ME on bein' selfish?! Ho ho, that's a laugh and a half!"
Raising herself up on stilted legs, Cake brought their faces level with each other. Her hot breath washed over the queen's nose when she spoke. "You think I'M selfish, let's talk about you and my girl!"
"YOUR girl?" the queen asked, pushing a grabby penguin flipper away from the plate.
"My rebel teeny little sister!" Cake continued, shoving the queen down on the couch. "Let's talk about how all this nonsense got started! Let's talk about Square One and the night you busted in on Fionna in the flesh!"
Ice Queen wiggled around in place until she found herself comfortable, then put her chin in her hand, looking to the floor for a moment. "...refresh my memory."
Cake grabbed her by the cheeks and shouted. "The night you snuck into our dang bathroom!"
"...oh yeah, the night she broke my nose with a faucet, right? How could I forget?"
"So why'd you do it? Why'd you go and muck up Fionna's innocence with your selfish, sleazy sauce?"
The queen pulled away from her grip and tossed her hair back. "I can explain that one, actually."
Cake cocked an eyebrow expectantly.
Ice Queen took a mouthful of waffle, swallowed, then nonchalantly cracked her wrist. "That was mostly the root beer's fault. Not the first time I'd knocked a few too many back and gone a little overboard, mind you."
"...root beer?" Cake asked, unimpressed.
"It really was my birthday, that day," she said with a nod. "I came home to find a fresh mess in the kitchen. Gertrude had ruined the beautiful cake I slaved over all day for my party. Naturally, I got a little hot-headed angry and I chased her down all over the house. A few scampering escapades later, everything's dealt with and I decide I need some time to relax. So, I break out the root beer. It's pretty potent stuff, great for taking the edge off a bad day, but it really screwdrives your judgment if you overdo it."
Cake smacked her lips. "So what, that's all? You're just gonna blame your whole catalogue of creeper sins you've committed on some bad dessert? That's pretty stupid."
She took another bite before responding. "No, I guess not EVERYTHING is the root beer's fault. But it certainly gave me the bad judgment to act on my silly whims like that. Root beer and I have had a complicated relationship over the years…did I ever tell you about what happened between me and Prince Gumball?"
"No, and I don't wanna hear it," Cake replied automatically, sitting down to grab a waffle for herself. "Every story about you and Gumball's exactly the same, anyway. You wanted to get in his pants, Fionna showed up to save the day, she bopped your noggin with her sword a few times, you flew your sorry booty back here to your lonely little cave to scheme up another lamebrain pain train scheme. End of story, I win."
"Oh hush. You're wrong anyway, this story was way before Fionna's time," the queen said, taking a breath to begin.
"Wait wait, back up," Cake interrupted. "Before Fionna's time? So this happened back when Gumball was just a kid?! That's sick, Ice Queen!"
"What? No, not THAT long ago. Why would you think that?"
"Simple math, dummy," Cake explained, pointing to a strip of waffle she'd just cut, as though each square represented a year. "Okay, so here's Gumball's lifeline, right? You said it was before Fionna, so we'll just take this knife and minus that many years from Gumball, that's almost 20 of his years right there. And that only leaves like-".
"Gumball isn't 20-something," the queen pointed out, stabbing another waffle with her fork.
"Huh? What is he then, 30-something? He doesn't even look that old."
"You're still a few hundred years off."
For several moments, Cake didn't say anything, just stared blankly back at the queen.
"The story I'm thinking of happened, oh...three, maybe four hundred years ago? I can't remember, it's a little hard to pin down the exact number of years, if you recall what I was saying before."
Cake remained silent another moment, then frowned and put her leg up on the table. "Ice Queen, hold this for a second."
Raising an eyebrow, the queen slowly placed her hand around Cake's ankle. She thoughtfully chewed her mouthful and watched as Cake stood up and slowly walked all the way across the room, stretching her leg to accomodate. Once at the wall, she turned around and looked dead center at the queen again.
"...you're pullin' my leg, ain'tcha?"
With an exasperated sigh, the queen shoved Cake's leg off the table and rolled her eyes. "I'm not kidding, this must have happened ages ago! Gumball isn't exactly a fresh-off-the-block kid, you know. He's ancient."
"Baloney! If he's so old, how come he looks so svelte and suave? And don't tell me it's cause of your stupid ice magic!"
"I don't know, why don't you ask him sometime?" The queen reclined a bit further in the ice couch, stretching her legs under the table. "I'd ask him myself, but you know he won't tell me anything. Not these days, anyway. He's changed a lot since back when this story took place."
"Changed?" Cake asked suspiciously as she brought herself back to the table, reloading on breakfast.
The queen set aside her fork and closed her eyes. "We used to be pretty good friends, actually. We'd stay up half the night, talking about our latest discoveries and how to run our kingdoms and such."
"But if you were all buddy-buddy with each other, how come he's scared of you now?"
"Well..." she said with a dismissive shrug, "the MORAL of the story is that root beer really puts a squeeze on your good judgment. I had too many one night, and I basically did exactly what you were worried about. I tried to get in his pants. Literally, I think. And ever since that night, I think he's completely convinced that's the only thing I want from him at all."
Cake didn't say anything, but her face folded into a completely unconvinced, disbelieving smirk that all but forced the queen into saying the rest of it.
"Okay fine, and maybe he's at least partially justified for thinking that!" She folded her arms and blew the hair from her face. "The REAL moral of the story is that you didn't know that about me and Gumball. And that you didn't know about the inhibitive effects of root beer. And that root beer is a completely valid excuse for barging in on Fionna oh-so-many nights ago."
"Valid excuse my butt," came the retort. "Ice Queen, you can't just blame all your bad habits on somethin' else when it's convenient! You gotta take responsibility for what you do!"
"Fine, then I DO take responsibility for all the feel-good, ice-crystal lipstick I've swapped with her."
"Ice Queen!"
"Why do I feel like I'm being lectured right now, Cake? Why are you treating me like I'm Fionna?"
And moreover, why am I allowing it to happen? she added to herself bitterly.
"What are you talkin' about, you nugget?" Cake asked, hands on her hips.
"She kept calling you 'mom'," the queen answered, still half in thought. "Now I think I see what she meant. You can be so overbearing and wet blanket-y."
"Hey, it ain't like that anymore! Me and Fionna understand each other better now, we had a nice long girl moment about it while you were conkered out!"
"Then why are you still acting this way? Why do you always insist on being absolutely right about everything?"
"Because that's my job!" Cake growled. "Even if I'm givin' her more free reign, lettin' her make her own decisions, she's still gonna be a little clumsy! Someone's gotta be there to help mop up, to give her guidance when she's got none!"
"And that's YOUR job, and your job alone?" the queen pressed, adding some grit of her own. "You're the only source of guidance Fionna gets? What if you say something wrong?"
"What's your point?!"
"So who cleans up after YOU if you screw up? Who's the mom figure in YOUR life now, Cake?"
Before she'd even finished the sentence, a fist struck her hard across the jaw. Before she could even put a hand to her face, she was yanked forward by the collar of her robe. Before her stood Cake, white fur bristling and blue eyes livid.
"Don't you EVEN bring my mother into this!" she snarled viciously.
"Why not?" the queen spit back. "Why don't we talk about your mother, Cake?"
"Because she's DEAD," Cake hissed through her teeth. "She's dead and she ain't comin' back! She's dead because you cold murdered her!"
"I had to do it, Cake! I had to make that call!"
"Liar!" she screamed, slamming Ice Queen against the hard floor. "You didn't have to kill her! You didn't have to kill my family!"
"Stop!" she cried as the pain of the impact shot through her spine. "I was...I was only doing what mothers do, Cake…".
"Mothers LOVE and PROTECT!" Cake shouted, slamming her against the floor again and again. "They don't MURDER! They don't!"
"I had...to make that call...Cake," the queen said between shortened breaths. "Someone...had to look out...for you…".
Cake stopped her assault, fingers still gripped tightly around the edges of the queen's robe. Her heavy breathing slowly began to stabilize, though she still feel the bubbling, boiling heat behind her eyes.
"I was...just doing...what mothers do…" Ice Queen repeated firmly, catching her breath as well. "Looking after you...".
Cake didn't say anything. Her nostrils flared once or twice. Her eyes became more distant, and her fingers slowly loosened as she picked herself up off of the queen and sat against the edge of the ice couch.
"...can I tell you another story, Cake?" the queen said, much softer, as she pushed herself up into a sitting position, despite the burn notice in her arms and back. "From one mom to another?"
Cake's eyes dilated again to their normal size and darted toward the queen. They reflected a complex mixture of emotions, from smoldering rage to hidden curiosity with a dash of hurtful memory. A perfect recipe for story time. She nodded and kept her eyes pointed at the queen.
And with a deep, cleansing breath, the queen began:
"So many years ago, back in a time long before all of this...before the Flame Prince, before all this trickery and deception, before Fionna even existed...this mountain was a disaster area. Eternal black storm clouds swirled overhead. The fierce, chilling winds would blow you right off the mountain and shatter every bone in your skeleton. And I was the one who made it that way."
The queen looked toward the ceiling and closed her eyes, digging through a locked chest full of darkened memories. "No one dared to come and visit my ice worlds. No one even wanted to. They were beautiful, Cake. Truly astonishing marvels full of tall, glistening towers and frozen waterfalls and upside-down pyramids with enormous ice dragons carved around each pillar. But nobody could brave the cold, nobody wanted to get too close to me. They feared me and my wicked ice magic, and they stayed tucked away in their own kingdoms."
She sighed and opened her eyes again. "To be fair, I didn't have a great reputation, anyway. Did some bad things, started some wars, the same dumb things that any queen eventually has to go through at some time. But the point is that I was alone and nobody cared about me, as long as I wasn't terrorizing anyone. Nobody hated me enough to attack, and nobody cared about me enough to check up once in a while."
She slowly turned to face Cake, who stared back silently and just a bit sourly. "And you know, no feeling in the world is worse than when you're alone with no one to keep you in check. You start getting ideas. You start wondering about things that you know are bad for you. You start to wonder if you can kill the loneliness by talking to yourself. Playing with yourself. Daring yourself to try scary new things. Talk yourself into playing with dares, in search of a new thrill, to remind yourself that you're still alive and what it means to feel that way."
Cake gave an angry sigh and folded her arms. "You got enough backstory context there? Sure you don't need to scoop on any more before tellin' me the REAL story?"
Ice Queen glared back at her and ground her teeth together. Even when she spoke directly from the sacred corners of her brain and her heart, she was still being pushed aside and ignored. She was being treated just like the villain she knew she'd been acting like for so long. She took another deep, calming breath and released it slowly and purposefully. Then, she continued.
"On that particular night, when I was experimenting with extreme blizzards and lightning, I felt something. You know when you're by yourself but it feels like someone's watching you? That's what I felt. No one had come to visit me in so many years, I'd almost forgotten what that even felt like. I knew something was happening."
"That feeling led me to the edge of a near cliff," the queen said, engaging with hand motions as she spoke. "And when I looked down, I saw a tiny creature in the snow. Not a penguin. Not a bear, nor a fox. It was a kitten."
Cake straightened up. "Yeah, I remember that night. The night I was runnin' from the wolves, got lost and ended up in a blizzard. Thought I was a goner."
"You almost were," the queen continued. "You must have been surviving on sheer willpower at that point, because there isn't much that can withstand a blizzard that strong. I don't know what compelled me, whether it was compassion or curiosity, but I hustled down to your body and carried you back to my house. This house."
On cue, Cake cast her gaze around the room, re-familiarizing herself with the ice-block furniture, the statues in the hall and the occasional distant scuttling of penguin feet. She wasn't sure, but she may have just felt a buried feeling of memory or attachment peeking out from deep inside the recesses of her mind. She shook it off and looked back at the queen again. "Go on."
"I don't know what it was about you," she continued, trailing a hand off to one side, "but something about you being so tiny and helpless and miraculously ALIVE snapped my brain back into focus. You survived the blizzard, Cake. That was a storm of impending death, and you LIVED. I know better now, but in that moment, you and I were pretty similar. We were the survivors of the storm."
"Anyway, I helped bring you back to full health. I kept you safe and sheltered from the cold winds. You used to sleep in a tiny basket in the corner over there, I don't know what happened with it, though. I remember you very fond of the cupcakes I used to bake back then, so that's what I started calling you. Cupcake."
Cake's ears flattened at the word. The queen held up a hand of acknowledgement. "I know, I know, not anymore."
She straightened up again. "There was something else about you too. You were much smarter than any of my penguins. You were curious and clever. You would sneak into my cupboards and snitch away the sweet things before I noticed. You were smart."
"And then one day…" she said with a toothy grin, "...you talked."
Cake blinked. "I wasn't talkin' before?"
"You mewed and yowled and purred, but you never made a noise I could understand before that day."
Cake blinked a second time. "...huh. So I learned to talk from watchin' you, is what you're sayin'."
"Mostly, yes," she said, drifting back into foggy memories. "We talked about things. We talked about all kinds of things. We talked into the late hours of the morning...and now that I remember that, I think those might be some of my favorite memories, Cake..."
"Blech, you're gettin' way too mushy on me," Cake said, making a face at her.
"Let me finish," the queen grumbled. "Now that I had someone to talk to, I didn't need to keep doing those horrible, dangerous things to myself. I had a good reason to stay alive. I had a person who I cared about, and who cared about me. You were the reason I brightened the ice kingdom back up again. You were the reason I could finally act like a normal and proper queen again, and not just a pestilent, thrill-seeking jerk."
She looked Cake in the eye again. "...until the day your parents came back."
Silent intensity began burning slowly between them again. The pleasant, nostalgic aura of the scene ebbed back into a dark, brooding one.
"I did what I did on that day, I made that choice. And I paid for it, too...you left me afterward."
Cake still did not speak. Her nose wrinkled and she brushed it with her paw, squinting at her former mother.
"You ran away and left me here," Ice Queen continued, still drifting in a haze. "I chased after you, but you were such a tiny speed demon. I couldn't catch you. That would be the last I'd see of you for oh-so-many years...until you showed up alongside Fionna during our first encounter together…".
The pause lingered after that, unspoken years worth of dialogue hovering around the room haphazardly. But the scene wasn't complete. Something still felt disconnected. Eventually, Cake managed to brush it all aside and land back in the present, to piece the rest of the puzzle together. She snapped herself together and spoke:
"So, I guess that makes me the reason you fell back into your usual nasty ways, eh? And I guess I'm just supposed to sit here and tear up now, then run over to your open arms in slow-motion and apologize for misbehavin' and runnin' off all those long, lonely years ago, and pledge forever to be your loyal daughter again? Is that what comes next in your sick little play?"
The queen sighed and hung her head as she too landed back in reality. "...I can't say that's what I expected."
"Well good," Cake replied, pulling herself up and brushing off her knees. "Cause I'm not gonna do it."
She quietly stacked the plates and silverware and dutifully carried the dishes back into the kitchen. The queen brought herself back up to a proper posture and stretched her arms. When Cake returned, she once again stood over the queen, staring down at her complacently with one hand on her hip.
"Y'know, I guess maybe I'm a little sorry for desertin' you when you had nobody left," she said, cocking her head slightly. "But I'm sorry I never came back."
Ice Queen slowly turned her head away, lost in wishful thinking. Cake grabbed her chin and forced her to again look her in the eye.
"You took my family away from me," she enunciated in distinct, precise tones. "Oh sure, you saved my life and helped raise me. You took care of me when I was down. But I already had a life and a family before all that...and you murdered 'em all. The mama Ice Queen I knew back then was dead to me after that. And no amount of love and nurture's ever gonna fix what you did."
She brought her face in close and personal, whiskers brushing against the queen's cheek. "You don't get a free pass for bein' nice."
Holding her gaze for another few seconds, Cake finally stepped back and sat back down on the couch, turning her head away and muttering again, "I don't regret not coming back."
Ice Queen stared at her for another minute. It could have been several minutes, or even an entire day. But at last, she sighed and lowered herself back down to the floor, arms apart and face pointed up at the ceiling. The reflected daylight bouncing around in the crystalline ceiling hurt to look at. She closed her eyes again.
"I guess we'll always be enemies then, won't we, Cake?"
She heard only a spitting sound in response.
"If there's nothing I can do to patch things up between us, then maybe this whole entire conversation has been nothing more than a waste of breath for the both of us."
"I told you," Cake returned coldly. "You were dead to me. Maybe you're still dead to me."
"What does that mean?" the queen asked. "You going to kill me while I'm weak, finally extract the vengeance you've desired for so long?"
"I ain't gonna kill you. That won't do nothin' 'cept make Fionna mad."
Her eyes opened again. "Fionna?"
Cake sighed and slouched back further, putting her feet on the table. "...she likes you, Ice Queen. I don't know what in the name of Grod almighty she sees in you, but she likes you."
A hint of a smile returned to the queen's face. Not her usual, manipulative smile of pure, driven evil, but a humble, honest smile. A heartfelt ray of sunshine through her ice-crystal-prism of a heart sort of smile.
"And that's somethin' I'm just gonna have to learn to deal with," Cake continued, resigning the last shard of her anger and intensity. "I'm gonna drop my feelin's about you altogether, 'cause I love Fionna. And for her sake, I'm gonna have to learn to live with you."
The smile widened. "I guess that's really all I can ask for, isn't it?"
"Don't you get happy with me," Cake countered. "You're still dead."
There was another pause that lingered in the crisp atmosphere between them. The faint smell of waffles still clung to the air in each breath, and the pitter-patter of penguins in the bathtub reminded them that time had not fallen prey to the frozen wall constructs of this icy domain.
"...I just gotta learn to tolerate havin' an ancient sarcophagus mummy around, that's all."