Summary: In order to save Meliodas' soul, Elizabeth descends into a journey to face herself.
A/N: Thank you for reading! This story should be fairly short, maybe only five or six chapters, so I hope you enjoy. It takes place in the time after Chapter 177, so please be warned for spoilers. This story will probably (most definitely) be AU as new chapters are released! Also, please note there are references in this first chapter to a previous story of mine, Seven Days of Sin. This is not a sequel exactly, but if you never read it you might want to check it out if you're wondering about the characters mentioned.
I'd also like to give a shout out to two wonderful friends and writers, woundedowl and BettyBest2, who both put up with my nonsense more than they should.
"He tried to name which of the deadly seven might apply, and when he failed he decided to append an eighth, regret."
—Charles Frazier
Chapter One: A Way Into Darkness
Elizabeth has a strange feeling, like déjà vu. She watches out the window as Mama Hawk moves the Boar Hat through new territory. Their goal is to move, and keep moving, as inconspicuously as one can on the back of a giant green pig. But there is something about the trees, something about the road that suddenly looks familiar, even though they are nowhere near any place they had traveled before.
"Hawk?" she calls, not taking her eyes from the window. "Can you ask Mama to stop?"
"I don't know, Elizabeth," he answers. "We're not back at the Forest of White Dreams yet, and everyone says that's the safest place for us to hide out. This was supposed to be only a quick trip out for supplies. If we stop, we are at risk of—"
"I know, I know," she says, frustrated, before turning to her little companion. "I just need to see something. Please?"
Hawk huffs and puffs and runs in a circle before scurrying out of the main room and into the back, where he does whatever it is he does to communicate with his mother. She is relieved as she feels the tavern start to slow, and then stop, and then the familiar rumbling as Mama Hawk digs herself into the ground.
As soon as the Boar Hat settles with a thud, she is out the door, sparing only a quick look around before hurrying down the steps. Suddenly, she thinks she must have been mistaken. They are just trees, just rocks, nothing unusual, nothing unlike every other forest they have passed since leaving Lioness and even before that, as they travelled everywhere.
Elizabeth sighs and looks around, when she notices something out of the corner of her eye. It's just a bird, it's nothing really, but the feeling of déjà vu is all at once so overwhelming she is hurrying into the trees without another thought. She has done this before, she knows she has, and as she makes her way through, she comes to a sudden drop off and remembers.
With a shout, she picks her way down, into the silent and empty town of Cadbury. It had been ages ago, before the Ten Commandments and Camelot and Ishtar and the horrible, horrible festival at Vaizel. It was here they had been cursed—they being the Seven Deadly Sins—and Elizabeth had found the woman who cursed them right in this little, empty town. She had known so much, even knowing things about Elizabeth, that she can't help the flicker of excitement as she finally gets to the bottom and steps into the town.
The feeling that the buildings are all a show is also familiar, and she finds herself moving through the streets in an oddly familiar way. The last time she had been chasing nothing more than a shadow, not paying attention to where she was going and which directions she was choosing. But now she feels a pull, and whether it's been the recent awakening of her powers or her better understanding of the world or just the desperate need for this to be something she cannot say for sure.
"Hello?" she calls, praying for an answer, and not at all surprised when she receives none.
.o0o.
For three days they wait, Hawk more agitated with every passing hour. They need to go, he reminders her, they need to hide before the Ten Commandments can find them. Elizabeth knows that, she understands this terrible risk, but she feels that the least she can do is wait for three days. Three days and three nights seem like a perfectly respectable amount of time, a reasonable length for any magical creatures to present themselves.
As the third day becomes the third evening. Elizabeth allows herself to feel the first pangs of disappointment. There was something about that woman—she assumed it was a woman—something that was familiar and good, even though she had placed such a horrible curse on them and was unable to even lift it properly. She knows this woman can help her. She must know a spell or a fruit or a river they can find that will change the silent figure on the second floor back into the person she loves.
So, she waits, and watches the light blue sky turn grey, then purple, then dark blue. The moon and the stars come out and a tear slips down her cheek. Once again, Elizabeth has failed.
There is a knock on the front door that startles her so badly she screeches and falls off of her stool into an ungraceful and very un-princesslike heap on the floor. She is up on her feet and bolting to the door in an instant, throwing it open as the bell above it tinkles without a thought that this could be a robber, a murderer, a demon even.
It's none of those things. It's a small robed figure, hood drawn over its head, and when the figure tilts her head back Elizabeth nearly laughs in relief. "I thought that was you," the old woman says, her voice like sandpaper.
Elizabeth laughs in her delight and excitement, asking her to come in and sit down and allow her to take her coat. The woman agrees to the first two offers but declines the third. She hurries behind the bar to get her some refreshments, but then pauses, wondering what she would drink. "I—I don't suppose you would…" She trails off, suddenly unsure and embarrassed.
Hawk is running into the room, shouting for Elizabeth. "Who was that?" he squeals. He pulls up short when he sees the woman. "Oh no, not her again! Elizabeth, run, I'll protect you!"
Elizabeth tries to shush him, but is interrupted. "What are you doing here?" the woman asks brusquely, and both Hawk and Elizabeth stop their arguments at her tone.
"I need help," she answers in a small voice. "I need someone to help me, and when I was last here, you helped me, even though it wasn't exactly the way I expected it." Elizabeth jumps, startled at her own confession, a blush rising to her cheeks.
"Not what you expected?" the woman barks at her. "It was exactly as I described." Impatiently she waves Elizabeth over. "Come here and let me take a look."
"No, Elizabeth!" Hawk yells, but she must do this, and waves a hand at the pig to shush him.
With a deep breath Elizabeth moves back around the bar to stand in front of the woman awkwardly. She grips Elizabeth's chin, pulling her down until their faces are even, and she tilts her head one way, then the other, her eyes flicking briefly to the little mark still there from the snake bite she received in Vaizel. She pulls down Elizabeth's lower lip, inspecting her teeth for a moment, before reaching both hands up to feel her hair. Her fingers slide through her bangs, falling still against the sides of her face, and for several minutes she stares into her eyes, making Elizabeth frightened and nervous and excited all at the same time. Finally she grabs Elizabeth's hands, examining the palms and tracing her finger along one line after another, the sensation tickling a bit.
"I don't remember inviting you back," she says, and Elizabeth jumps at the sound. "Easily startled, aren't you?"
"I'm sorry," Elizabeth answers quickly.
"For what?"
"For coming here uninvited. And for being startled."
The woman gives a laugh so harsh it sounds painful, as if her throat was filled with glass. "You are something all right. I've never seen one quite like you." She ignores Elizabeth's puzzled face as she continues, "All right, I can't exactly say no to you, can I? What do you want?"
Elizabeth steels her courage. "Sir Meliodas—"
"I know about all that," she says impatiently. "He's upstairs dead, isn't he? I could tell that from ten miles out. And your story is plain in your palm, so no need to bore an old woman to death. I asked what you want. If you would just answer the question, I can get back to what I was doing."
Her fingers twitch as she rubs her palms, wondering how much the woman could have actually seen in them. "I don't understand," she whispers, apologetically.
Huffing again, the woman growls, "What do you want, girl, what do you want? Do you want to go back in time? Do you want to go see him in the land of the dead? Do you want to die too?"
"No, none of those things," she says quickly. "I want…" Elizabeth whispers, afraid of who might hear her request. "I want him to come back."
"Is that all? How boring." The woman stands slowly, stretching the stiffness from her limbs. "That is easy enough to do, although—"
"Really?" Elizabeth exclaims. She jumps and claps her hands, too excited to be embarrassed by the display. "You can do that?"
The woman tilts her head. "Luckily for you, his soul is the kind that can come back. If it was somebody else, I'd say it was impossible."
Elizabeth's hands clutch her chest as her mind spins. She did it, she found help, and now Sir Meliodas would be back with her again! "Thank you!" she cries. "How can I ever repay you?"
"Don't thank me yet," the woman laughs. "I meant it would be easy for me, not you. As for payment, you'll have to owe me something. Agreed?"
Hawk is shouting at her again to stop, to think, but Elizabeth is agreeing with her without pause. Her heart is beating so quickly, her pulse racing so fast at the idea that he will be back with her again that she feels lightheaded. She nearly misses what the woman says next because of the rushing in her ears. "There's somewhere you will go, and if you follow the directions then you can bring him back. I'll leave you a map."
Elizabeth goes to find paper, but instead she reaches out and grabs her. She pulls up the sleeve of her shirt and traces her finger over the princess' arm. Elizabeth's eyes go wide as she watches a map being branded painlessly against her skin. When it is done, she pulls her arm up to stare at it, fascinated.
"Where do I—" she asks, lowering her arm, but the woman is gone.
.o0o.
Elizabeth spends the rest of the night puzzling out the marks on her arm. She finally decides that they must refer to Cadbury, and leaves the Boar Hat at daybreak to make her way back to the town. Hawk insists on accompanying her, and they walk once more through the silent streets.
She looks from her arm, back up to her surroundings, back down again, over and over but unable to match anything to anything. She spends all morning searching and searching, walking up and down every street three or four or ten times. As noon approaches Hawk begins to whine about lunch, and Elizabeth reluctantly agrees that maybe a snack and a rest will help clear her head and help her work out the map.
As they climb back up towards the Boar Hat, Elizabeth thinks she hears her name and looks back over her shoulder in alarm. That's when she sees it. The roofs of the fake houses and the fake stores are laid out in a pattern, one that she never noticed before because it had never been pointed out. But it has been pointed out, pointed out right on her arm, and her chest begins to heave as the realization that she knows exactly where to go hits her.
She does not wait for the squealing Hawk, but runs as fast as she can towards the one building tucked away among all the other buildings, the one she walked by a thousand times. She races as fast as she can up and down the streets, her heart thumping with exertion and excitement, until she skids to a halt in front of a dark and lopsided door.
Carefully, Elizabeth peels the door open, coughing as dust balloons around her. She steps inside even more cautiously, and it's a good thing too, because instead of a room the door has opened to steps that stretch down into the darkness. She is afraid, more afraid than she has been in a long time, but her need to make this happen outweighs that by miles. Elizabeth steels her courage and begins her descent.
As the stairs go on and on, the bit of light shining through the open door behind her gets dimmer and dimmer until she is in a blackout. The only sound is the tap of her shoes on the stone, the panting of her breath, and a dripping somewhere distant. She tentatively feels for each step, praying that she does not fall, and begins to count.
She loses count around three hundred, giving a little curse she had heard Ban use one time and had stored up for such an occasion. What had made her lose her place was the feeling of a little breeze against her cheek, which had startled her in the still, stale air of the stairwell. Elizabeth picks up her pace slightly, moving as fast as she dared, and yes, there was another breeze, then another, until the air actually starts to feel cleaner somehow.
It is still pitch dark, and when she reaches the bottom of the steps, she gives a startled, "Oh!" It doesn't echo as she predicted it would. Elizabeth waits, holding her breath for a minute that stretches on and on, before she tries a small, "Hello?"
"Elizabeth Lioness," a voice answers, and Elizabeth screams and clutches the wall. She is so angry with herself for her ridiculous reaction, but she saves the harshest chastisement because it really was so incredibly frightening.
"Yes," she breathes, her lungs straining to work properly.
"You are here for your heart's desire," the voice says.
She supposes that is true. "I want Sir Meliodas—"
"You must ask yourself, then."
"Ask myself? What does that mean?" Elizabeth takes a tentative step forward, one hand bracing against the wall.
No answer comes, so she takes another step, then another. "Hello?" She reaches out, and her fingers brush something both strange and familiar. Her hand wraps around it, and instinctively she turns it, and opens a door.