Title: Death of a King
Notes: Spoilers for Chapter 240! A what might have been scenario if Dolor and Gloxinia had been just a moment too late to stop Chandler's attack on King.
This fic is dedicated to Trig and Mars from the Church of Kiane discord server. You mentioned angst while knowing full well I would answer the call and so here it is! Plus the two of you have been very supportive and sweet and I appreciate all your help. Love you guys so much!
Death of a King
'No! I'm going to fight with you!'
'But at the very least let me protect you...'
'No! King, no!'
'I want to spend my final moments dying a king's death..'
'No..No...No! Nooooo!'
'PLEASE, JUST GO-!
Ringing silence.
Gloxinia and Dolor appeared, their expressions heavy and regretful. Diane was picked up from where she stood after having escaped Elizabeth's hold and staring at the scene before her, shock-still, deafened by the turn of events. Ban, with an anguished look of anger on his face, deposited her back into the pale and petrified Elizabeth's waiting hands.
His body was torn to shreds, unrecognizable.
He was gone.
Fairy King Harlequin was dead.
"Is there nothing you can do?" Dolor's deep voice grated with sympathy, directing his question at the small winged figure that floated down to his successor. The former Fairy King studied the prone form with a sad flutter of his wings.
"No...His spirit has already left his body...otherwise I could've..."
"NO!"
The two former commandments turned to look not at Diane, but Elizabeth who stood with the speechless Diane in her hands, Ban standing at her back with the unconscious form of Meliodas carried in the crook of his arm. The Goddess was staring at the two great kings with something akin to horror, her face awash with tears. "No! There has to be a way!" She cried and stumbled forward.
Gloxinia turned away while Dolor looked on with sympathy. "There is not." He told her, his voice painfully kind. Elizabeth shook her head, throwing herself to the ground at King's side. She dropped her chin, trying to breathe past her sobs.
"Diane..."
The little form of the Giantess was frozen, her eyes were wide with disbelief as they gazed upon the battered remains of her lover. He couldn't be dead... He had promised her...
"H-Har...le...quin..."
Elizabeth set Diane down and reached her arms out, trying desperately to call on her magic to heal the Fairy King. She ignored the void in her mind that told her that he was gone. The princess knew she could not bring back the dead but all she needed was just a drop. Just the tiniest spark of life to use her magic and return him to them. To Diane.
The Grizzly Sin of Sloth's body was a mess. The attack that he'd taken the brunt of had blown through him, leaving gaping holes all over. His head was bruised and swollen, a fresh burn on one side of his face bubbling from hairline to chin. He'd lost an arm and blood pooled around him. Clear faintly glowing strips of what appeared to be gauze could only be his wings, shredded from his skin.
In the distance there was a rumble, a grating that shook the ground. Chandler burst from the imprisonment cocoon Gloxinia and Dolor had sealed him in with a snarl. He advanced on them.
"The Ten Commandments Dolor and Gloxinia! Answer me! Why would you help the Seven Deadly Sins?!"
Slipping into fighting stances the two kings of the past faced the deranged demon with matching expressions of determination. "We have no obligation to answer you." Gloxinia huffed.
Dolor eyed the others. "You should just leave this to us."
"Run now while you can." Gloxinia added with a drawl.
Forcing back her sorrow Elizabeth glared at them. "Not without King-sama!"
Gloxinia gestured to them with a wave while Dolor ran forward to meet Chandler. "Then take him but just get-"
A sudden pulse of power filled the air. Everyone stopped, including the battle-ready Dolor and growling Chandler. They all spun to look at the glowing form of Diane and the deadly scowl that made the normally sweet-faced girl near unrecognizable.
"You...Demon..."
Hawk squealed, pushing against Gowther as the two retreated hurriedly. Elizabeth scrambled to her feet with a cry, Ban reaching out to wrap his arm around her middle and haul her back as the spell that kept Diane miniature broke. With the sickening groan of bone knitting together and the snap of muscles ripping the Serpent's Sin of Envy grew until she towered over them all.
Furious violet viewed them all with hate and the Giantess gave a roar of madness as she directed her attention to Chandler and leveled the head of Gideon in his direction. "I'll Kill You!" She screamed and sped towards the viciously grinning demon.
Then she was face to face with the Giant of old, his expression passive as he intercepted the swing of her arms by grabbing her wrists in two of his hands and forcing a gut-wrenching punch into her stomach with a third. Diane shrieked in fury before a streak of light hit her neck and her eyes took on a distant look. She passed out in Dolor's arms.
"She will be unconscious for only ten minutes. That is all I can guarantee." Gowther told them from where he'd shot and lodged one of his arrows in Diane.
Dolor lifted Diane into his arms. "Then take her."
"How?" Ban groused as he glanced around irritably. "None of us can even lift her!"
Elizabeth screamed as a blast of power landed in the ground at her feet. A wall of vines protected her as Gloxinia flew forward to place himself between them and their adversary. "You have to leave now!"
Hawk cantered up quickly. "Mama can take her!"
"That's right!" Elizabeth spun and ran to Ban, her eyes carefully scanning Meliodas. Hawk Mama groaned and stamped forward hurriedly. Dolor lay Diane over the giant boar's snout. Gideon went into the her mouth.
"Someone has to navigate. She can't see with Diane on her." Elizabeth pointed out. Ban grabbed her, securing his hold on Meliodas and leaping into the air to land on Hawk Mama, Gowther and Hawk already on board.
A vine carrying King's body gently placed him on the deck of the balcony. As soon as everyone was accounted for Hawk Mama took off in a dead sprint.
A haze of miasma with Chandler at it's center awaited the two that remained.
Gloxinia and Dolor shared a glance. They knew their fate.
"We are no longer Ten Commandments, nor are we kings. We are simply Fairy and Giant."
I'll always love you and I'll always be by your side.
"You swore...You swore-!"
She wept over his body in the room of the Boar's Hat Bar that had belonged to Meliodas. Elizabeth had been with her when Ban had placed King's body on the bed, helping her dress after she had taken another one of her shrinking pills. The Princess had cried with her and said nothing. Merlin had led her out, quietly suggesting they leave Diane to her grief especially when the young giantess had taken a single look at her dead lover and broken down into another wave of sobs.
King had loved her with everything he had. Waiting for so long. Loving her from a distance. Wanting to see her happy but making mistakes in his warped idea of what it meant to keep her safe.
Diane hadn't realized how lost she truly was until she had been able to finally see him again, with all her memories intact, and he had been beautiful. So beautiful that she wondered how she had ever missed the clear and unfiltered love that had always held for her. No matter what he had done in the past she couldn't hold it against him. King had loved her, in his own special and beautiful way. Her heart was already his, always had been, and all she could was accept and love him in return.
Even when she hadn't remembered him she had loved him.
She thought she was strong enough to keep anything from taking what was most precious to her but she had been wrong.
Shouldn't she have been able to do something? If only it hadn't been for Chandler's curse...! He wouldn't have had to sacrifice himself for her!
"H-how can you keep your promise if you're not here with me!?" She shouted brokenly into the sheets. "What am I supposed to do now without you?! We were supposed to stay together! Forever! You promised! You promised King!" Diane smashed a fist into the bed frame, breaking it into splinters. "So you can't be dead! It's not fair! IT'S NOT FAIR!"
From downstairs no one dared to move, listening to her broken sobs while falling to their own grief. Elaine was beyond them, in Ban's room with his arms around her as she struggled to stop the pain of her brother's death from overtaking her.
Elizabeth buried her face in Meliodas' hair, her shoulders shaking with the effort to keep her cries in. Merlin stared at a space on the wall, her expression troubled, as if she couldn't believe that King could have fallen in battle.
They had to make a plan. Had to continue their mission. If they couldn't manage to defeat Zeldris then King's death would be for nothing and they would all die. They didn't have time to lose themselves in the despair of losing a precious comrade. Shouldn't.
They knew what it was they had to do but none of them were willing to be the one to face Diane. Diane, who like Elizabeth, like Gowther and Ban, like all of them, had finally found love. To see her experience the torture of losing the one who mattered most to her...
It was a darkness none of them thought they would have to witness her facing.
In his room, against the sounds of Elaine's sniffling, Ban realized that the sobbing from upstairs had ceased and that it had become eerily silent. Something cold settled in him and he carefully bundled Elaine in his arms. She shook but couldn't bring herself to ask as he carried her with him up the stairs. When she realized where they were going her grip on his arms tightened and she paled even further. Ban stopped to comfortingly lay his head on hers, pressing his lips to her forehead, saying without words that she could trust him. Elaine rubbed her nose against his chest and closed her eyes. She didn't want to see her brother this way.
Ban opened the door to Meliodas' room slowly, wondering what he would find and how Diane would react.
But Diane was gone...
And so was King's body.
The world was so very quiet in the earliest hours of the morning. The tops of the trees rustled softly, a swooping rumble in the distance that barely pulled her attention. From the energy signatures she could tell that another fight was raging. She faced away from it, at full-height, and blinking against the brightness of the rising sun, crumbles of sleep that had gathered in her eyes a sign of how long she'd gone without resting. Her hair was untamed and hanging listlessly around her shoulders, her arm still raw and red from where a charged demonic blast had made contact. She limped with a sprained ankle, walking slowly, the pounding of her feet creating slamming echoes. She was determined to keep going, keeping her hands cupped to her chest, stray tears trailing down her cheeks.
Soon she reached the border of the trees and she looked up with a small shadow of a smile.
The Fairy King's forest lay ahead.
Diane kneeled at the edge of the tree line, carefully opening her cupped hands and quietly cooing to her prize. Fairy bodies healed themselves, even in death. Though the heart did not beat, an inherent magic that existed in each of them as children of the Holy Tree preserved their bodies. However, despite healing itself, the once flawless peach-toned skin was pale and cracked, dark lines splintering over the features, a physical representation of the curse the Demon Chandler had inflicted on him upon his murder. His wings were gone, ripped from his back and only two long gaping wounds were left to mark that they ever existed. His body was broken in death and it was a malicious sort of torture to be able to see him in such a way.
The sentinels that were charged with peeking at the border of the forest and the human realm soon appeared with expressions twisted in horror, the heartbreak in them making Diane bend until her head was on the ground and her hands clasped in prayer.
She apologized through her tears, repeating herself until she was hoarse, shattered and so sorry for all that happened, for what she hadn't been able to prevent. He had sworn to protect her but she had sworn too. They were a pair, partners, and she had failed him, alive only because he had placed himself in the path of death to protect her.
It was harder to accept than she could have imagined as Gerharde flew forward with cry of denial, her face cracking into sheer devastation as she fell from the air to crumple into a heap next to her king's side.
"Harlequin..."
Though she knew it mattered little, would change nothing, Diane apologized again and again, the agonizing clench of his death choking her heart.
Through shared misery Gerhearde could only shake her head. She turned her head up to Diane with unfathomable pity. "Harlequin was no ordinary fairy..." The now dead king's adviser seemed to understand Diane's suffering which she proved when she went on to say, "My brother...was the First Fairy King a long time ago. He too was unable to overcome the demons..."
"But...At the very least... Harlequin was a true king...to the very end..."
Diane lifted her head and nodded dismally, reaching a finger out to caress the cheek of her beloved. "I-I know th-that everyone says we have to accept death because it's a part of our lives but..." Her words caught in her throat and Diane clapped a hand to her mouth in an attempt to smother the sob that had worked it's way up as she said, "But I can't when I know there's a chance I can save him."
She hadn't been able to stand the thought of losing him...
He had never told her exactly how Fairies dealt with their dead. Knowing that Ban had been able to find a way to bring Elaine, a once dead fairy, back to life made her realize what it was she had to do. It was painful and would only get harder to bear but if it was for him then there was nothing she wouldn't do. She would return to the Seven Deadly Sins and finish what they had started against the Ten Commandments and then she would seek their help in finding a way to bring King back to life. Until then she would entrust his body to the fairy realm for safekeeping.
Gerhearde gave her word that she would protect him just as she had protected Elaine for so many years. Even now that they were king-less, she would do her best to keep an eye on the forest, and to support Diane. He had been her king and in some ways, a friend. She felt his loss as keenly as the others. She had never thought that the human Ban would find a way to revive Elaine, the dead were meant to stay dead, but there was no denying that the immortal had accomplished the impossible. Knowing that he had managed such a feat gave her hope for Harlequin.
There was no telling when or if the Holy Tree would appoint an new ruler. Only a king could hear it's true call. It was up to her to do what she could for Fairy kind in Harlequin's absence. She offered Diane a promise and set to making her king comfortable in the place his sister's corpse had once occupied.
Crying fairies surrounded Diane, asking questions she couldn't supply answers to. When one asked what it was they would do now she told them with steel resolve, "I'm going to bring him back." They all watched her gather her things and prepare to go.
But leaving him was harder than she could have ever imagined.
He rested in a nest of flowers, his face lax in death and so very still. Beautiful and wrong. She didn't know how she could bring herself to leave him.
Yet...just as the day she thought she had lost Matrona, something in herself made her get to her feet and move.
I'll always love you and I'll always be by your side.
She looked back only once, fresh tears in her eyes. King did not move, did not breathe, and it only fueled her determination as she turned away.
Time stood still for her now. Everything she did would be for him. For them.
She would be brave, letting nothing interfere. She would save him.
'It's my turn to save you.'
Diane took a step and began her journey.
Owari
...She was supposed to kill herself at the end... but I swear these fics take on a life of their own. Diane and King are such a beautiful couple. I imagine that while King would be the one to go off on his own to find a way to bring Diane back, Diane would not react the same. She would fulfill her promise to help Elizabeth and Meliodas and then she would do whatever it takes to revive King and something tells me that she wouldn't have to do it alone.
Thank you very much for reading! Please read and review!