Disclaimer: Neither Kyou Kara Maou nor any of its characters belong to me.
Rating: M
Pairing: Yuri/Wolfram
Warnings: Major character death. Mild smut. Angst.
And you as well must die, beloved dust,
And all your beauty stand you in no stead;
This flawless, vital hand, this perfect head,
This body of flame and steel, before the gust
Of Death, or under his autumnal frost,
Shall be as any leaf, be no less dead
Than the first leaf that fell—this wonder fled.
Altered, estranged, disintegrated, lost.
Nor shall my love avail you in your hour.
In spite of all my love, you will arise
Upon that day and wander down the air
Obscurely as the unattended flower,
It mattering not how beautiful you were,
Or how beloved above all else that dies.
"And you as well must die," Edna St. Vincent Millay
Once Upon a Time
Part 1
One day, long after he was dead and gone, Yuri was sure some intrepid biographer would think to write of his life as if it were a fairytale.
It would begin, as all such stories tended to, once upon a time.
Four millennia following the death of His Most Illustrious Majesty the Great One, there came a boy from the world of Earth to take his rightful place upon the throne of this our Great Demon Kingdom.
There would be adventure...
Thus His Majesty the 27th King charged forth into the boiling water of the spring which topped the dormant volcano, and pulled from its depths Morgif, the mighty Demon Sword of legend.
… and mystery...
For many hundreds of years the Demon Flute eluded all those to take up the quest, until His Majesty the 27th King ventured into the brutal deserts of Svelera. But the Demon Flute was not the only lost artifact to be found in this desolate nation, as Lord GegenHuber Grisela of the House Voltaire was to learn firsthand.
… and, naturally, romance.
Upon the steps to Covenant Castle there stood a young man of heavenly beauty. Then a mere eighty-two, the youngest and arguably the most esteemed of Her Majesty Queen Cäcilie's sons, Lord Wolfram von Bielefelt could not have fathomed the great heights to which he would soon rise. For by the brilliant luster of his golden hair, the vibrant emerald of his fierce gaze, and the refined beauty of his adolescent features, he had come to the undivided attention of His Majesty the 27th King. Before the evening could reach its conclusion, His Majesty would request Lord Wolfram's hand in marriage.
But it would be a farce.
His life had been nothing like that. Like Günter's elaborate and joyous praise, such a biography would no doubt rely on exaggeration to make the tale even more fantastical. Sure, he'd found Morgif in that volcano, but the real story wasn't nearly as daring. The Demon Flute, too, had been more of an accidental find than a legitimate quest, and none of them had really wanted to seek out the Forbidden Boxes until it had become a necessity to do so.
Of course, over the years there had been occasions when Yuri himself thought his life to be a bit like a fairytale. After all, he had been transported to another world, he did become the King of the Great Demon Kingdom, and yes, there was that whole matter about being engaged to a Prince, unintentional as it might have been at the time (a fact everyone but Yuri tended to overlook), but he had always known fairytales to have happy endings.
Cinderella escaped the cruelty of her Step-Mother and the evil Step-Sisters when she was whisked away by her handsome Prince. Sleeping Beauty awakened from her eternal slumber by the power of True Love's Kiss. Harry Potter destroyed all the Horcruxes and managed to defeat Voldemort with a rebounded Killing Curse.
Alright, so the last one wasn't a true fairytale, but that wasn't entirely the point.
The point was, his life didn't end the way most fairytales did. Sure, he inherited the crown, and he found the legendary sword, and he married the handsome Prince, but that was where the similarities ended.
Once upon a time he fell headfirst into an epic adventure complete with knights and dragons and menacing evil. He won the Prince, tamed the dragon, and brought peace to a war-wearied world.
But he never knew a happily ever after.
To be Continued...