Title: Too Late

Status: One-shot (Barely. More like a lengthy drabble.)

Author: ChibiRaccoon

Note: IMPORTANT! Spoilers for the manga up to chapters 150-152 or thereabouts.

Disclaimer: To own Nanatsu no Taizai would mean owning King. I haven't died from heart failure caused by his outright amazing cuteness so obviously it doesn't belong to me.

Too Late

Desperation set in the pit of his stomach, black with disease, rendering him short of breath. Falling from the sky he hit the ground roughly. Chastiefol landed several feet away. It had somehow contorted itself into form two, with the oddly proportioned face of a teddy bear staring at him. Upside down the expression on the bear was discomforting and something in it's dead eyes locked King's gaze. Terror laced his veins and his head shot up with a frightening premonition.

"Diane..?!"

He was so stupid.

How could he have done it? Again?!

How could he have left his most important person behind for the third time?! It didn't matter that she couldn't remember her childhood with him. He had so selfishly taken precious memories from her to grant him his own selfish actions void of consequences. He had left her after the framing of the Seven Deadly Sins, going his own way so that he could return to a home he had left in the wake of his own self-centered ambitions. Excuses were attached to each instance, somehow painting a tale that could free him from any true guilt. The result came in his conscience fighting him. At his core, he knew who the true culprit was.

Now he was going to pay for his third wrong against Diane. It didn't matter that she was the Snake Sin of Envy, nor did it even excuse his behavior simply because she traveled with Meliodas and the others.

What was the point of always staying behind at the Boar's Head Bar with her whenever they headed to a town she wasn't welcomed in? Why was it that he had taken to sleeping in a hammock next to the window that would always just so happen to lay above wherever she slept at night? Why was it whenever she was sad or pining for the Captain he took it upon himself to support and encourage her despite how it made him feel?

He loved her.

So why did he keep failing to save her?!

Harlequin screamed into the air, tears falling and nails digging into dirt, painfully scratching his fingertips. He cursed himself. Everything he was and all that he had become!

Worthless!

He took off from the spot like a shot, flying, clueless to his destination but inherently aware that whatever was driving him in that direction, it would lead him to the most precious person in his world.

'Diane!' He grit his teeth, eyes focused on the horizon through his tears and frantic heartbeat. 'Wait for me! This time... this time... I swear... I won't...

...I will never leave you alone again.'

He hadn't been ready in the past to accept the feelings he felt for the young giantess. There was something simply pure and untouched about her that, even without his memory, the weak-hearted fairy king could not face her. In his selfishness he did the one thing she begged, pleaded, hoped he wouldn't do to her. He had left her. To hide the shame he could not stand he took her memories, an unforgivable offense, and years would go by marked by his continuous stream of failures.

Elaine...

Dead. All because he had left her all alone.

Helbram?

More than dead! Thrice! King, always so absorbed solely in his own feelings, hadn't been able to stop the madness of a human from keeping what was once his best friend from a death experienced not just once, but three times over!

And Diane...

She wasn't a fairy. It was an inconceivable thought. The Great Fairy King Harlequin in love with a member of the Giant clan. It was unheard of. His kind lived for peace and beauty among the sweet presence of nature while her people breathed for the glory of battle, for the honor of a death in the midst of fighting. No one could have predicted how his feelings would grow, not even he himself. Unready he may have been to confront himself, there was still no lie in his words when he had told her unabashedly that he loved her.

Now...

He finally knew.

It was finally in him.

The strength. The awareness...realization that came with it.

The acceptance.

King was finally ready to tell her the truth.

To look into her honest slanted eyes the color of lavender and confess the truth he had withheld for so long. The promise he meant to keep now. The forgiveness he would ask for.

Harlequin was ready to tell Diane his feelings and he was going to lose her before he even had the chance!

'Not this time!' He fiercely thought. Unconciously Chastiefol became a spear that he actually took into his hand. Power flooded from his fingers to the crown of his head and with a sharp change in stance, King shrieked his fury and blew through the sky so fast he all but teleported to where he felt the pull of Diane's powerful signature.

King appeared at her side in an instant, rage fueled by his oustanding love and loyalty to his comrade and friend overwhelming everything around them. Diane gaped at him from within the barrier of his protective shield, moisture flooding her eyes as the image of his back, the image that had been burned into her memory since she could remember suddenly flared and with it, everything.

She remembered it all. Her friends. The Seven Sins. Their battles. Her past...

But most of all she remembered Him.

As the power that rolled off him in waves directed itself at their enemies Diane couldn't stop herself from crying with a mixture of joy and shock.

"Harlequin!"

His face turned to her, colored by happiness and deepest, greatest sorrow and she had never felt her heart hurt the way it did then. He had come for her. It may have taken him years. It had been late. But the most important realization for him was-

"Thank goodness... I'm...not too late." There was a near sob in his words and it calmed her. Standing to her full thirty feet of height, Diane held her arms out to him. He was there in an instant, stepping into her palm, looking up at her with all the love he could muster.

"Diane..."

Laughing through her tears she brought him close enough to lay his hands on the tip of her nose. He smiled at her and she shut her eyes in contentment as he placed a soft kiss to her skin, warming her.

"You did it Harlequin. You came back to me."

-Owari-

There is a great lack of good Diane and King (English) fanfiction on this site. Since they jumped to one of the top slots of my otp list in the span of two days this is disturbing. I better not see all the good fics on AO3. It will upset me. Lol. Regardless, this was done in response to catching up to the manga and crying hard since I now have to wait for Diane and King to meet again. Written in the span of an hour with me sobbing and playing mood music. I don't really care if its good or not. I love Diane and King together. I am not going to stop writing fanfiction for them even though I supposedly retired from this a year ago. Goes to show what good otp's will do to you.

Read and review if you want. If only reading then thank you for taking the time.

-ChibiRaccoon