Um... yeah. This happened while I was listening to Lorde the other day. Something about the song made me want to write. So I did.

Everybody Wants To Rule The World

"Everybody wants to rule the world," Bubblegum said with a frown and a sour twist to her delicate mouth.

Marceline only smirked and lolled forward to pluck the gleaming crown from her head. "Oh, I'm not here for your crown, princess," she said darkly, tossing the item over her shoulder and out the window. It pinged once on the balcony rail before plummeting into the dark of the night. Marceline rocked a little closer in the air, nearly nose-to-nose with Bubblegum now. "I don't want your money," she growled. "Or your crown. See, I've come to burn your kingdom down."

There was laughter in Marceline's crimson eyes that Bubblegum could only counter with steely resolve.

"You're going to pry it from my cold, dead hands," she whispered up at the vampire. To her unending ire, this seemed only to amuse her. "You can't have my kingdom."

"You've missed the point, kiddo," the other woman laughed. "You can't stop me, because I don't care how much of your pretty little heart-attack house I destroy. In fact, reducing it to rubble is kinda the point."

"Finn will stop you."

Marceline held up a hand at what would've been hip-height if she hadn't been floating. "The blonde kid? Oh… he's all tied up right now, your majesty." The vampire drifted closer, circling her but Bubblegum refused to do more than glare out the window. "He's… buried in work, actually." She barked a laugh then, no doubt amused by whatever wit she thought she was displaying. "You're all alone."

The bones of a resigned sigh blew through Bubblegum's lips. Not that she'd ever admit defeat, but Marceline was a force to be reckoned with. There was no telling what she'd do if Bubblegum resisted.

So all she did was twist her glower on the vampire and mutter, "Why? What do you gain from this?"

"Oh, Bonnie," she tsked. "You really can't see the gain for me in this? How narrow minded of you." Once again she pushed her face into Bubblegum's personal space. "I'm taking away your responsibility," she hissed.

And then it all fell into place. "That's childish," Bubblegum scoffed. "Burning my world to the ground won't accomplish anything to that end."

Marceline's arched eyebrow voiced the 'oh really' so much better than words could ever have.

"You can't take away almost everything that's ever meant anything to me and expect me to harbour any sort of emotion outside of resentment for you," Bubblegum explained deadpan, hoping none of the desperation coiling in her stomach oozed through. But Marceline was too lost in her own imagined slights to notice nuance anyway.

"Almost everything? Your kingdom is the only thing in the world that matters to you," Marceline sneered. "Finn is just your knight, to be used and abused until he's broken. Your people are an excuse, a shield to hide behind while you tinker on crazy laboratory experiments. But you don't care about those either. You just toss them aside when they don't work." Marceline lowered herself so they were eye to eye and her face twisted with distaste and… and her own form of desperation. "And I certainly never meant a damn thing to you."

There was rage building in Marceline's eyes that Bubblegum had no idea how to counter. She wanted to voice all the arguments to her theory, all the reasons that, well, no, she did care an awful lot about Marceline and there's a photo in her closet to prove it. But this was a long time in coming. Marceline was beyond reason and probably had been for a while.

With a heavy sigh, she collapsed onto the edge of her bed, reconciled – fatalistic about whatever the fates might have in store for her now. Marceline sat with her, finally dropping out of the air to dip the bed beside her. There would be no kingdom to rule come morning.

Together they watched out across her balcony as her city burned.