Chapter Text
The last thing he remembers of his past life is darkness, accompanied both by great pain and great warmth.
The soft cushion of a lap underneath his head, a gentle hand pressed to his cheek, soothing him and lowering him, kindly, into death. He welcomed it only because it took the pain away, but more than that there was regret. Regret because at the end he too became blind, unable to see her face in his last moments. Also gratitude, because she continued to speak to him, tenderly, lovingly, up until he could no longer hear.
One of his last thoughts is that he would give anything to have another chance, and be able to stay by her side. Forever, this time.
*
When Meruem opens his eyes, he knows he has entered his second existence.
He can’t move the way he’s used to; he cannot speak, and his sight is poor and his hearing is dull. There is no Pitou, no Pouf, no Youpi. There is no tail on his lower back. The top of his head is still hairless, but it is a soft hairlessness—no helmet of scales adorns him now, only a soft, fragile layer of skin. The skin is brown, not green. His eyes are brown, as well—not violet. They are so dark they are almost black. His mouth is devoid of teeth. He has five fingers on each hand, this time.
This body is much more natural at feeling than his last. He was worried, at first, that it was going to be as difficult as before, in which his biology steadfastly refused to let him feel something as simple as affection. But he’s surprised, pleasantly, to find himself completely taken to the woman who bore him—she’s lovely, and beautiful, and he is already looking forward to a long life with her. He will treat her with the kindness he never showed his first mother.
His mind is not yet mature enough to make much sense of anything, but he knows there is something—something so very important, and he simply cannot remember what it is.
But he has been given a second chance, regardless of how much he truly deserves one.
(He does not deserve one.)
And he is grateful.
*
His mother, Loiyan, names him Menelik. He is the namesake of his late father, who had died of illness shortly into his mother’s second trimester of pregnancy. He thinks it’s a fine name, but whenever she calls for him he has to remind himself who she’s speaking to.
The moment his body is capable of speech, he asks her to call him Meruem.
She smiles, and tells him it’s a lovely name.
Meruem truly adores his mother.
*
All of them appear to him, in due time.
All it takes is one look for him to remember their significance, and then all the memories come flooding back so quickly and seamlessly it feels like he should have remembered from the moment he was reborn.
The first to appear is Neferpitou, just as she was the first of his guard to be born of his first mother. Except in this life, she’s the little girl who moves into the house next door, along with her parents and little brothers.
They are still very small when they meet for the first time (again). They are unable to adequately vocalize their feelings on the matter—Pitou simply shrieks before tumbling into him, pressing him to the floor and snuffling into the patch of dark hair growing from his human head. This touching is something Pitou would have had to ask permission for back then; something that she most likely would have been beheaded for. But Meruem doesn’t have a blade on his tail (no tail at all), and even if he did he doesn’t think he’d react violently. It’s nice, being touched like this by someone other than Loiyan.
They are inseparable, immediately. Their parents push them together at every opportunity, letting them play together on the floor as the adults chat over coffee and biscuits. They learn to speak at the same time, but they never speak about their past life. It seems to be a mutual agreement between them that this new life was a chance to start over; a chance to repent for their unforgivable transgressions, and no amount of griping over their catastrophic failures was going to help either of them move on.
As they grow older and their bodies more capable, it becomes clear as day that Neferpitou is a mirror image of her past self. She still enjoys pouncing on things, except there is no accompanying twitch of a tail. She has long hair that is braided in a single plait down her back. One day she can not be bothered to comb it, so she cuts it short with the knife she finds in her father’s shed. She enjoys running and jumping off of high places—she’s the fastest runner in the village by the time she’s seven years old, and by far the most wily and mischievous.
The first time Meruem begins wondering if Pitou remembers the same things he does, they are eight and they are playing in the backyard of Meruem’s home. The small wooden building doubles as a medicinal shop run by his mother. During the day Loiyan is kept busy grinding herbs with pestles and patching up the village-folk. She says she will always have time for Meruem, should he need her, but he knows when it would be most helpful for him to stay away.
He adores Loiyan.
“Menelik! Meruem!” Pitou (her name this time around is Sashka) yowls from her spot over by a rotting log. Meruem looks up—he had been drawing shapes and figures into the dirt with a stick, and now he watches Pitou as she comes scampering over to him, something clutched between her chubby hands.
“Isn’t this bug pretty?” she asks with delight, presenting to him a large beetle. Its coat is luminescent, reflecting the sunlight as it begins making its way up her bare arm. She giggles, picking it off her elbow to return to her palm.
“Are you going to eat it?” Meruem asks her, not really caring what the answer is. But he gains a certain amount of enjoyment watching Pitou’s own excitement, so he tries to present her with as many opportunities to share her exuberance as possible.
“Hmm, probably. But look at the color! It’s green. So pretty,” she coos, stroking one finger over the insect from antennae to rump. She leans her face closer, nearly glowing. “It’s the same color as her eyes,” she breathes. “Green and sparkly. Not green like the grass but green like water."
“Whose eyes?”
She looks at him, her mouth opened into a round “O”.
“Sashka?”
Pitou smiles and shakes her head. “It’s nothing,” she tells him, quickly turning back to the bug. She studies it for another moment before gently setting it down on the ground and watching it scuttle away.
*
Shaiapouf is the son of a traveling salesman. The first time they tug their cart through Meruem’s village, Meruem is sweeping fallen pine needles away from the threshold of the storefront, bored but not being able to deny Loiyan anything. He happens to glance over at the same time Shaiapouf does, and the moment he sees Meruem watching him from the front of his mother’s shop he drops to his hands and knees and immediately beings sobbing.
Pitou comes running out of her house and beelines for Pouf, tackles him into the dirt and tickles his sides until his sobs turn into shrieks of laughter. Then she dips her head and murmurs into his ear for a long moment. Meruem can’t hear what she tells him with his dull human ears, but by the time she pulls away he’s stopped crying and is looking up at the sky like he’s never seen anything quite like it.
Pouf’s father needs to stay in the village for a few days to complete several sales, and during that entire time Pouf is glued to Meruem’s side, much the way he used to. He never mentions the wings he used to have, nor the castle nor the terrifying golden storm that brought it all to an end. He’s subdued, but not quite as submissive as he once was. He hangs off of Meruem’s every word, but he’s also almost equally invested in everything Pitou says.
Pouf has an old, beat-up violin his father gave him when he was four years old and has already mastered at the age of eleven. It's his most prized treasure, and when they ask he puts on a private show for the two of them and Loiyan right in the middle of Meruem's house. When he’s finished, they give him a round of applause and his cheeks turn bright red, but his smile says he’s pleased.
When it’s time for him to leave a few days later, he has to be forcefully ripped from Meruem’s home by his father, kicking and screaming. Pouf’s father apologizes for separating the fast friends, and promises that the two of them will visit again soon. Pitou sniffles a little and hugs him goodbye. She and Meruem stand beside the cart as Pouf’s father finishes harnessing the elephant-birds, and the three of them have a final chat before Pouf has to leave. After a strange lull in conversation, Pouf hesitantly asks Meruem if he’s met her yet.
“Met who?” Meruem asks.
Pouf looks at Pitou for a moment, brows furrowed, before he turns back and gives him a watery smile. “It’s nothing.”
Meruem doesn’t like that the two of them are keeping a secret from him (he can only hope it’s the one secret), but he’s not their ruler this time. He can’t order them to tell him (he can, but he does not wish to).
So he pretends like it doesn’t bother him, and he stands next to Pitou and the two of them wave as the wooden cart dips and sways down the dirt road and away into the distance.
*
When he first awoke, he was worried that fragments of his old self would resurface.
He’s expecting, constantly, for the bloodlust to return. He waits for the day he wakes up and longs for the taste of human meat and the feeling of blood on his hands. It never happens, but that doesn’t keep him from worrying.
He never learns how to fight, in this body. It’s too slow and fragile—something tells him he wouldn’t have the patience for it, even if he wanted to. But beyond that, he wants to avoid anything and everything that could trigger the violence within him again.
Meruem is under no delusion that being a slightly better being in this life in any way makes up for the crimes he committed in the previous. He knows that the things he did are unforgiveable, and he will carry those shadows on his shoulders for the rest of eternity.
But he tries, the best he can, to be a person that Loiyan can be proud of. He holds his mother’s hand when they go on walks down the forest path, and hopes that he never has to go back to being the monster he used to be.
*
Menthuthuyoupi doesn’t appear until Meruem is fifteen. He’s actually older than Meruem by five years, and when they make eye contact the older boy - man - has to sit down on the ground where he stands, has to put his head between his knees and take deep breaths. Meruem invites him into his mother’s shop for a cup of tea and a pastry to settle his stomach, and he accepts. He wipes tears from his cheeks with the back of his wrist.
Youpi decides to settle in Meruem’s village, because even in this lifetime the tie between the four of them is too strong to ignore. Similarly, as soon as Pouf reaches a suitable age, he receives permission from his father and moves into a little shanty not one hundred yards from Meruem’s front door. The three former guards become permanent fixtures in Loiyan's kitchen, eating anything she will give to them. She’s delighted that her son has so many close friends. Oddly enough, he’s happy about it, too—maybe they are his friends. Maybe beyond their undying loyalty, they’re with him because they want to be.
Yet all the while, it still feels like he’s waiting for something, but doesn’t know what it could be.
*
Meruem is nineteen years into his second lifetime when the blind girl makes her way through town. He sees her walking down the street, her cane tap-tap-tapping the way in front of her, and immediately, he knows.
Everything slows down. It’s like all the light in the world narrows down into a single pinprick, illuminating this figure dressed in baggy clothes, a halo of white hair. His breath catches in his throat, and something in his chest rips, something unbearably painful and unbearably sweet.
Loiyan is out in the forest gathering plants to hang in her storage room and dry out for the winter. Pitou, Pouf, and Youpi are all sitting together at the kitchen table, but Meruem must have made a strange noise, because the next thing he’s aware of the three of them are crowding around him at the window. Both Pouf and Pitou make loud noises of surprise, Pouf’s a little hysterical and Pitou a wordless cry of joy. Youpi just stares, grumbling something nonsensical before turning around and leaving through the back door. Pouf follows him as well as Pitou, but not before she pats Meruem’s back and whispers into his ear, “Her eyes are green. Not green like the grass but green like water.”
He knows now that she’s right. He remembers her now. He remembers everything.
Her eyes are green, when she has reason to open them. Komugi.
Komugi, how I have missed you.
He leaves the shop in a hurry, nearly running after her. He doesn’t bother to put shoes on, because his human feet have grown tough and resilient after many years of trampling around the woods with Pitou. They are nearly as strong as they were when he was a king. He catches up to her slow walk easily, but he’s still out of breath, feeling like his head is dancing among the clouds.
“You have been so unlucky as to be without sight in this lifetime, as well,” Meruem tells her, astounded by how easily the smile touches his lips. Excluding his wonderful mother, it’s the first time since his birth he has felt so instantaneously at ease with another human being.
The girl stops, her face turned upwards towards him, searching. She’s still so small. She furrows her thick brows and worries her lip anxiously. “Excuse m-me, a-as…as well? I…”
Ah, it’s the same—everything’s the same. How did she turn out so identical? Perhaps she’s a descendant of the first Komugi’s siblings, because the resemblance is uncanny. Wild, bottle-brush pigtails, the nasal, choked-up voice. She’s sniffling, wiping her nose on her sleeve, and Meruem just takes a moment to admire her. Every bit the ugly, beautiful girl he remembers.
“Komugi,” he says, and she sucks in a sharp breath.
“I…my name is Urenha.”
“Komugi,” he repeats, and she begins to shake. “Do you remember me?” he asks softly, watching with a resigned sadness as tears begin to spill from underneath the girl’s closed eyes. That’s answer enough for him. She remembers. “Why are you crying?” he continues, softly, in a voice he hardly recognizes as his own. “Because of how it ended?”
“Yes,” she gasps. He's struck with the thought that maybe this was too much for her. Maybe it was going to be too painful, bringing up memories of a star-crossed last life. It sobers him, and he's prepared to turn away the moment she tells him to. But then in the next moment she throws her cane onto the ground before she's burying her running nose into his chest, crying like the world was ending, the way she used to. “But also! Because I’m so happy! We get to try again!”
He feels the same warmth he did in his last moments, except it’s magnified tenfold, unfurling inside his chest like a red-hot bloom, so powerful he’s choking on it.
This lifetime must have been much kinder to Komugi than the last. While it’s the same girl - the same soul - she’s bolder, like there have been people in her life to encourage and support her. She only hesitates for a moment before standing up on her tiptoes and throwing her arms around his neck, reaching forward and pressing rapid-fire kisses all over his face.
When he reaches for her, scoops out her feet from under her and begins to carry her back to the shop she doesn’t pause, continues to pepper his skin (brown skin, human skin) with kisses, speaking breathlessly in-between: “Meruem, Meruem, Meruem—!” It’s something the first Komugi would never have dared to do, but he's not the first Meruem, either. They've both changed, some ways more important than others.
It’s muscle-memory alone that gets them back through the door, because between the feeling of Komugi’s lips all over his face and the absolute muddled mess of his brain it’s a miracle he manages to get his feet to keep moving. He sets her down at the wooden chair by the hearth, the one his mother would sit in and nurse him when he was young. She’s still clinging to him, unrelenting in her affection, and his face is becoming wet with tears and other substances. He’s honestly unsure if she’s the only one who’s crying.
Meruem gently gathers Komugi’s hands in both of his, pressing them to his chest and letting her feel the powerful thrumming of his heartbeat. “Komugi. I have missed you.”
She shakes her head wildly, her feet tapping against the floor, restless. “I love you. I never got to tell you, that I loved you—“
“Hush, hush," he soothes her, and she lets out a soft wail. "It’s alright. I knew. I promise, I knew. I loved you, too. I still do.” He leans forward, letting his breath fan across her face to let her know what’s coming, and then he gently sets their lips together. It’s a chaste, pure kiss, unsoiled by blood or poison. She doesn’t seem to know what to do with her hands because they twitch between both of his, and only when she falls into him, making a desperate sort of sound does he pull away, laughing.
“When did you become so brave?” he teases her, thinking even as he says this - but you’ve always been brave.
She flushes, tucking her chin down into her chest. “I...I-I’m sorry! I just, really wanted, um? I really wanted to!”
“We have lots of time now. We have all the time in the world.” He combs a few stray hairs by her temple behind her ear, and she leans her face into his palm. He lets her, watching as the tears start to dry up, his thumb brushing in soft strokes across her cheekbone.
Once her breathing has stabilized he goes back outside to retrieve her cane that’s still lying in the street. When he returns he makes the two of them a hot drink of milk and honey, and they sit together, side-by-side. Meruem can’t wait for Loiyan to come home so that he can introduce them.
“Do you, ah, by chance, remember how to play Gungi?”
His lips quirk up. He had known it was only a matter of time before the topic of Gungi arose. “A little. But I think I could stand to receive a refresher lesson.”
“Um, well, I have a travel-board in my bag…! If you’d want to play with me?”
“Nothing would make me happier,” he tells her, honestly. She makes an embarrassed noise and scratches at the back of her head, blushing but smiling dopily, and he never knew he could feel so much love in such a vulnerable body. It’s limitless; an eternally expanding warmth in a small room, his heart filling until it’s close to bursting. The feeling is so strong he’s amazed he’s not suffocating on the spot.
In his last lifetime, he had learned how to love. In retrospect, it was a weak love and wasn't nearly good enough to keep someone. He was loyal and devoted, yes, but Komugi had needed someone better than that. Someone who would be patient with her; someone who could keep their temper under control.
And he's still not good enough. He’s under no misconception that he will ever repay his sins. He knows he will never deserve someone as pure and genuinely good as Komugi.
But this lifetime has been preparing him. Loiyan taught him how to care for someone as selflessly as possible. Pitou, Pouf, Youpi—they taught him how to be someone’s friend without being their ruler. He taught himself that there are many things in this world that are worth living for. He's still not good enough—but then again, he never will be. He's as good as he will ever be. And if she still wants him, even though he's so achingly flawed, then all he can do is give her his whole heart.
Maybe this time, they can be happy.
Together.
*
They have been reunited for two weeks when Meruem asks Komugi if she would do him the honor of being the wife of a once-king.
He brushes his fingers across her cheeks to smear away the tear tracks as she tells him, vehemently, yes.
*
Not a year into their marriage do Meruem and Komugi welcome their daughter into the world.
They name her Kaiyo, a name meaning "forgiveness".