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The castle had always seemed so big when Zeldris was little.
To be fair, it was a massive castle. It stretched winding, ebony fingers deep into the sky’s realm, so high that the air seemed thinner at the very top, while reaching just as deep into the earth. He fondly remembered racing his brother to the deepest floors and warming themselves in front of the massive furnaces before their respective days started.
Those days were behind them now.
Meliodas was gone. Not dead, not missing- gone. He’d seen a better life on the other side and seized it with both hands, knowing full well that Zeldris couldn’t follow him. Wouldn’t follow him, not when he had so much to lose here.
He couldn’t bring himself to blame Meliodas. Zeldris wasn’t stupid- he knew his brother was unhappy, and treated… less than well- but he never thought it was this bad. Not bad enough that he’d throw everything away for a Goddess.
(Maybe Zeldris did know. He’d seen the bruises, the haphazard stitching, the tense shoulders and flinches when Chandler got too close. He’d never thought too much of it- Zeldris dealt with the same thing. He’d always figured that if Meliodas, hero of the Demon empire, heir to the throne and Zeldris’ very own big brother could handle the pain, he could too.
Maybe his brother never handled it as well as he let on.)
Zeldris hoped he was happy. Really, he did. He hoped that his brother’s happiness was worth what it had cost, and gods, it had cost everything.
The castle that had once seemed so big, so safe, so indestructible, was burning.
They hadn’t expected the attack. The fighting was focused on just the borders for so long, isolated to the clashing edges between the Goddess and Demon states, they’d grown relaxed further inside their territories. When the outposts fell and the Goddess forces marched inwards, the news came too late.
Charred black stone and wood crumbled against the Arks, rubble surrounding the young prince as he surveyed the damage. His room- his brother’s room, gone untouched since his disappearance- had been reduced to nothing in mere minutes. The throne room doors were thrown open, piles of Goddess corpses smoking in the face of darkness they couldn’t have imagined. The occasional rumble shook what remained of the grand structure, scattering dust and the occasional section of stone tumbling down.
Zeldris sat with his back to the last standing wall of his room, facing away from his brother’s. The load-bearing wall had crumbled hours ago, in the early stages of the siege, leaving nothing above it and barely anything below. The outer facing wall had been long destroyed, and Zeldris was focusing on the curling patterns of the smoke to drown out the sounds of screaming.
He could hear the commandments in his mind, each pulling and pulling on their respective strings almost to the point of snapping, screaming and ordering and if he cared to listen closely, crying. With fear, frustration, rage, all of the above, it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered anymore. If there was a point to the fighting, he’d have joined their defense the moment the siege began.
There was nothing to fight for.
What was the point? A throne he wasn’t ready to take, that would cost his body and soul? His lover? His family? Gone. Everything, gone and left him behind.
“Zeldris?”
Gloxinia. A commandment. A hostage. He was as much a demon as Zeldris was fae, but they’d been down a soldier and he had the ambition to fill the role. How far the fairy king had fallen.
“Gloxinia,” he rasped, clearing his throat. “What do you want?” The fairy king shifted uncomfortably, ash staining his pale skin. Zeldris could see the silver veins underneath. “Well- your highness, shouldn’t you be leading us?”
He snorted. “Don’t bother with the honorifics, you’re twice my age. By all means, tell me,” he gestured to the desolation around them, “what exactly are we protecting here? What is it you’re so determined to defend?”
The apprehension fell away from Gloxinia’s face, replaced by something unreadable. “I see,” he murmured. Zeldris couldn’t gauge his tone. He crossed from the broken doorway into what remained of the room, sitting next to Zeldris. They didn’t speak for a long moment, letting the echoing booms and shivering of the castle’s bones fill the silence.
“I think this is the worst part,” Gloxinia murmured out loud. “Knowing there’s nothing more you can do, and just watching everything dissolve. I never thought I’d do it again.” Zeldris only hummed in response. That’s right- the fae king had done all of this before, at Zeldris’ hand. The forest burned more easily than stone, but at least it would grow back.
Zeldris scrubbed at his face, furiously biting back the tears that threatened to spill over. “I didn’t want to give up,” he admitted. “I don’t want to lose. It hurts. I just don’t know what else to do.” He was grateful that Gloxinia didn’t react to his wavering tone, at least not outwardly.
“Why did you, then? Give up.”
Zeldris shrugged, considering for a moment. “What’s left to fight for?” he wondered out loud. “My brother’s gone, cursed into a personal hell. The only other person I love is unreachable to me. Even if I win this battle, I’ve already lost.” He let himself take it in- the crumbling castle, the smoldering town around it, the acrid smell of burning flesh that poisoned the already sulfurous air. He wondered how many civilians would pay for his apathy.
Gloxinia huffed a laugh without any real humor. “I wish you weren’t so easy to relate to. You fought for the people you loved, I fought for the people who depended on me, and now we have neither.” He shook his head, looking up to the violet horizon. “I wonder what my sister thinks of me now.”
Zeldris let the background noise fill the silence again, ignoring the way Gloxinia flinched with every new rumble. The fae nervously checked the wall they were leaning on, only minutely relieved when it appeared stable for the moment. The remaining floor space groaned, a few inches giving way to the forbidding drop below them. Goddesses shouted orders and fired at defenseless servants- Zeldris should help. He should get up and help them and lead them, but gods, he was so tired.
Meliodas would have gotten up.
But Zeldris was not his brother.
Another rumble shook the air, harder this time- hard enough to send dust spiraling down onto both of them. Gloxinia searched the horizon, fearing the worst, horrified dread crushing his stomach when the bright light on the horizon was too harsh to be sunrise. “What the hell is that?” Zeldris rasped, fear adding a tremor to his voice.
Gloxinia’s face twisted. “One of Ludociel’s experiments,” he realized out loud. “I didn’t know he finished it. I didn’t think it was possible.” The fae king’s face was ashen, more than it already was. “Zeldris,” he began, “how old are you, really?”
He swallowed, looked away. “I told you, around 200.” Gloxinia shook his head. “We both know that’s a lie. Just- please.”
Zeldris hesitated.
“I’m 124.”
Gloxinia let out a heavy sigh, leaning back against the wall. The light was bright enough now to cast a harsh shadow on his face. “Gods, you really are just a kid,” he muttered. “I thought Meliodas was exaggerating.” Zeldris looked at him again, trying to decipher the look on his face. Regret? Grief? He couldn’t tell. “Did my brother talk about me a lot?” he ventured. Gloxinia closed his eyes and smiled.
“I don’t think there was a day he didn’t. Zeldris, he adores you. I wish he could have said it himself, you deserve to hear it.”
He tried, he wanted to scream. He tried every day for half a century, and I was too proud to listen. I was too obsessed with being better than him to know him, and now we’re going to die as strangers.
The light grew brighter. It hurt to look at. There was a haunting silence just below the ever-present screams.
Zeldris was losing the battle against the lump in his throat. Traitorous tears escaped down his cheeks, uncaring of the deep breaths he tried to take. “I don’t want to die,” he choked. “ Fuck. This is pathetic, I should be better than this-”
Gloxinia sighed, shook his head. “You don’t have to do shit. For all we know, this is the last ten minutes or so of our lives. Probably less. You don’t owe anything to anyone, least of all your obedience to your father.” Zeldris had a sharp retort on his tongue, ready from years of punished whispers, that died before it was spoken. Maybe the fae was right- if Zeldris was going to die, why did he care what his father expected of him?
He laughed, leaning back against the crumbling wall. “Remember that Vampire princess? We executed their clan a few months back.”
“Yeah, the blonde one. Why?”
“I was in love with her. Still am, I think.”
Gloxinia didn’t speak. There was nothing to say. How could you justify that kind of betrayal, a loss you inflicted on yourself? Zeldris closed his eyes against the harsh white light. It was starting to singe his arms.
“I hope Meliodas regrets it,” Gloxinia sighed. “I know that’s selfish, and he’s not going to. He’s too stubborn. But I hope he regrets not knowing you after everything you did together.”
Zeldris considered it, humming slightly. Just over a century of protecting each other, from their father, their handlers and Goddesses alike, stitching each other’s wounds from all three, laughing together over the shared pain. The scarce spare time they had spent dragon hunting, even though Zeldris knew his brother hated the acidic meat.
Meliodas had tried to save him- tried to know him, to love him- but at some point, stopped trying. At some point Zeldris stopped expecting it. The gentle shoulder checks, lighthearted shoves, hair ruffles that disappeared one at a time, until they were as much brothers as the Commandments were friends.
Zeldris hoped the goddess was worth it.
“What’s she like?” he wondered out loud. “Elizabeth. Is she as stupid in reality as she is in battle?” Gloxinia snorted. Zeldris would have loved to see his expression if it wouldn’t cost his retinas. “If by stupid you mean idealistic, then yes. But at least she’s genuine. She’s… nice, I guess. I know that doesn’t give you a lot, but she and your brother were good for each other while I knew them.”
“Good,” Zeldris sighed. “That’s good.”
They’d have an eternity to get bored of each other. Then, whenever Meliodas died or Zeldris somehow came back- whichever came first- Zeldris could kick some sense into him and finally, finally get his brother back. He’d do it right this time. He’d be endearing and forgiving and annoying the way little brothers should be, and if he did it well enough then Meliodas would come back.
The light was close enough to burn now. Gloxinia’s hand found his, holding on with a death grip. They said nothing. Nothing needed to be said.
And after the white flash of pain, the only sound managing to escape him a pained gasp, and feeling Gloxinia’s hand disappear into thin air-
Zeldris was alone.
+++
He’d waited for this day for three thousand years. Sure, he was injured, tired, and pissed as hell, but all of that seemed like a minor problem in comparison to what Zeldris had just been told.
Meliodas was coming home.
Part of him seethed, furious that he was being welcomed back like an old ally instead of the filthy fucking traitor that he was, but another smaller part of him sang that he was finally here, his brother was here, his brother was coming back.
Zeldris knew about the curse- of course he did, he’d doomed this version of Elizabeth before she’d even had the chance to live- but he didn’t realize it would be this bad. He waited on a throne that wasn’t his- not yet, anyway, and now never would be- and watched them approach.
Something was wrong.
It looked like his brother- sounded like him, had magic that felt like his, but something about him was fundamentally wrong. Maybe it was the callous way he threw Zeldris and Estarossa to the floor, maybe it was the way the Goddess looked at him like he was a stranger to her, maybe it was the void in his face and tone. Whatever gave it away first, something about his eldest brother had changed.
The childish voice inside him started to die.
It fell quieter when he used his brothers like pawns to do his dirty work while he sat on his ass, but still hoped. It lost its hold on him when Meliodas looked at him like he was lesser than himself- he’d never gone that far, not even when they were strangers. Now he was expected to treat Meliodas as his brother and king when Zeldris knew what he thought of him?
Bullshit.
He should have known better than to play along. He should have ran with the Goddess, gotten out while he had the chance. Now what good had it done him? Fighting the same war against new faces, both of them for a cause they didn’t fully understand. Nobody knew why they were fighting anymore, only who their enemies were and how to kill them. Archangels with new bodies, the same blind Goddess worshippers, and those who thought they knew better but fell prey all the same. Not like Zeldris could claim to be any better.
Maybe this war would be the death of him. Maybe it would cost everything. But gods be damned, Zeldris wanted his life back. He wanted his lover. He wanted his family. He wanted his brother, not this poor echo of who he could have been.
Zeldris knew what he wanted.
He was going to fucking get it.