The Insanity of Myself

Seven Deadly Sins: Strange Feelings

Summary: Having a coin driven through your skull is not an experience Ban recommends having. Nor is having a sword driven through your skull, or having your torso blasted to smithereens by magic. And getting cut in half is highly discouraged. He recommends these decision, immortal or not.

Warning: Language. Mildly graphic images: Regeneration isn't quite child friendly.

{~*~}

The Fountain of Youth, especially drank from Elaine's lips, tasted sweet to Ban - despite the overwhelming pain pulsating from his abdomen, he felt pleased, knowing she was saving him, and this could be one of his last memories of the sweet fairy. But then the pain receded; it felt like the bones were growing back, the muscles knitting itself together, his organs growing back inside him.

It was fucking weird.

He could feel the strange sensation even more as he killed the demon, his flesh pulsating and healing even as new wounds opened. When he finally finished, cradling Elaine in his arms, he realized something very important, however. Immortality meant healing physical wounds.

The emotional wounds would remain.

+++++

The first time his heart was quite literally ripped out of his chest, Ban thought he was done for. It was only the second time he'd 'died', his first being when Elaine had-

No. You will not think of that.

His tender heart, beating in the man's hand, suddenly dissolved, and he could feel it reforming in his chest, blood refilling his veins, his lungs swelling with air as he stared the man down and the blood on his face disappeared. Perhaps the weirdest feeling was the emptiness, the feeling of not having such a vital organ. It was.. Weird. Odd. Strange.

But two hours later, in the solitude of a cave in the woods, the pain caught up to him, replaying itself, his heart feeling like it was trying to break out of his chest. The feeling lasted only five minutes, but it felt like an eternity to Ban, the pain overwhelming everything. Later, as he continued getting hurt, he would learn to avoid the hard hits, and only King would ever learn of the doubled pain he suffered.

Maybe that was why the first thing King did was gouge the immortal's heart out when he saw him again.

+++++

Headshots, however, still remained the attacks Ban despised and avoided at all costs.

The first time, he'd had a sword driven between his eyes; the immediate result was a splitting headache that lasted for days, leaving him practically bedridden, and hallucinations worthy of the most drugged up man in the country (including a dragon in front of the fridge, purple and blue polka-dotted rabbits, and a small chihuahua dog). The man with the audacity to shove a sword into Ban the Undead's head had been murdered rather brutally by the Fox Sin himself before the worst of the effects had set in, and although each time consecutively, the effects had greatly varied, a migraine always accompanied the injury. And each time, Ban would remain still for days, the smallest movements sending waves through his body, his only respite sleep.

+++++

King was the only one who knew - with the ability to sense other's dreams, he quickly realized Ban's mind was always blank when he slept, the pain pulsating at the edges of his mind. After each battle, they wondered why Ban was always the first one to fall asleep, and sometimes not wake for a day; the fairy tended to mutter something about 'sleeping it off,' but Gowther often rebuttled with, "Shouldn't the immortal be just fine?"

Thus, Gowther knew there was something more to Ban's immortality. The scar was the only wound that never hurt him, it seemed; only once did it ever throb and ache, as his phantom wounds did. It had taken a long time to heal, and he'd been touchy about the scar since, but all the same, no one quite knew why Ban slept as much as he did.

The truth was, sleep was usually his only escape from the physical pain. And he preferred the emotional pain to that.