"The ground can be pretty tricky around here," Meliodas warns. "Be careful, alright?"

"You're telling me to be careful? You serious, Cap'n?"

He didn't seem to really hear. "Just saying," he says distractedly. "Watch your step."

He shoves his hands into his pockets and moves to follow, head kept down. "Alright," he says quietly. "I gotcha."

It was the middle of the night. How far they were from the Boar Hat, Ban didn't know. The Captain had had to fly to get them here, Ban in his arms, and that trip had been so quick, Ban had barely been able to see where they were going. Still, he wasn't complaining and he wasn't going to. After what had just happened—

("Elizabeth will die in three days.")

(He was so stupid, fucking hell, he can't get over how stupid, how insensitive, how self-centered he was)

—This kind of trip wasn't even a nuisance. He doesn't care about the late hour or the distance or anything else. All he cared about was finding some way, any way, to make things better for the Captain.

(Not that there was anything his useless ass could do but fuck everything up for everyone)

He's willing to do anything for the Captain, always has been, but now even more so. A late-night trip was nothing. So when the Captain had shown up at his door earlier this evening, away from her bedside for the first time since the Princess had... remembered, asking him if he could come with him for a little while... well, what else could he have done but agree?

(He couldn't beg for forgiveness, not when he wasn't worth forgiving)

They landed in the middle of a valley he had never before seen, bordered between a pair of towering mountains, with rich, thick grass that reached up well past his knees. It seemed to stretch out endlessly into the horizon. Aside from the two of them, there wasn't a soul in sight, whether human, animal or anything in between. The night was calm, quiet, and perfectly still. In a place with flora this overgrown, he would've expected insects, birds, or some other kind of wildlife. Instead, there was nothing. Just silence.

"Have you ever heard of Mount Vesvia?" the Captain suddenly asks, breaking the silence. "It used to be famous."

He's more than a little blindsided by the question but shakes his head. "Can't say I have."

The Captain didn't look surprised. He points to the mountain on their left, large enough to cast them in its shadow. "Over there. That's Mount Vesvia. There was a legend about it, back in the day, about how it's the cage for a monster."

He thinks to their surroundings, the absolute quiet of the environment around them, the dead silence where the noise of wildlife should've been "Is it?" he has to ask.

He shrugs. "Maybe. Who knows. Whether it is or not, Mount Vesvia is dangerous. There was a town here, once. Ipipome. It was buried after Mount Vesvia erupted." The grass reached well past his waist as he kicked at a piece of turf, eyes fixed on the ground as he nodded toward it. "We're standing right on top of it."

"On top of...?!"

"Yeah," he says quietly. He tries for a smile but it was so obviously false, it almost hurt to see. "Welcome to Ipipome."

He'd never even heard of that name before. It should've been difficult to picture but, somehow, there was something about this place that made it all too easy to imagine a city like the Liones capital lying hidden, buried, under the tall grass. He can picture it clear as day, faces, bodies, buried beneath their feet, hands reaching up to grasp at anyone with the misfortune to come within their reach.

(They could go ahead and take him if they wanted. It might be better than living like this, like the useless shit that he is)

He shakes his head. This wasn't the time for that. "What're we doing here, Cap'n? Shouldn't you..." There's a lump in his throat at the thought but he swallows it down as he presses on. "Shouldn't you be with the princess?"

He shakes his head. "Elizabeth isn't going to die tonight," he says, as-a-matter-of-factly. His voice is filled with a numb, detached sort of certainty and his gaze was distant. "She won't die until the third day and no matter what, she always dies right before my eyes."

Fucking hell.

No matter what Ban'd gone through, he could never complain, not when the Captain, who he had the gall to call his best friend when he wasn't even worth the dirt on his shoes, had to go through the shit that he did.

"Besides, this is important, too," he was saying. He then looks at him before visibly forcing himself to smile. His eyes were numb, hollow and his smile was stiff, lifeless. It was hard to look at him. "Besides. Do you remember what you said back then, back during Triss'..." he falters. "Triss' funeral?"

He freezes.

"Cap'n," he says carefully, very, very carefully, because holy fuck. "Are... are you telling me that...?"

If one of his kids died on top of the Princess remembering again...

If it were him in the Captain's position, he would've gone insane years ago. To think he could've said to his face that—

He looks away. "No," he says softly. "It's... sort of like that but no. If it were, I—" he shakes his head and pastes that awful, dead smile back onto his face. "Anyway, it's... sort of related to that. Follow me."

He does. Together, they walk in the unnatural stillness of that valley, the moon bright overhead, the only sound to be heard that of their footsteps and the sound of the grass as they pushed through it. As it had been back then, the Captain took the lead, Ban following like a shadow. They spent that walk in silence.

As it turned out, their destination was an enormous ridge of dark rock nearly five times his height, one jutted sharply out from the earth like a black island in a sea of green. Beneath it, he could just about see a gnarled old tree that had grown from under its shadow so that its trunk had grown almost parallel to the ridge, its topmost branches just barely noticeable where they bent to reach for the sky. From his point of view, it looked almost like the stone had squashed the tree. It is here that the Cap'n stops, forces in a deep breath, before beckoning him to follow as he stepped around the ridge then under it, one hand tracing the contours of the tree beneath it before he finally reached the base of it, where, in its shadow, were—

Ah.

Ban stops as his Cap' went forward to kneel before the nearer of the little white graves. His shoulders had sagged. His posture was stiff. His knuckles were white. "Hey, Drystan," he says softly. "It's been a while, hasn't it, kiddo?"

The grave here is not at all like the one they'd visited all those years ago. Triss' had a proper headstone, a stele that had obviously been freshly cut new for her, one with her name had been carved neatly into the stone. Here, the gravestone looks like nothing more than a pillow-sized boulder nestled against the ancient tree, and the letters forming the name are roughly cut and written in a handwriting that he found more than a little familiar. It is old and worn, the name inscribed almost unreadable from the moss and degradation it had undergone. Ban could only barely make it out. "Drystan, huh?" When his friend didn't answer, he gave a low whistle. "You sure like that name a lot, huh?"

Meliodas shook his head. "I'm not the one who picked it," he says quietly. "She did."

Ban looks down. His throat burned. "His mother?"

"I always let her pick," he says simply. "Elizabeth. She was born as Elisabet at that time. But everyone just called her Lisbet." He fumbles for a moment as he stands. Ban hadn't noticed but he'd brought a bag, a satchel that hung from his waist and from it, he pulls out a scrapbook, its binding cracked leather, its pages yellowing. He's seen a lot of the Captain's scrapbooks after Triss' funeral but this one, he's sure he's never seen this one before. It looked so old, he half expected it to crumble into dust the moment the Captain opened it. It didn't and the pictures inside seemed as vivid as if they were new. "This is what she looked like."

While he was always eager to show off pictures of his children, he had never shown pictures of their mother before. He understood (or thought he did) and so he'd never pried, but he'd always been curious. Knowing what he does now, the thought makes him almost nauseous now but he forces himself to look regardless. It was the least he could do. Anything the Captain asked, he would do.

The picture he pointed out was that of a woman in an airy blue dress, her face that of the princess Elizabeth he knew, with striking, ink-black curls long enough to fall to her waist. It was drawn to such a lifelike degree, he could've sworn she was about to start moving on the page. There were so many little details that kept popping out at him the longer he stared at it—a spray of freckles across her sternum, a twinkle in the blue of her visible eye, a small scar at her left eyebrow—all rendered with such loving detail, it was almost hard to look at. It was a work of art. As always. All the pictures he'd been shown of the children, they were always works of art.

"... she was incredible, you know," Meliodas says, breaking the silence. "I mean, she's Elizabeth, so it's a given that she would be—but still. Lisbet was amazing." He traces the black of the drawn Lisbet's hair and lets out a long sigh, eyes turning distant. "I was always worried about her," he says quietly. "She was sickly even before we met and there were weeks when she was too weak to get out of bed. And even on her good days, it felt like, everywhere we went, there was just always something to remind her of..."

Fucking hell.

"You don't need to say anything, Cap'n," he says quickly. His voice had come out rough. "You don't have to say anything if you don't want to."

He only shakes his head, smiling once more, the expression, for once, seeming genuine and all the more heartbreaking for it. "She kept remembering things," he finally manages, words all one exhale. "Little things. But all the same, it was like she was always close to remembering."

"Cap'n..." He can' help it. He wants to say something. Anything. Anything that could make things better. Anything that could help. Anything. But he doesn't know what to say. Like always, whenever things were dire and the people he cared about needed help, he can't do anything but fuck things up and hurt the people he cared about. He's just—

He swallows as the Captain then pressed the scrapbook into his shaking hands. For a moment, both were silent as Meliodas brought out other things from his satchel—a sponge and a bottle of some kind of fluid—before he rolled up his sleeves and began to scrub the grave clean, the motions obviously familiar and well-practiced.

"Drystan was my first," he says, without looking up from his work. "Before he was born, I didn't even think—I didn't think I could ever become a..." he swallows. The sound was rough, almost phlegmy. Ban was good enough not to say a word. "And even while Lisbet was pregnant, there were just so many problems—she was just constantly sick, the town was constantly under attack, there was never enough food... but when the day came that Drystan was born... he was just perfect. He was the most beautiful boy I'd ever seen. He was... he was our baby. He was ours."

His voice was raw with emotion as he finally stood, his task completed. The Captain wasn't a person anyone could call tall but the gravestone looked just tiny under his hands. He was still smiling that awful, horrible smile, and knowing everything he did now, Ban almost wanted to scream. He wanted to break the curse, strangle both the Demon King and the Supreme Deity with his bare hands for even thinking of doing such a thing, tell his best friend that he would somehow make things better—

But he can't promise any of that and the Captain deserved so much more than the false promises that are all he can offer.

Without saying a word, the Captain reaches out to turn the page on the scrapbook in his hands. The picture shown now was a drawing of a young boy in a green tunic, maybe twelve or thirteen-years-old. His hair hung loosely to his shoulder in a tousled shock of black, drawn back from his face by a white bandanna. His eyes were different colors, his left a soft amber, his right, the Captain's green. He was drawn smiling, the expression open and just a bit cheeky, a dimple prominent on his left cheek. He didn't look much like the Captain but he thought he could see something of Princess Elizabeth in the curve of his cheeks, and maybe a little of the Captain in the arch of his nose. It was, again, so lovingly detailed, it was almost hard to look at, especially knowing that—

Fuck it all. He was just the worst, how could he have said that to him? He should've realized—should've remembered, even—that what he'd gone through, the Captain had to have experienced it before, knowing about Triss and what little he did about Betha, even without knowing about the specifics about the curse and the Princess and—

"He looks just like his mom, doesn't he?" Meliodas comments. "He was the cutest thing. And he was such a great kid too, I almost couldn't believe he was mine, he was just... he was just so good."

His voice broke on the last word and he has to take a deep shuddering breath. He looked so proud as he traced the lines of that boy's picture. So proud. And so very sad.

"Of course, he was," is all Ban can find himself saying, feeling almost numb. "He had you for a dad, didn't he?"

"Pfft." He elbows him in the stomach, though without any real force. His eyes were fixed on the picture. "I drew this the same year he'd... " He shakes his head, forces another smile. "He was thirteen when I drew this. He'd always wanted his own picture. You know, he actually drew me a picture in exchange for it."

Here, his smile grew softer, more genuine, as he turned the page. "I told him he didn't have to but he wouldn't have it. Take a look."

In comparison to all the rest, this drawing was crude. On the page were two people drawn with barely more detail than stick figures, bright against the backdrop of carefully shaded-in blue. The Captain was drawn so that with his shock of blond hair, he looked like a smiling dandelion more than anything, and, holding his hand, was who he assumed to be Lisbet, her smile literally too big for her face and her hair a smear of ink. It was drawn with pastels, so vivid, the colors seemed to fly off of the page. It was bright and eyecatching but, compared to what came before, just childish, really. But the Cap'n beheld it almost as if it were sacred.

"I was a guard back then but, whenever I had the time, I would try and teach him how to draw," he reminisces. "He was so good with colors, I was sure he'd become an artist once he grew up."

He doesn't want to ask. He doesn't mean to. But all the same, the words come out before he can stop them: "What happened?"

His expression went blank. The light in his eyes died. Wordlessly, he closed the scrapbook, taking it into his arms as delicately as if it would shatter, before finally speaking. "I'm sure you've guessed it," he says, eyes blank. "We used to live here. Before Mount Vesvia had—when Ipipome was buried, I..." He falters. "I couldn't get them out in time. I was the only survivor."

It had fallen so silent, it was as if the world itself had held its breath. Ban wants to say something, anything. But there's nothing he can say that could make anything even the slightest bit better. Nothing he can do. He turns away but, when he does, the grave on the other side of the tree catches his eye. The name on it read 'Lisbet'.

Captain...

Damn it. Just... fuck.

He wants to say something to him. Anything. But the words all get clogged in his throat and finds he can't say a thing. All he can do is listen. All he can do is be there for him (however little that might have meant). All he can do is stay.

"Back then, that time I had with Lisbet and Drystan... " Meliodas says, the words halting, hesitant. "It was the happiest I'd ever been and it all just—" He stops. Releases a shaky breath. "Gone. She was already dying when I got to her and Drystan, he... " He shakes his head, cradles that scrapbook against his chest. "These are all I have left of them."

The scrapbook looked so small in his hands, so fragile. It looked like it could have crumbled at the slightest touch.

"I'm sorry."

He doesn't know why he said that. The words were out before he could stop them.

The Captain flashes him a smile, this time, mostly genuine. "Why? It's not your fault."

He just closes his eyes. "... Why're you showing me this, Captain?" he finally asks. "Why?"

"... Tana visited me a few nights after I came back," he says. A faint smile had crossed his face, small but soft and wistful. "She told me you two'd met while I was... you know."

Ban closes his eyes. Nods. "We have."

"She told me you were blaming yourself somethin' fierce," he continues, eyes fixed on his face, his eyes understanding, caring, and damned hard to look at. "Why? It wasn't your fault. You did nothing wrong."

I did nothing right.

"Ban," he says forcefully. "I don't blame you. Not then or now. You didn't know. You couldn't have known. I never told you."

Yeah. But I should've realized—I already knew you'd lost someone. I should've never said that.

"... You really are unbelievable," is all he say, instead, shaking his head, forcing himself to smile. "You and her, both." Then he looks over to his Captain with something of a smirk. "I can see why you're so proud of her, Cap'n. She really is a good kid. A great girl."

He brightens. For the first time since the Princess had remembered and he got to find out just how much shit his best friend had to go through, he actually, visibly brightens and, for a moment, it made his own heart feel light. "She is, isn't she?" he says—no, sighs, pride obvious in his eyes. "She's just like her mother."

"Hah. Drinks like you though," he says. After their inauspicious first meeting, he'd come by that night to try to apologize for how he'd reacted, not that she seemed offended about it. At some point, they'd gone out to swap stories about his best friend, her dear old dad, and the night ended with him blackout drunk and her not even tipsy, still guzzling ales like a woman starved. That month without the Captain had been one of the worst times in his life but that memory... it wasn't a bad one.

Meliodas didn't seem amused though. He stopped right in his tracks. "My daughter was drinking?"

He snorts a laugh. "She's almost ten times older than I am, Cap'n," he drawls, feeling just a bit more like himself. "Cut her some slack. She's safe with me."

"It's not that," he says, shaking his head. "I trust her, she can keep herself safe. I was just surprised... she doesn't really drink that much."

He sobers. "She'd just gotten some bad news." He knows he doesn't have to elaborate. "We all needed it."

Meliodas looks down. "I guess so," he says quietly. Then he sighs. "Honestly, she already knew I'd—ugh, she's such a worrywart! They all are and I don't know where they get it from!"

One corner of his lip quirks up into a smirk. "I can imagine," he drawls easily. Knowing her dad and who her mother had to be...

The thought is like ice water and makes him somber all over again as he looked at the graves, Lisbet's and Drystan's.

"Hey, Cap'n?" he finds himself saying. "You don't have to answer but... I get that Tana must've asked you to talk to me." Even if he didn't deserve that kind of consideration. "But... why here?"

"I was going to visit here anyway so I thought... I might as well do it here." He smiles, then, reaching down to touch the little gravestone. "Today's his birthday," he explains. "I can't always make it but I try to visit here when I can. Since we were already close by..." He lets out a long sigh. "It's the least I can do for him."

"His birthday..." He lets out a single, disbelieving laugh. At a glance, the grave looked over a thousand years old. "You still remember that?"

"Of course I do!" was his immediate answer. By the sound of it, he was almost offended he'd asked. "I remember all of my kids' birthdays. What kind of dad would I be if I didn't?"

He remembers the bastard who sired him and his sister and shakes his head. "You really are a good dad. You know that, right, Cap'n?"

He smiles again, though it's a sad expression and his eyes were, again, unreadable. "I try," he says. Then, after a moment's hesitation: "There was another thing. I was planning on going by myself, at first, but with what just happened with Elizabeth..." His voice breaks at her name and he was to swallow before he can speak after. "I didn't want to be alone here."

He doesn't know what to say.

He lowers his gaze again to the gravestone, eyes moving as if tracing the name. "It's... it's not easy, being here. Elizabeth—I've lost her so many times and it never gets any easier no matter how times I lose her but... with my kids, our kids..." His hands tighten into fists and he grits his teeth before he speaks. "It's different. They aren't—they're different each time and I love them all, of course, they're ours but... they're always different. They're not cursed with reincarnation or resurrection or anything. When they die... they're gone. I'll never see them again."

He can't help it. "Captain..."

"It's not like I want them to go through what Elizabeth is," he continues. "I just... I wish I could see them again. But I can't."

There's nothing he can say that'll make anything better. All he can do, all he does, is reach out, grasp him by the shoulder, and hope that it brought him some comfort, no matter how small. He doesn't know what else he can do.

At the very least, Meliodas made no move to remove his hand. "We should get back," he says, reaching out to pat the grave once before standing.

Ban never once let go.

"Happy birthday, kiddo," Meliodas says to the grave. "I'm sorry I forgot to bring any flowers. With everything that's been happening... I'll make it up to you the next time I visit, alright?"

There isn't much Ban can do. Barely anything, really.

But if it were just this...

Without letting go, he turns away, reaches out with his free hand and exhales. "Fox Hunt."

He did not shout the technique. This wasn't the place for that. In point of fact, he hadn't really intended to be heard, though the Captain would've heard him regardless. He'd said the words as softly as a whisper and, as such, his power manifested to reflect that, the objects flying into his hand as if blown by a gentle breeze instead of the usual, forceful smack. What came into hand were a small bunch of dandelion flowers, stems torn ragged by the technique, however gentle, but the petals still vibrant. He hands them over without any fanfare, eyes fixed on the grave. "Here."

The Captain seemed to hold his breath for a moment as he accepted the flowers. "Thank you," he breathes, eyes going wide and warm.

"They're just weeds, Cap'n," he says gruffly, not looking at him. "No need to thank me."

He shakes his head. "Dandelions are his favorite," he says as he arrayed them around the gravestone. When he stood to look at him, his eyes were warm with a regard Ban knew a person like him really didn't deserve. It wasn't much. It really isn't. But it's the only thing he could do. "They're perfect."

The Captain flies them back to the Boar Hat in what felt like a blink of an eye and Ban heads back to his room without saying a word the moment Meliodas lets him down. Meliodas doesn't stop him.

"Night, Ban," he calls out. "Remember what I said."

He only closes his eyes. "Night, Cap'n."

Elaine was still fast asleep and she doesn't stir when he crawls back under the covers to be by her side. He doesn't try to sleep. He hasn't been able to since he found out about the curse. Over and over, what he said plays in his head. He'd been so fucking selfish, so thoughtless...

"Remember what I said."

"I remember what I said," he murmurs into the dark of night. "Damn it. Fuck me."

He does not sleep that night.

"Does it ever get any easier, brother?"

Over the Boar Hat, unseen by even the ghostly Helbram, there were two people who lingered just outside their parents' window, one, an ancient-looking matron of a woman and the other, a youthful-looking teenaged boy

Drystan, thirteen-years-old the day he'd died but, by this point, a spirit older than Liones itself

And Triss, seemingly ancient but all in all, barely a fraction of her brother's age.

He flashes his little sister his best smile as he reaches out to take her hand, giving it a squeeze.

"I'm sure things'll get better for Mom and Dad," he says, as surely as if saying an axiom of life. He's seen this cycle so many times, has had to comfort so many siblings once they'd passed and had to see the cycle from this perspective, and he still always says those words. "It's difficult now but I know it will get better for them someday."

He can imagine it, a brighter future ahead, even as the picture of his father holding his mother's hand never left his sight. He's seen this so many times and it never got any easier. But, all the same, it would be a disservice to doubt and, no matter what, he will never stop believing in his father, his mother, his Auntie Merlin and, now, all the friends they had.

"I just wish..." She exhales. "Back when they visited the Capital of the Dead, I wish we could've..."

"We can only allow them in once," he reminds her, not for the first time. "So we have to make it count."

Already he can feel the Capital of Dead beginning to call them back, as it did for all spirits who had not tethered themselves to the mortal realm. Together they rose, their parents' never leaving their sight and, as they did, he remembers the first time his father tried to visit the Capital. He'd wanted so badly to come and meet him, back then, but he stopped before he could open that door because, in his heart, he knew that the right time for that would be—

"Once the curse finally breaks, we'll let them in. We'll all see them then."

Whoa, this turned out monstrous. Pretty sure it's obvious but this Lisbet is the same one referred to in my oneshot, Surge (formerly Spillage). That works as a standalone but, in this 'verse, part of the reason he went straight to volcano jumping after was because his son had... yeah. Unlike with Lisbet, he actually did get him out but he died from smoke inhalation a few hours after.

If Drystan had lived, he'd be 2,198 but, in all likelihood, he would've died at around a hundred years old. Unlike most of Meliodas' other kids, Drystan aged at a regular rate and had a normal lifespan. Triss was much the same.

If it's any consolation, the next update planned for this (Trisha) is going to be pretty cheerful. I'd like to say Wrong Time will be updated soon but I have finals coming and the chapter's too important to rush. I will say it'll be up before the year ends, though.

Anyways, reviews're always appreciated and have a nice day.