(FOLLOWING THE MANGA, WARNING: SPOILERS)
This story takes place after the Ten Commandments were defeated (to be exact; after chapter 196)
I do not own Seven Deadly Sins or any of the characters.
The End
Present Day
The whirlwind surrounding the two was too strong for anyone to enter or exit. The cold sent shivers to anyone near let alone anyone inside.
"You'd better get away girl, you'll get hurt," he said.
"No, never. You know I won't do that," she screamed. Tears are strolling down her face, and her sobs are wrecking her whole body as she squeezes herself into a tight hug in her own arms to keep warm from the furious wind. Even still, she moves forward towards the man feared by everyone, hoping to resolve the current matter at hand.
"I'm serious. I will not warn you again, human." At the sound of his stern and hard voice she stops momentarily, also feeling a rise of fear crawl up her throat. She swallows it down and with the courage she has left she pushes forward once again.
"Meliodas, please! Don't you recognize me!? Please stop!"
"Who are you?" the man addressed as Meliodas asks. "How do you know my name?" His wind doesn't relax or waver, instead, it stays strong and stiff as it did from the start. He looks behind him towards the woman calling his name, and it was as clear as day as to why he did not recognize anything. His eyes held no sign of light, and the crest of the Demon Clan shown on his forehead radiated a sinister power that he could no longer resist.
"It's me, Elizabeth! I'm Elizabeth, Meliodas! Don't tell me you have forgotten?"
He snickers and lowers his head towards the ground at his feet, his menacing smile does not leave his face after this point, "Ah, yes, that name does ring a bell. Could you possibly be the woman who kept me back all these years?"
"Kept you… What are you saying Meliodas?"
"In terms you low humans may understand, I am saying that you are the reason I have become weak all these years. I mean, a woman to protect? What a pathetic idea he had." His head is now facing forward, still making no eye contact with the woman behind him.
"Come back to me, Meliodas, please."
"That Captain you are referring to cannot hear you. I take back what I sad about you leaving. You should stay. Wiping your existence away would probably let my power increase to its highest potential. Nothing will hold me back anymore."
"Meliodas, look at me! You don't mean those things. Come back to me!"
"Look at you? Humans don't deserve to see me at my fullest, I, Meliodas, Leader of the Ten Commandments and most likely the successor for the next Demon King." He raises his head towards the sky and laughs from the bottom of his heart. His arms raised slightly on either side of his body as if giving himself up to the heavens. Ironically, it is the opposite.
"That's not who you are anymore! You told me that, remember?" Elizabeth stumbles to find the right words to calm Meliodas, "Don't be swallowed by the darkness, you told me that remember?"
"Tch," those words triggered something in him that made him lose his resolve even just a little bit.
"Meliodas, don't you want to run the tavern with me again?" Elizabeth asks with icy tears streaming down her cheeks. Those words calmed him to the point that the tornado caused by his aura slowly disappeared, words he once said to her that held the upmost meaning to him. The real him.
The audience those two did not know they had were stunned with amazement after seeing the whirlwind dissipate, they do not know the context of their conversation, but they listen quietly to discover what will happen next. Everything depends on Elizabeth now.
"See, Meliodas? You don't want this. I know you don't want this," she says in a whisper as she is arms reach, close enough to touch him.
"What I want… What do I want?" Meliodas asks himself.
Elizabeth goes in for a hug from behind, but as soon as their bodies touch each other, Meliodas's head shot up to the sky, eyes wide as they were engulfed in black all at once, and coming from his body an aura of just darkness covers everything in sight. Himself, Elizabeth, the audience, everything in and far beyond the battle field. There was no light.
Everlasting Life, Isolation, Zoophagous, Agony, Beasts, Evil, Terror, Hatred.
One month ago
"Meliodaaaaaas!" Elizabeth shouted from the bottom of the stairs of her father's castle. "Breakfast is served."
Meliodas doesn't groan or waste any time getting up. The sound of Elizabeth's voice was enough to get his eyes wide open, and his body ready and awake for the day. He jumps out of bed with a "Hup!" and heads towards the stairwell in the hallway outside his room. Rooms in the castle were assigned to the remaining Sins in Liones as the Boar Hat no longer stands at the moment. Meliodas eyes the stairwell and is eager to see Elizabeth in her nightgown in the morning, but instead represses that urge so that he could wake up Ban. He goes towards Ban's door and turns the knob, but there is no one there. Tilting his head, he stares into the room of a tidy and made bed with no snoring Ban in it. Odd he thought, Ban's not a morning person, or someone who keeps anything nice and clean. He shrugs the thought off his mind because maids could easily clean up anything in a certain amount of time. So, with a small smile, Meliodas walks towards the staircase, and then abruptly stops. The smile now wiped off his face, his face now has a look of worry. That still doesn't excuse why he's awake at this hour, and before me? He runs down the stairs hoping to find Elizabeth for some answers, but the stairs he goes down doesn't end. The floor he was heading towards was out of his reach, he didn't know at the time that his foot would never hit that floor. The stairs became endless, and Meliodas shouts Elizabeth's name over and over with no response coming back to him. He tries jumping to the floor, but it was still no use as he was still stuck in the middle of the staircase neither on the top nor bottom floor of the castle. A Spell? This is bad. He never stopping trying to reach the bottom floor, running as fast as he can, leaping through as many stairs as he could. He realized that with his strength now he could never reach that floor in time, he gave in to frustration and used the power of the Demon Clans Crest, but, as soon as he turned that power on, a curtain of darkness pulled over him as if that power triggered a sequence of events. Quickly realizing this, Meliodas attempted to release that power and failed. He couldn't switch back to his 'normal' self; the one he shows to the world everyday, the one he woke up with this morning. Instead, the demon transformation stayed on like a switch that refuses to switch off, the switch was stuck and there was no way to move it. The frustration of the new problem irritates him more, making anger come up to him, and he can feel his wrath boil up at the thought that something terrible has happened to his Sins, or worse, to Elizabeth, and there was nothing he could do at the moment to stop it because of the trap he is in. Wrath, shit. Realizing his new mistake, he tries to calm himself down, but, just like the Crest, he couldn't seem to switch back.
"Fuck. Fuck FuckfuckfuckfuuckFUCK!" he raises his voice to the sky, or what would have been the sky if there was sign of light him the black room he was in. The power of the crest starts to consume him as it travels around his body. "No, no! Stop this, I can't let this happen again!" Meliodas tells himself out loud.
"Meliodas," a soft voice calls out from the darkness, and catches his attention immediately. He waits for it to call him again so that he may follow it, until then he did not move, he probably did not even take a breath so that all noise would be minimal.
"Meliodas," the voice called again, a little louder. From the right? He whips his head towards the direction of the voice but still has trouble locating it exactly.
"Meliodas," from the left this time but still nothing there. The darkness in the room makes anything impossible to see past your hands.
"Meliodas," this time the voice called out from in front of him and it was loud and clear. It was Elizabeth's voice. Whipping his head to the front of his body as fast as he could, the room became slightly lighter, not light enough that Meliodas can notice his surroundings, but light enough that he can see Elizabeth, and the state she was in.
"Meliodas," Elizabeth calls out again before fainting and falling into Meliodas' arms. He was in shock, his heart dropped to his stomach when he saw that his whole body was covered in the Demon Clan's black mark, ripped skin dug deep under his fingernails, and his hands dripping with blood. Just as he was about to scream in terror at the sight of Elizabeth bleeding by his own hand, her eyes shot open to meet his in a terrifyingly wide stare, her voice unrecognizable like one of demons she says, "if you keep this up you're going to kill me."
Meliodas' eyes shot up wide as he bent over the covers of his blankets panting in sweat. One hand holding his bed covers, and the other just in front of his face to check it's tone. No black. Then he turns around to see he has an audience watching him in surprise.
"What just happened?" Meliodas asks.
"Cap'n, been a while since I've seen you have night terrors. Damn, if I was calling your name instead of Elizabeth, I probably would've been punched," Ban replied with a laugh following his sentence.
"You woke me up?" Meliodas looks at Elizabeth who was sitting at his bed side.
"Ya, I did. Uhm. I called out to you earlier to say that breakfast was ready, but you didn't come down. So, I went looking for Ban and thought maybe he was with you, and uhm, well he was still sound asleep. But he woke up immediately when we heard you cursing and kind of yelling too. And that's when I decided maybe you should wake up," Elizabeth said as she worked her way explaining the events that recently happened.
"Geez, you gave me quite a scare too!" Chimed Hawk.
"I see, I'm sorry guys. Thanks for waking me up, Elizabeth," Meliodas said with a smile, and then began to notice his surroundings, not recognizing it at all. "Right, where are we?"
"The Boar Hat, this is your room," said Elizabeth.
"The Boar Hat? Wasn't this destroyed?" Meliodas asked.
"Anh? Cap'n are you still sleepy? Merlin fixed this so that we can continue travelling remember?" Ban said.
"Is that so?" Meliodas pondered. How come he can't remember? "Probs can't remember after having our celebratory drinks last night then," he said towards Ban with a light chuckle as he scratched the back of his head with one hand.
"Meliodas, are you okay?" Elizabeth asked.
"I feel great now thanks, why?" Meliodas replied.
"Maybe cause we had those drinks three days ago at the castle, Cap'n," replied Ban with irritation. "Honestly, Cap'n, get yourself together, what's up with you?"
"Three days ago… I… I don't rememb… What's happening to me?" Meliodas said as he grabbed his face with both hands, eyes wide with terror, and vision going hazy. His world starts spinning, and then suddenly he falls back to sleep as reality slips away once again.
"Meliodas!"
"Cap'n!"
"Meliodas!"
The voices of his comrades also began to fade until they were unrecognizable, until they weren't there anymore. He falls back into a deep sleep.
XXX
"How is he, Elizabeth?" Ban asks as he sees Elizabeth exiting the room.
"It seems like he's fallen ill with a fever, he really is heating up. It's weird though, my powers can't heal him like they did with his physical wounds, is it possible that I can't treat illnesses?" Elizabeth asks.
"Hm, can't say. Not my area of expertise."
"Right," her gaze falls to the floor towards Hawk, "Hey, can you get me a bucket of cold water, please? I'm going to grab a towel so we can start treating Meliodas' fever," Elizabeth said towards the pig.
"Already on it!" He said as he turned running to the door, so he could fill a bucket in a river near by.
"Any news on King and Diane?" Elizabeth asked to Ban behind her.
"None," he replied with a sigh, "For a girl as big and noticeable as Diane, she's fucking hard to track ain't she?" Elizabeth could only nod as she looked for a new washcloth.
A couple of minutes pass before Hawk comes back with a bucket of cold water in between his teeth to give to Elizabeth.
"Thanks Hawk," she said with a smile before going back into the room and treating to Meliodas' fever at once. She closes the door behind her leaving Hawk and Ban in the hall.
"Say, Master," Ban said in a low voice, close to a whisper.
"Hm?" Hawk sounded, only to show that he was paying attention
"In the last ten years that you have been with Cap'n, have you ever seen him have nightmares like these? Or at least act like this as he slept?"
"Actually, no, not in the past ten years," Hawk said, waiting to see where this conversation would go.
"I've seen him have night terrors once before, back when I received the scar he gave me."
Hawk still waited in silence for an explanation.
"He probs didn't tell ya this, but I was eager to see his sword, not his sacred treasure, but the green lookin one that he had on his back." Hawk recognized it of course, Meliodas never let go of that sword until it was stolen, and even then Meliodas searched to get that broken thing back.
"Well, long story short, he cut me cause I wanted to see his sword," Hawks eyes averted towards the scar on Ban's neck that stretched towards the jaw of his face and further. "But I didn't stop there, he cut me so fast I still didn't see the blade. When everyone was asleep, I took his blade without anyone knowing. It was quite amazing actually, the handle was so easy to grasp, and it was carefully crafted and well taken care of with no scratches on it. What was even more amazing was that the blade was broken. It got me wondering, what does Cap'n need his for? Why wouldn't he let me see it? It had a pure aura around it too, I didn't think much though,
Cap'n a good person."
A pause.
"Needless to say, I was drunk that night, wasn't thinkin straight. I slept with that sword by my side that night forgetting to return it. That's when we everyone woke up to Cap'n's screams, it was terrible, the way his body wiggled like he was being strangled. Of course, I jumped to his side to help him wake up, and eventually he did, but not without a terrified look on his face. That Cap'n, I've never seen him scared, not even in battle. That expression… it was genuine."
"Okay, I see your point. That key to the Demon Clan's Seal is the missing link for Meliodas' terrors, but what about the memory loss Ban?" Hawk said, finally adding something to Ban's one sided conversation.
"I can't figure that one out either, he didn't have anything like that back then," he said before heading towards the kitchen, "come grab some scraps, Master, I'm about to eat the breakfast made."
"Gotcha!" Hawk said without a second thought. Ban's head was all over the place with worry for his dear friend, but decided to put the pieces together after he got some food in his system, maybe even ask Meliodas some questions when he wakes up.
Elizabeth stayed at Meliodas's side until he woke again a few hours later, this time calmly, no screams or jumps.
"Hello?" he calls out with a coarse voice.
"Meliodas!" Elizabeth said quickly getting closer to him.
"Water."
"Yes, right away." Elizabeth get's up to leave to grab a glass from the kitchen as fast as she could. Behind her, Meliodas sat up in bed as she left the room and hurried to complete her task.
"Anh 'Lizabeth? Cap'n up?" Ban asked over the counter.
"Mm! I'm just getting him a glass of water," she replied as she started to look for a clean cup. She finally finds one but it slips out of her hands and shatters on the floor.
"I- I'm so sorry, I'm so clumsy I was just in a hurry, I-" She stuttered as she tried to find a broom to fix up her mess.
"I got this, Elizabeth! Go look for another cup, I'm in charge of cleaning anyway," Hawk said, a little disappointed however, seeing that it is glass and not scraps that he has to clean.
"Thanks, Hawk," she searches for another clean glass, but there is none, instead, she decides to wash one before filling it with cold water and making it back up the stairs again.
"Meliodas, I got your water," she said as she opened the door. Immediately afterwards, she dropped the glass as this one shatters on the floor beneath her feet just like the one in he kitchen, water splashing over the floor and cool droplets streaming down her legs and sticking to the material of her uniform. Ban and Hawk quickly joined Elizabeth to see what happened, and it was made very clear with the window open and no one in bed, that Meliodas is gone.
A/N: Comment and tell me how you like the first chapter of my new story. See you soon x.
