Disclaimer: I don't own Adventure Time and don't claim to.

Buried

It was dark that night as Princess Bubblegum traversed across the Candy Kingdom graveyard still dressed in her science garb. In her hands she gingerly carried her latest project: a beta version of a rejuvenation potion that she had been working on for years. She knew from experience that bringing back the dead wasn't really a good idea, so her new project was very small scale. When she reached her destination she knelt down in front of the little grave. It was so old that nobody remembered who was buried there. The name had been scrubbed away by the weather and there was an empty metal vase sitting in front of it with the blackest, driest, deadest flowers anyone had ever seen. Princess Bubblegum uncapped her bottle and inserted a pipette, drawing up a small drop of her purple serum.

"Carefully, carefully," she said to herself, sticking her tongue out in concentration. If the concoction was applied incorrectly, who knew what would go wrong.

She squeezed out the drop. It fell onto the dried petals of one of the unfortunate flowers in the old bouquet. With a sparkle, it suddenly came back to life. Princess Bubblegum's eyes shone as she gazed at the magnificent white rose that had now returned to full bloom. Its leaves and stem were a deep, rich green and the petals were so pure they could have come from the very peaks of the snowiest mountains. It was a beautiful success.

Bubblegum was about to start using her new serum on all of the dead flowers in the graveyard, thinking only of how happy her subjects would be when they came to mourn their deceased loved ones and found their past offerings as beautiful as when they left them, but was stopped when she heard the deep plucking of a bass being tuned. She pursed her lips and grumbled.

"I only know one person who would play a bass guitar in a graveyard in the middle of the night. Doesn't she have any manners?"

Bubblegum capped her serum and followed the systematic sound of tuning, followed by some scales and chords. The warm up was accompanied by haunting vocal warm-ups that Bubblegum wouldn't admit sent chills up her spine. Walking around a bush, she finally found who she was looking for sitting between the wings on the back of stone angel. She began to play a familiar song on her red axe bass that Bubblegum could see as clear as day in the light of the full moon.

"Ladada, dada,
I wanna bury you in the ground.
Ladada, dada,
I wanna bury you in my sound."

Bubblegum frowned. "Oh, brother. She's playing that distasteful song again. And in a graveyard. Where's her respect for the dead?"

"I wanna drink the red
From your pretty pink face.
I wanna lay drink the red
From the rose I lay upon your grave
Because now no one will know~"

The pink princess stepped out into the open to confront the vampire queen but stopped in her tracks. Marceline floated off her perch, lifting the neck of her bass higher and throwing her head back in that way she often did that made her hair bounce and Bubblegum secretly like that, as well as the way the moonlight danced off her locks like the sun dances off a Rainicorn and she was hovering in exactly the right place to look like those statue wings were actually her own. The princess slapped herself.

"What we were, what we shared.
We were perfect as a pair.
I won't pretend but in the end
You didn't wanna see me aga… ain…"

The bass line trailed off, as did Marceline's singing. She stared blankly at Bubblegum and Bubblegum stared back, both at a loss for words. Princess Bubblegum shook her head vigorously and remembered what she'd come here to say. She scowled.

"Marceline! What do you think you're doing here?"

"Uh, practicing," Marceline replied, holding her bass up by the neck and waving it in front of her. "You know I like to play my bass in graveyards sometimes."

"Even the dead don't want to hear your awful music."

"Pssh! Like you know anything about music. You're too busy playing with your stupid science toys to appreciate the art of music."

"Why you!" Princess Bubblegum clenched her teeth and her face started to turn red. "I know all about the art of music! I was taught by the finest tutors in the entire Candy Kingdom."

"Music is more than notes and patterns and math, you know," Marceline retorted, leaning back and floating around the statue. "Music has to have feeling. A song with structure is nothing if it doesn't have meaning. Didn't you get that, Bonnibel?"

Marceline hovered in front of Princess Bubblegum and smirked right in her face. Bubblegum huffed. "Well then, please do enlighten me."

"What?"

"Since you claim to have knowledge superior to that of the greatest composers of the Candy Kingdom, why don't you explain to me the 'art of music'? Tell me about that song you were just singing."

Marceline regarded her with a blank expression.

"Well?"

Marceline blinked and in an instant her face became demonic. "That song is personal! You had no right to eavesdrop on me! Why are you even here?"

"Au contraire, it is you who is trespassing on the lands of my kingdom. I have the right to be wherever I want a listen to whomever I choose."

"You're such a snob!"

"You're so temperamental!"

"See? This is why we didn't work."

The princess gasped. "You promised we wouldn't talk about us ever again!" she hissed.

"There wasn't really ever an 'us'. It was just you, you, you and your kingdom and your feelings and your wants. You didn't care about me."

Princess Bubblegum's jaw dropped. "Excuse me?! You're the real problem you arrogant, narcissistic, blood-sucking psychopath! I never really liked you anyway."

Contrary to what Bubblegum expected, Marceline floated backwards and stared at Bubblegum sadly. "Is that true?"

Princess Bubblegum gulped and suddenly her heart began to feel heavy. "Well… not entirely," she said, deciding to just be as honest as possible. "Actually, the answer is no. I do kind of like you and I appreciate you still being my friend after everything we've been through. But sometimes you just don't understand how dire the responsibilities of being ruler of the Candy Kingdom are. It's written in our sacred law that the princess must one day take the hand of a man to become her king and you're not a man. If I fail to do this by my twenty-first birthday, I risk losing my right to the throne and the Earl of Lemongrab will take over my duties. Nobody wants that."

"But you're the princess now!" Marceline argued. "You can change the laws of your own kingdom."

Bubblegum sighed in exasperation. "No, it's far more complicated than that. It'll take at least a whole day to explain the whole process. The point is that we just can't be… well… 'we' anymore. Ever."

"If that's how you felt then you should have just thrown away the shirt," Marceline huffed, turning around and crossing her arms. She began to float away, intending to just leave.

"I wouldn't dream of it!" the princess blurted out, making the vampire queen spare her another look. Bubblegum blushed. "I mean… somewhere inside of me, I still think you're one of the most important people in the world. I like having that piece of you close by."

Marceline smiled tenderly before she could stop herself. "Well, I never told you this either, but I still have your ring."

Bubblegum gasped. "My royal ensign? The one I gave you?"

"Yeah. I kept it safe all this time."

"Aw. That's sweet, Marce."

"Hey, you called me 'Marce' again."

Bubblegum turned away and fidgeted with her science project. Marceline looked around awkwardly. They were totally alone right now.

"Um… you know, maybe it wouldn't be such a bad idea if we got back together again," said Marceline.

Bubblegum looked up again with wide eyes. "But the laws!"

"We'll find a way around it. We can look into it a bit, see if there's a loophole or a special way to change them. And maybe Finn and Jake can help."

"They'd only be of any help if there's an adventure involved."

"And there might be! But this time, can we try? I mean, really try?"

Bubblegum took in the hopeful look in Marceline's eyes. Her heart rose back into its rightful place and begged her to say yes and make everything just the way it used to be. Right at the moment that she opened her mouth to say something, a loud snarl cut her off. She turned around and gaped at the huge, white rose monster that was crashing through the graveyard towards them, gnashing its razor sharp teeth and swinging its thorny arms. The two young women stared at it in disbelief.

"This guy a friend of yours?" Marceline eventually asked.