#bc Meli didn't want to see her using something that didn't fit right like the last time and handcrafted it himself.

[hihopelessromantics]

y e s

THIS

Along with the things the Elizabeths and his friends have taught him, he's got a bunch of hobbies and knowledge he picked up just for himself.

He's done plenty of things just 'cause it's fun, but it wasn't always like that.

angst incoming -

Mel didn't get the chance to really know how his people lived when he was their war hero- his father kept him too occupied with the war. Meliodas seemed to be alienated from his whole tribe, and probably had little to no one to learn ordinary social skills with until his brother was born. I hc that Meliodas would help his little brother get to know their people and their culture in ways he knew he would never be allowed to do, whether that be by sneaking him reports / letters to the royal family from civilians and soldiers, helping him gain access to the restricted sections of the library, or, like I'm writing in through the wall, helping him go on little “missions” to visit his own people and experience a little of what life could have been like for them if they weren't the demon king’s sons. Now that he's cursed to wander Britannia until he can break the curse, learning more about culture and people and emotions and cool little tricks is one thing he can do that will continue to matter and stick with him over the course of his journey.

By living for himself for once, he can have more bittersweet, honest moments with people he loves. Good moments, bad ones, times he doesn't know how he's feeling and can't function because of it. He can do it all without becoming a stain on his father's throne room carpet. He can experience life. Not fully. He can't - not without his soulmate by his side. They fought with every ounce of life in them, side by side, for each other and for the future their loved ones will live in, so that they might experience life instead of simply surviving it.

He's lost everything - even his freedom is debatable - but the axe is hanging over Elizabeth's head now, not his.

All the people he's met and thought "in another life, we could have been friends" about are either dead or healing. He has another life. This is his new life, and he can make friends. They may hurt him and betray him and misunderstand him and die while he lives on endlessly, but he can make friends.

Zeldris and the Commandments should be safe in the seal. Well, safe from his father and the goddesses, at least. He didn't know what they were going through in there. He prayed it was painless. He prayed they weren't conscious, frozen but aware of passing time. He bit down hard on his arm until the blood flowed to try and stop himself from praying for forgiveness. He was stunned when one of his longtime human friends noticed - even more so when he screamed and started shouting for Meliodas to stop. His friend refused to switch topics until Mel did something other than insist he was fine, so he broke down and told him - vaguely of course - about his old team and what he had done to them. How all the dreams he was working toward were snatched away, leaving him nothing but a traitor and a failure. Pushing the demons he knew could change for the better one day even further into the darkness. Even living as an unfeeling rock, he could see little bits of their personalities, glimpses of who they could be - that habit he picked up from Zeldris never truly left him. The mundane days of the past haunted him. The mundane days in Britannia were somehow, even with the curse, so much better than the ones he suffered through as the leader of the Ten Commandments. There was nothing he could do to change the past. He just wished . . . he could see what would happen if he had been able to give them the chances he had now. He wanted them to see all of this.

The friend understood. Turns out, loss is something that can be felt between two people . . .

Whenever someone leaves his life,

He searches for things they would like, things they would find interesting. And he learns what they are.

Until he loses track of where and when and until that revived muscle humming with emotion dies again, guilt and grief vanishing to leave all those memories of learning and teaching as dull as he was, just a rock with a couple pretty pictures slipping out of his hands, falling through the gap. As it closes over and they snap out of view, all he sees is love, love, love, falling like fragile petals into oblivion.

He’ll have to brush off the dust on a couple of those things to teach Tristan. He had a feeling his son would appreciate the harmonica as much as he had back then.

Random thought of the night: Meliodas must have some really old-fashioned and odd skills. Especially to humans. He's a demon, raised in the Demon Realm, who then spent 3,000 years living amongst humans. I don't know how the world has changed over those years, but surely humans don't live the same way they did 3,000 years ago. So Meliodas must like just know how to Do Stuff.