Author's Note: this story is taking the longest out of anything I've written before to do. Usually, I just speed write the first draft like an insane person-all there, right then, vomit. Well, at least it's still coming, so there's that. I'm sorry for the unorthodox updates. I'm just getting back into the swing of writing after having my baby. X.x Please. Enjoy.

8

It was nothing like how they had first met, back when he lived beneath a scarlet sky, and he loved it. She laughed at his jokes, and her eyes lit up at everything he thought they would—like how he could lift her above his head with ease, jump into the sky, and take her flying. She all but shrieked with delight when, after dinner, he drove her up to the hills outside the city and, rather than pulling moves on her, pulled her up into the glowing twilight above the sparkling city. It was the first time in years he had let his wings free, and he almost expected her own pearly whites to spread out and join his. But even when they didn't, he just took it as more excuse to hold her close and breathe in the scent that had been behind the cedar scented ribbon.

"Meliodas!" she cried above the wind rushing past them. "You're amazing!"

"Only because I'm trying to show off!" he cried back, his cheeks hurting from the force of his smiles—the real ones. "Is it working?"

"What?"

"Do you like me?"

When her mouth dropped and her eyes widened, he swooped down and broke the air against the asphalt next to his truck, her warm shape held tight to his chest.

She pulled away, gliding her hands down her windswept silver hair, a jittery excitement in her eyes.

"You mean all this is because you want me to like you?" she gave a cock to her head with a peculiar half-sided grin—his heart leaped at the sight! He knew that look! "Silly, of course I like you. But if you keep getting better, I'll have no chance at all."

He ducked his head closer, enough to touch her lips with his breath. "No chance at what?"

Her cheeks were flushed. Her blue eyes shivered, just as they had then. "Of getting you to like me. I mean, I—"

It would have been against the laws of physics and nature to not kiss her then. His arms trembled from the effort to not crush her in his fervor, though all strength left them completely at the shock when she kissed back, including a little tongue to swipe along the corner of his mouth.

Some more intelligent part of his brain, a part that had ruled him for far too long, screamed that he should slow down and think about this, but the uprush, the adrenaline, the familiar apple tang of her shot him up too high, too fast, and the next thing he knew she was beneath him in the bed of his truck. Her hands had tangled up in his hair and his own were busy mapping out the curves of her body.

But, inevitably, and because of the depth of his emotions for her, he forced himself back.

"That's as far as I go, Liz," he breathed. "I'm not about to take advantage of you. You're too important for that, and you don't know me enough yet."

The heated glaze which she looked through at him made him shiver.

"You don't know me either," she said.

He just gave her a crooked smirk at that. Little did she know…but he already knew the can of worms that would cause her if he told her she was essentially his dead lover reincarnated. She might think he didn't love her and was just projecting on her. That could not be so. Not while Elizabeth was warm and vulnerable in his arms. The protective instinct of a demon rivaled that of dragons. Why else would their king be called dragon and serpent?

Still, with a few last nuzzles and whispered endearments, she reluctantly loaded back into his truck with him and they headed off down the road. As they talked, she was soon surprised by how well he did know her (all while he delighted in the fact that he could possibly be right), though he attributed it to his paranormal capabilities rather than the truth.

"What are you, anyway?" she asked.

Ah, the moment of truth. "Do you really care to know?"

"I just made out with you on the back of your truck, yeah, I care to know."

He didn't quite know how those two connected, but he went with it. "I'm a demon."

This gave her pause enough to make him wonder if he had just gotten too caught up in his ecstasy and made a horrible mistake. "What? Like…demons demons? Exorcisms and stuff?"

"I assure you, this is my body and mine alone. An exorcism will do nothing to me," he thought on it for a moment, wondering how he could fix this before she started connecting him with horror films…though that would have been cute compared to the things he got up to in his previous life. "What you know as demons are disembodied spirits that are jealous of those with bodies. You won't find anyone else like me on this planet. I'm unique. By all intents and purposes, I shouldn't be here, but…" he hesitated. He had only hinted upon this with Ban, but had never before told anyone. But this had been a night of wonders, and nothing could dissuade him now from believing this was his Elizabeth. "But the one you know as God gave me a second chance on this plain…in a way."

"In a way?" she asked.

When he found only curiosity and maybe a hint of that same elation he had seen while they flew over the city, he pushed on passed another boundary. "I'm still in the body of my final judgment. When you receive your final judgment, you go to the world which your body is best suited for. Usually, I wouldn't be allowed here with the amount of…it's a higher glory than where my body is supposed to go, but I…" he looked out on the road, suddenly fascinated by how the yellow median line flickered underneath his truck.

"You what?"

But he didn't know what else to say without admitting how crucial a role she had played in his life, or how falling in love with her had wrought a change unheard of in his soul that allowed him to handle a level of light he hadn't been able to before.

"Someone…helped me handle more light than before, and it changed me." He glanced to her, hoping the swell of tenderness in his chest wouldn't give away who that someone was. "And the Creator—or God—He told me that if I could continue to take on more light, and handle it, I could…I could eventually make it up to where they were."

She cocked her head, a little frown of confusion. "But…final judgment, when do you get that?"

"It varies on the person and the world they're from," he said. "The details would take days to explain, but the point is that death is a major marker of that. Mortality is a unique and pliable state, and it's the state where everyone drifts towards the degree of light and power they are most suited for. Once they're done with the mortal phase, that's it. Because, like anything, once it's done changing into its final form, it's done. Only a few continue on growing, and it's those that become Creators as well."

He took a chance to sneak a glance at her from the road and found, for a lack of a better description, that her mind looked thoroughly blown.

"Sorry, is that a bit too much?" he asked. A deep-seated anxiety had vibrated up from his gut sometime in the middle of his explanation. This had to be too much too soon.

She blinked. Pursed her lips. Then her eyes widened again.

"Wait—you've seen God?!"

That made him laugh.

"Hell no!" he cried. "That would destroy me! Haven't you been listening? Our bodies—and anything, really-can only handle so much light—light is just another term for energy. Energy is heat, light, kinetic movement, gravity, just as the sun has more light than the Earth, so does the Creator's body have more light than mine. Being in his presence would turn me to less than dust sooner than you could blink. No, a messenger was sent. You can't miss them. They're like lightning."

"A person of…lightning."

"Yep."

"…like an angel?"

"More or less." And he felt another wave of fondness rush over him as he remembered her as she truly was, vibrant with wings of white light beyond any white he had ever seen.

"And since you were able to…take on more light because of—how did someone help you to do that? Did they find a potion or something that made your body more absorbent or something?"

"Elizabeth, can I just say how phenomenally you're taking all this?"

She flicked a strand of silver hair. "Oh, trust me, I'll be rocking back and forth in my shower later." She paused, and something flashed across her eyes that he couldn't decipher—which was saying something, as he had been reading people for an awfully long time.

Or, perhaps, it was something his mind hadn't wanted to read, said that annoyingly intelligent and logical part of him.

He waved if off.

"I…can't really explain it myself. And, to be honest, I don't think I'm ready to tell you about that yet. That okay?"

She nodded quickly, like an overly eager child. "Oh, yes, of course. We have time."

He all but purred at that statement. Yes. Time. All the time.

After a minute or so, something else had struck her though.

"Wait, you're not mortal?"

He clicked his fingers. "Bingo."

"You're immortal?!"

"Unfortunately."

She somehow skimmed over that part—which only for a fraction of a moment gave him pause. Elizabeth, as he remembered, wouldn't have—but this is modern Elizabeth, one who lived in a world that didn't believe in immortal beings whatsoever. Heck, they still thought their God was some ephemeral being of spirit and yet not spirit that existed in their hearts and yet didn't.

"How old are you?" she asked.

"Now, that's just rude to ask a lady her age," he said with a wink. "Don't you think you've had enough shockers for the evening? Flying, demons, gods, immortality. I kind of like your brain the way it is and not imploded."

She seemed to deflate a little bit. "Oh…sorry, should we talk about more normal things? Wait, I should take a turn, shouldn't I? Oh, um…but you seem to know so much already, what don't you know?"

"I only know basics about your tastes and personality, nothing about your actual life," that little lie about having some sort of psychic powers would come to bite him in the butt later, he just knew it. "Tell me about your family."

She did so, going in about a loving father who had doted on them since the death of their mother when Elizabeth had only been five. She had two sisters, one which was married and one that was in a weird sort of dating but not really romantic relationship with a huge MMA fighter, and a little nephew or niece on the way.

"I'm so excited, I love babies," she said. "Don't you?"

For the first time that night, a line of cold ran through his gut.

But he gave her that easy smile. "I like them well enough. They're more fun once they can walk and talk though."

Her bright eyes watched him, that unnamable something going through them once more, too quick for him to name.

The muscles in his back clenched. She couldn't already know he couldn't…?

But before he could really get worried, she was off again, talking about what they did for a living and how Elizabeth had been the only one who had chosen a career her father had agreed with.

Strangely enough, despite the dream come true the entire evening had been, with enough glorious moments to last him another few hundred years, the muscles in his back didn't relax until he had snuffed out the last bit of light in his room for the night.