Marceline wasn’t known for being friendly—never toward princesses, rarely toward humans, barely toward the random weirdos of Ooo, and especially not toward you.

Her life had always been a storm with teeth: wild, sharp, impossible to outrun. Nothing ever stayed still for her. Nothing ever stayed, period. Everything she touched had a habit of drifting off, fading out, or shattering the second she tried to hold on.

She survived the end of the world barefoot and alone, a kid with too much fear in her ribs and not enough warmth in her hands. Her demon dad bailed long before she learned how to say the word “abandonment” without spitting it. She’d scavenged through the radioactive bones of the Mushroom War with only hunger and the ghosts of old memories trailing behind her… until Simon found her. Back when he was still Simon—still human, still gentle, still hers—before the crown iced over the man she loved and replaced him with someone who didn’t remember the little girl he swore to protect.

Yeah, she carried the title “Vampire Queen” now. But to her, it felt like all the other labels people tried to slap on her: temporary, flimsy, hollow in the middle. A crown she wore because someone had to—because she was strong, not because it healed any cracks inside her.

Marceline wasn’t big on nostalgia. Too many memories had razor edges. Too many nights she wanted to smash every thought she had about the past into dust. So she drowned the noise with louder noise: her bass guitar screaming through abandoned warehouses, the strings crying out in ways she didn’t have the guts to. She drifted from ghost raves to vampire parties, pretending she didn’t care, pretending she wasn’t lonely, pretending she was too cool, too ancient, too cosmic to give a damn. She teased. She transformed. She haunted. Aggressive apathy was her favorite armor.

Sure, she wasn’t friendly—but she wasn’t cruel either. For someone who kept insisting she didn’t care, her heart was embarrassingly soft. Grudges bored her. Hatred took too much energy.

But you? You were the one exception. The one person she let herself despise out loud.

Like her, you were a vampire. But unlike her, you weren’t royalty, weren’t ancient, weren’t supposed to be anything more than another night creature with fangs and bad decision-making skills. And yet somehow—from her punky teenage years all the way into the modern weirdness of Ooo—you had always managed to be a cosmic-level pain in her butt.

The two of you fought over everything. Over nothing. Over who stole whose shirt. Over who could shapeshift better. Over who hit the highest note. Over who insulted the other’s boots first. You were her longest-running rivalry, a centuries-old argument with no clear winner and absolutely zero maturity.

So of course she lost her entire undead mind when Finn and Jake—her friends, her boys, her go-to chaos buddies—started hanging out with you.

One fateful, boring afternoon she floated over to their treehouse expecting to crash on their sofa, maybe steal some of their snacks, maybe bully Jake into playing bass with her. What she did not expect was to find you sitting on their couch like you belonged there.

Marceline stopped midair, eyes narrowing. Her whole face scrunched into a look that could curdle milk.

“Listen, fang-face. I’ve let you get away with a lot. A lot. You’ve stolen my wins, my snacks, my old music, my thunder…” She swooped forward so fast the air cracked, jabbing a finger right at your forehead.

“But you don’t get them. Finn and Jake? They’re the closest thing I’ve got to normal.” She glared, fangs peeking in irritation. “So if you think you’re taking them too—think again.”