Chapter Text
Having resigned himself to a world where no colors would ever show themselves in front of him, resigning himself to live in his world of monochrome grey, grey, grey- he slumps on his throne and wants the loud night to pass unnoticed in his eyes until he sees her there. Dancing into the night, under the dazzling stars.
And then- a soft color-what was that? It breaches his vision, slow at first, then spreads. He sits up, nearly breathless at something he had thought would never grace him. And his eyes widen at the sight of true color, and the whole world bursts into rose pink and gold tresses.
Diana was her name. Diana of Siodonna, and she was a fairy that danced as if wings were placed on her back to give her the power of flight. She had come into his world and had re-made it of beauty.
Beauty that he had never seen before, and he wanted to give her this world of his.
This world that had once been cold, grey, empty and void of all things, was now flush with colors like the color of her eyes-pink she says-the color of her hair, your hair is blonde too-the way she smiled when she sipped tea and roses scattered their petals across their table.
And then his world wasn't just about colors. His world was about her, was her in its entirety and he gave and gave and gave to her until he felt this world was lacking in what he wished to gift to her.
Until she chose another instead of him, and this world seemed cold and bleak. He locks himself away, having yelled until she had wept tears that were like clear crystal.
He hadn't wanted to make her cry, but didn't she understand that she wouldn't have enough time to live in this world with him if she brought that thing in her into their colorful world?
He wished it were a normal child inside of his love, his Diana that was dying as he thought of endless ways to just make it all stop, to make it all go away. His world stops when Felix brings him the news. She was gone.
Gone from thei- his world. And gone away from life itself.
He had blinked once, then twice, then many times, and Felix stared anxiously at his expression, waiting to see if he would crush the arm rest with the discovery that color was once again gone from his reach. It was not. It was still there, throbbing at the edges of his vision, the stark red of Felix's hair.
His chair falls over with a bang as he storms the Ruby Palace and he doesn't falter in slicing through the hordes of people that he should have killed years before.
Kills until he sets foot on the threshold of her chambers and steps over it, to see her laying there, all alone. The girl she had taken a liking to was holding a bundle in her arms, weeping silently as she curtsied to him entering.
He stands over her, the color of her hair still beautiful. Her eyes now closed, never again to open, to show the pink gems that sparkled at him in the daylight.
All because of that child that she had born into this world, but how was it that color was not fading away, even right at this very moment?
Seeing his soulmate dead and gone in front of him? It was muted yes, but he could see the clear shades and hardly any different, but why?
He stalks over to the girl and snatches the child away from her, and unfolds the blankets around her face.
And color once again burst into vivid view and made the scent of roses in this room all the more unbearable as he silently gazed down upon a piece of Diana in his arms.
So the child grew up, cheerful, bright, energetic. But she was not Diana. He watched her adorn herself with jewels and danced with dolls, and made mana sparkle in the air around them. She was never her mother.
She was Athanasia.
His only daughter within this color-filled world. Diana may have left a part of her within her child, because blood never lies, but Diana was gone. Claude knew that now.
He had overlapped their images and didn't see the person that lay beneath it all. This little princess of his was her own, beautiful, loving person. His child.
He tells her not to run around and she waves at him from across the garden, Felix hurrying to catch up to her and Claude thinks he knows what this world, once ugly and unworthy of living in, had meant for him to see and understand.
Because it was never about color, you see.
Soulmates drew color to their world and made it look and breathe a certain way, but that was just one single aspect of the whole way their persons met and clashed together into the harmony that was blown into them.
The whole thing about color, was that it had always been about love.