Summary: Kind of random ficlet. This is just a more dramatic! take on what happened after Jeanne lost to Hao in the anime.

Queen

'No big deal,' Jeanne whispered to herself like it was such a big deal to pretend it wasn't one.

If someone died for her, she would do the same for the sins of those present in this so-called game as she likes to think of it. It's all one fat test, challenge, hurdle, obstacle, more synonyms, please. Sure, she can be all smiles when the iron-faced nun creaks open but she gasps for fresh air—something other than the smell of her broken flesh.

The little girl exhaled when the walls of her lungs shuddered with a dangerous threat of giving way to gravity. 'It's alright,' she insisted that the color of cranberries racing over the freckles and fibers of her skin would be add on to the list of works she has done. Jeanne watched numerous pairs of imaginary eyes gaze admirably at her works. For once, she could wave her hand like those omnipotent beauty queens that demand that they do indeed have it all.

But when you've been ripped to shreds by the most powerful boy in death and life on earth, what do you do about that? As if it wasn't humiliating enough that he killed and taken the souls of the people she half-raised, Hao found it as some sort of sick pleasure to spare her with no spirit of her own. Jeanne was hardly even alive when her eyes memorized the distorted glimpses of Shamash's head half gone but its tail and hind legs still struggled against the groping nails of the Fire's burning hands. Then Hao's voice, marring her senses, rang a laugh filled with the inevitable victory that she hoped never would arise.

'Guess you didn't win after all,' he stared straight into her eyes but she found it strange how she couldn't see his. 'At least you'll be the only one who survived my fire. That's something you can brag about.'

He kissed and blew a hole in her heart. In a moment like this, she was tired to hate him so she closed her eyes and allowed the sounds of the Spirit's crunching teeth and wet appetite fill her ears before the last resistance against Hao Asakura died. Maybe, somewhere up there, those imaginary eyes will be real, and she may get a chance to wave like one of those omnipotent beauty queens who had it all but lost it in the final round.