Disclaimer: I don't own the characters or anything from 七つの大罪。Bummer.

So...this prologue is the very first scene I had in mind to start this story. I wasn't sure about the storyline, and am still in the process of developing it, but I think I know what I want. ;D Mostly.

This is supposed to be written in present-tense, and I think I normally write in past-tense? Out of habit(?). Or maybe I think I might tend to mix them up...hm. I don't really know. But bear with me, I promise I'm trying.

Anyways. Hope you all enjoy!

Prologue

"Wake up…"

He feels his hair being brushed gently away out of his face with the most delicate of touches, almost as soft as a feather. Fingers lace through his hair and hold the sides of his head gently, yet firmly.

"You've already done enough…please…"

He could feel his body growing numb from the pain. There was something gradually soaking his clothes, making them mold to his body, following every muscle outline, sinking down into every crease. He was lying on the cold stone floor, but his head was placed comfortably atop something warm.

Ah, that's right. He knew what it was.

It was her…

"…wake up…wake up…wake up…"

She wouldn't stop whispering those words over and over again. These were words he now often heard her breath out in a hush, and he wasn't sure who she was saying those words for anymore. Was it for him? Because he was in seemingly incredibly bad shape? Heh. He only had a few scratches across his stomach, no big deal. Anything for her sake was no big deal. He just wanted to be in the same world as her…so why was she telling him to go? He didn't want to go. He didn't want to leave her alone. She's already been alone for so long...

He feels a warm drop of water splash onto his right cheek, and he opens his eyes to look up at her.

That was the other reason as to why he wasn't sure if her desperate pleads were for him or not: Were they for herself? So that she could escape this reality? So that she wouldn't have to keep crying like this? She was a big crier, and frankly, it was something he secretly adored her for. It was just a part of who she was and how she expressed her emotions so openly without a single care in the world who saw. Just as long as her feelings could scream to the world for what her voice couldn't. But she's been crying an awful lot lately—every time she sees him, she cries. He's told her so many times to not cry for him, that everything was all right. It'll be okay. Yet she still cries because she can't help it. But she does try for him. She really does.

"Heh," he lightly snickers, giving her his best lopsided grin because that's all his strength can manage for him to offer at the moment. "Don't cry," he tells her gently for probably the millionth time. But he doesn't mind. No matter how many times, until he's able to see her truly smile and be truly happy…he'll ask her to not cry for his sake. At least not like this, in this kind of situation.

After wiping her eyes dry, she simply peers down at him with her cerulean blue eyes, glistening like the waters of a crystal clear lake reflecting the voided sky. But the storm clouds quickly return to her eyes and flood the once calm waters of her eyes. Oops. It seems he may have made the situation worse somehow.

He tries to lift his left hand so that he can help clear her eyes, but despite all his efforts, his hand doesn't reach her face. He glances to the side to see what the problem is. Oh. That's right. He had his left arm ripped off. Guess it wasn't just a scratch to the torso he received, huh? And his right arm was no good. For some odd reason, it was just dead weight. What happened? Oh. Did that blow he tried to block shatter the bones in his right arm? Well, then. Hm. That's tremendously inconvenient…

A few more tears fall onto his face, and he brings his full attention back to her.

"Please…" she whispers, begging him, "wake up…" She then lowers her head so that their foreheads touch. "Wake up…" she whispers again, and this time, he can feel her breath like the warm spring breeze, tousling his golden hair.

He closes his eyes. He really doesn't want to leave her again….but he can't help her in this world when he's like this, can he? Armless. Bleeding half to death. Immobilized. Absolutely useless. Not what she really needs, nor has the time for. He purses his lips, trying his best to fight for another option other than this, but eventually sighs in defeat.

"Elizabeth," he softly calls out her name, almost feeling as if it was the very first time for him to say it. He purses his lips, discontent with that fact. This next time, for sure… "I promise you…no matter how many times I forget…I will remember you. Even if it's the last thing I do before death…I will absolutely remember you."

He can't see it, but a small smile manages to break her solemn expression.

"I know," she murmurs, fully believing every word he said. Her tears have now stopped and her eyes rest closed. "I know you will," she says with much more confidence laced in her voice, and lifting her head a little, she gently presses her lips to his forehead.

He grits his teeth, and with all his hidden built up frustrations and angers, as well as desires and a little bit of something else tearing its way out from his black heart like an enraged dragon trying to break free of its tightly held chains, his right fist clenches, the pain searing through his right arm feeling like absolutely nothing compared to what he truly felt welling up inside.

With her delicate hands still holding his head in place on her lap and her heart pounding loudly in her ears, leaving an echo after each beat, she ends the soft kiss full of everything she wish she could give and say to him, and slowly moves her lips down to his left ear, whispering one last time...

"No—Eliza—!" he tries to stop her—he's not ready—

But his strength has just about reached its limit, and the softly spoken words have already left her mouth, resounding in his ears like a distant memory coming back to haunt him.

"Wake up—"

He gasps wide awake, blinking.

"Meliodas," a deep voice calls from a distance in front of him.

He blinks again as his surrounding becomes clearer to him and he remembers where he is. His eyes focus on the brown-haired man in front of him, blocking everyone around him out of his mind, despite knowing that some eyes are lingering on him somehow in what feels like an intruding way.

"Was my lecture on how the ancient monks, during what many call the Apotropaic Millennium a thousand of years ago, sat in a circle of abandoned children's belongings, believed to be a vessel for demons, chanting their mantras as a way to ward off those demons that moving for you to be crying as you are?" the brown-haired man asks, his face serious as ever. That look was normal, though. He had one of those faces that typically always appeared and remained a certain way by fierce default, but due to the tone of his voice, anyone could tell he was simply astounded at what was happening in his classroom this very moment, which was why he brought attention to it.

But Meliodas didn't understand. He didn't get anything his professor was talking about.

"Demons?" Meliodas repeats dumbly. That was the first and one of two words that stuck out to him. The second was: "Crying…?"

He brings his right hand up to his face, and surely enough, it's wet.

Tears?

A mixture of emotions suddenly rush through him like a flash flood—confusion, pain, anger, frustration, something like nostalgia, the desire to protect, the need to remember—but as an outcome from the wreck, just as fast as these feelings came, they quickly left him, leaving him a hollow mess. The tears wouldn't stop...he just didn't understand. Why was he crying?

Thank you so so much for reading! :)