Quote of the Chapter:

"you are, I know better
you are pieces of cork floating in the wine glass
you are the morning after
whose name I can't remember
still in my bed" - Exit wound, Jeanann Verlee

Chapter Thirty-Eight: (I wish) I knew better

For too long he sat there, downing gulp after gulp, bleary-eyed and logic hazed. An empty glass. A full bottle. Another thirty minutes spent trying to blank it all out.

More and more, block it out, drown it out - erase every trace of it all. Soon there was nothing but a foggy, heady daze in his mind, clouding his thoughts and jumbling his memories into flimsy veils of mist. Just how he liked it; just how he needed it to be in order to forget about her. Drown her out.

Silver smiles and gentle hands. Slippery voices and playful nudges. Meaningless words, actions that have so much more weight than she'd ever believe. All of her, every little damn thing, was blocked out by the haze, the alcohol - and Meliodas needed it to be that way. To shut up the voices, to get rid of the memories, he must black it out; he must remove all traces, all the lovely memories and precious moments, from his working memory. Each and every one of them.

Deep down, deep, deep down, they'll go. Far away and locked up tight, at the bottom of the chest, beneath the nested knot of chains, shoved right between his shitty childhood and even crappier adolescence. Yeah, that's where she'll go - where she'll stay. Down there was where she'll remain until he was ready to dig her up again.

"Hey stranger," A familiar voice, buzzing about his mind. Desperately, he tried to match it to a face - a name - but Meliodas came up with naught. He was all tapped out for the night.

Beside him they sat, face distorted like frosted glass, sculpted from clay and with two piercing eyes that wavered between pale blue and celery green. Dark hair twisted over their shoulders, messy and curling in stormy swathes, loose strands that fell into mysterious eyes. Comfortable, assured, they perched upon the bar stool, drink in hand as they nodded toward the empty counter, sipping from their glass.

"Been a while, hasn't it?"

'Has it?' Meliodas found himself musing, 'Has it really been that long?'. Right now he was so plastered that he couldn't even remember why he'd gotten so shit-faced in the first place. Something told him that it was about someone he knew, someone close and personal who had the power to dictate his entire world. Move entire planets and solar systems in his tiny little universe. But it was only a small something. Tiny, small and niggling, it knocked away at his skull, pounding and pleading as it tried to pry open the heavy chest lid and push apart the fog. Powerless - it was. Completely powerless.

All night long it could try to win him over. Niggling away, nibbling away, but never making much progress. Until the morning, when his head would pound and the memories would come back in the form of stunted visions and dreams, that something would keep on knocking on a door to nowhere.

"I guess so," Meliodas found himself saying, not at all bothering to be suitable company to the stranger beside him. Instead he took solace in the mountain of empty pint glasses beside him, already working on beating his previous record of a dozen. A pumped stomach was no big deal to him now, after all.

"So..." The voice did not stop its pestering. Instead the owner turned to him, leaning on their elbow as they raised a keen brow. Their lips were an eye-catching scarlet. "What exactly are you doing here tonight? Didn't Elizabeth strictly advise you to stay away from pity drinking?"

"Pity drinking," Meliodas scoffed, hiding the cringe the seized his body at the name. Elizabeth. Such a common name, a plain and ordinary name. Yet that name spoke volumes to him, shocked his entire nervous system with a jolt that even the electric chair could never hope to compare to. Elizabeth. That name was like a summon - a bell. Something sacred that he cannot say. But for the life of him, he could not remember why.

"Yeah, that's exactly what I said," The voice responded, chuckling. Another sip was taken, giving a brief pause before they hummed. "Still, she was not entirely off the mark. You've let yourself go over the years."

Something prickled in his system. Hot, broiling annoyance. A hand tightened around a half-full pint, "Why are you still here?"

"Because I'm a fool who's willing to wait around for you, no matter how long it takes," The voice responded quietly, wine-tinted breath floating in the air between them. Green-blue eyes darkened in the lights of the bar, framed with lashes that twinkled silver yet fought to remain as dark brown lines. "And like every time this happens, every time you fall off your high horse, we always end up back at the beginning."

'The beginning?' Meliodas frowned, 'Is this what the beginning is?'. Right now, laying on his back, blinking harshly as he stared at his fingertips, he cannot feel anymore distant from the beginning. Instead this felt like the middle, a terribly long and drab middle, that felt like it would never end.

Night after night, day after day, he noticed the emptiness left by her. Elizabeth-sized, vital, the crater she had left was slowly breaking him down, piece by piece, cell by tiny cell. Reality, the weight of it, was chipping away at his once solid stance. Microscopic chunks, barely noticeable portions, were being destroyed each and every day.

Once again he woke up alone, cold and lonely and empty. Gone were the days when he woke up with a bounce in his step, the days where he could think and remember what he really wanted to do. Playful teasing, little distractions, enjoying what it was like to just coexist and live was no longer normality for him. Instead it was all a storm of bad days, foggy and thundering days, which revolved around violence and empty, meaningless sex. Work, fight, use: three things Meliodas had always lived by and would forever do it seemed. Nothing else. No other path. All that was left was the past - a terrible past painted with the need to dominate and survive.

Good days were rare again. Patches of bright sunlight that slipped between the cracks of his fingertips were the closest thing to good days. His Elizabeth - no, the girl he locked up tightly within the chest, came back to him on good days. In his mind he'd see her clearly, hear her soft and silvery voice and would replay his apology over and over again. His plea.

'I'm sorry,' He would say, 'I didn't mean it. I never mean it. And I know it doesn't make it better, I know it doesn't hurt any less, but I am sorry. So, so sorry.' He'd always apologise, always repeat, grasping at the traces that slipped through his fingers, clutching to the small pieces of her that remained. And every time she would smile at him, laugh that tinkling laugh of hers and say that it would be ok. That one day, some day, he'd find a way to move on - to survive without her being there.

Only, her visits made her absence all the more prominent. Like dynamite, explosive, cataclysmic bombs, they only made deeper abysses of the already moon-sized crater.

On good days, the days where he could recall and cry and grieve, Meliodas didn't even bother to emerge from his room. On those days, those days of distant memories and tattered touches, he couldn't bear to face the reminders of her departure. So instead, trapped in time, suspended in that final moment when he'd spoken to her, held her, he'd remain: listening to her voice, tracing the shape of her lips, laughing with her. God, he missed her. So much. So, so much. That's all he wanted to tell her, let her know.

But then the darkness came again. Dark, dark days that made him worse and worse with each complete cycle.

Another voice would see him on those days, the woman with the green-blue eyes and sparkly eyelashes. Openly, she would welcome him with eager arms. With her, there was no need to go through pleasantries and appearances. There was no need to apologise and grovel and appear weakened and damaged. All he had to do was show up, humor her and get his fill of satisfaction. All he ever did with her was exist - drown out the living part of life with more and more pallid smoke.

So Meliodas couldn't blame himself for ending up back here - the beginning. Once again, to no-one's true surprise he was back in the pits of darkness, wasting away in an existence that meant nothing. Existence was all that he knew; the beginning was all that he truly had left. A dark, grueling reality - an intense hunger that can only be temporarily sated.

Maybe that was why the strange voice always waited for him. Whenever he was at his lowest, downing his spirits in potent alcohol, she would always find him. Ghostly, witch-like, she would always know where he was, know just how to lure him in once more. Then, once again, like she always did, she would sink her hooks into him, trapping him once more in a vicious cycle of darkness and brief periods of light. Soft, fleeting light.

"Why do you always wait for me?" He had asked, truly wanting to know the answer, the true cause to this voice's purpose. There must be some reason, some motive, as to why she was always there, a tiny pebble attempting to fill the crater Elizabeth left behind. There must be.

However, as Meliodas looked at her once more, the voice's blue-green eyes twinkled, sparkling like cat's eyes in the middle of the night. From that alone, he knew he wouldn't get a true answer.

"Like I said," She whispered into his ear, tone low and purring. "We always end up back at the beginning."

Oh how he wished he didn't.