"Leaving already?" Merlin asked, barely glancing up from her grimoire, though her voice betrayed a hint of disappointment she didn't really try to hide.
"Official summons," Meliodas answered, pulling on his jacket with obvious lack of enthusiasm. "The kind you can't really turn down, even when you clearly don't want to go."
"Stigma's command," Elizabeth clarified, tying her hair into a quick braid before grabbing her cloak from its hook by the door. "Shouldn't take more than two or three days."
Merlin closed her book, a worried crease forming on her brow.
"They've been summoning you a lot lately," she remarked, her gaze moving between the two of them with sharper attention than usual. "That's the third time this month."
"The war's picking up. Guess they need everyone to check in," Meliodas answered, in a tone he wanted to sound light, without much success.
"Everyone, or you specifically?" Merlin pressed, a hint of worry showing through her usual casual tone.
A brief silence settled in, enough for Merlin to understand she'd hit the mark without needing an explicit answer.
"Be careful out there," she finally said, closing the subject rather than pushing further, well aware Meliodas wasn't the type to open up about what was really eating at him. "And take care of him, big sister. He's got this annoying habit of wanting to carry everything on his own shoulders without ever saying a word about it."
"Always," Elizabeth answered with a warm smile, coming to give Merlin a brief hug before heading for the door. "We'll be back before you've even finished your next grimoire."
"So, never, given the rate I go through them," Merlin joked, a tired but genuine smile lighting up her face.
"Exactly. Two or three days, then," Meliodas corrected with a wink, finding a bit of his usual lightness again for a moment. "Try not to wait up for me to test your latest half-baked theories about Drainda while we're gone."
"My theories are never half-baked," Merlin shot back, feigning offense. "Just... ambitious."
"That's exactly what a mage says right before blowing up their workshop," Meliodas said, laughing, dodging with easy grace the cushion Merlin had just thrown at his head.
"Both of you, get out of here before I change my mind and keep you hostage to help me carry my books."
"Message received, loud and clear," Meliodas answered, pushing open the tavern door, Elizabeth right behind him.
"Stay safe, Merlin," the latter called out one last time over her shoulder, a soft smile on her lips. "We'll be back soon, promise."
The door swung shut behind them with a light jingle of the bell, leaving Merlin alone with her grimoire, the silence of the tavern, and that quiet worry she never quite managed to fully shake off whenever Meliodas left for this kind of summons.
---
The Fairy King's Forest stretched out as far as the eye could see, an ocean of golden foliage and gnarled trunks so ancient they seemed to have grown long before anyone had ever thought to name the world. At the heart of that vast green expanse, hidden beneath dozens of illusion spells woven over the course of many months, stood Stigma's general command.
Meliodas didn't like this place.
It wasn't the magic that bothered him, nor even the strange architecture, half organic, half carved from stone, that made up the alliance's headquarters. It was the stares.
"You sure you'll be okay?" Elizabeth asked, her hand slipping naturally into his as they crossed the main entrance, flanked on either side by two heavily armed fairies.
"I'll be fine," Meliodas answered, a smile a little too quick, a little too forced to be truly convincing.
The two guards watched them pass without a word. But their eyes said plenty.
Meliodas felt that familiar weight settle between his shoulder blades the moment they crossed the threshold, that sensation of being watched, measured, silently judged by dozens of glances that never quite looked away fast enough for him not to notice. A giant soldier who cut his conversation short at the sight of him. A fairy who instinctively tightened her grip on her spear. A group of humans, probably messengers or scouts, who whispered something behind their hands the moment he came within earshot, before falling abruptly silent as their eyes met his.
Even the halls themselves seemed to conspire against him, every polished stone echoing his own footsteps back a little too distinctly, every banner bearing Stigma's emblem, that clenched fist ringed in golden thorns, reminding him precisely which side he was supposed to represent in the eyes of all these people who saw, at first glance, nothing but a representative of the very species they'd sworn to defeat.
He kept walking, face impassive, shoulders straight, the way he had hundreds of times before.
It didn't get any easier with time. Contrary to what he'd once been promised.
"They don't know what they're talking about," Elizabeth murmured, quiet enough that only Meliodas could hear, her hand tightening slightly around his.
"They know exactly what they're talking about," he answered, his smile finally fading, revealing something more tense underneath. "That's the problem."
They crossed an inner courtyard where a handful of young recruits were training, giants and humans mixed together, under the supervision of a stern-looking veteran. The training paused a fraction of a second too long when the veteran's eyes met Meliodas's.
A demon, on our land, in our command. A demon strolling around like he owns the place, when it's because of his kind that half of us lost someone.
Meliodas didn't need to hear the words to know them. He'd heard them, in one form or another, hundreds of times already.
What nobody here knew, what nobody here was supposed to know, was just how heavily this war weighed on him for reasons none of them could ever have guessed just by looking at him.
A young human recruit, barely out of her teens, stepped further out of his path than necessary, her eyes fixed on the ground. Meliodas slowed his pace, imperceptibly, part of him wanting to stop, to explain, to justify himself somehow. But what was the point. Words never quite erased that kind of look, and he knew that better than anyone.
They continued on in silence until they reached a small outdoor terrace, set apart from the main building, where Elizabeth gently led him, away from the stares, away from the noise.
"Meliodas," she said, standing in front of him, both hands coming up to frame his face with a gentleness that clashed sharply with the tension in his features. "Look at me."
He obeyed, a little reluctantly, as if afraid of what she might read there.
"This isn't your fault," she said simply.
"You always say that."
"Because it's always true," she answered, without the slightest hesitation in her voice. "You didn't start this war, Meliodas. You didn't ask to be born what you are. You didn't ask for things to turn out the way they did."
"Maybe. But I was still the one who lit the fuse," he murmured, looking away toward the horizon, toward the golden canopy stretching out beyond the terrace. "No matter how many times you tell me that, it stays true. And every time I catch one of those looks in there, I see exactly the same thing. People who lost someone they loved because of a war that might not even exist without me."
Elizabeth stayed quiet for a moment, clearly searching for the right words rather than rushing in with a ready-made answer.
"You know what I see, when I look at you?" she finally said. "I see someone who's spent the last two years trying to fix what could still be fixed. Someone who could have run, hidden, let the world deal with its own problems. And who chose to stay instead. To fight for the right side, even when that same side looks at him sideways."
"Doesn't make up for much," Meliodas answered, a bitter smile barely tugging at his lips.
"No," Elizabeth admitted. "But it's not nothing, either."
She rose slightly on her toes, pressing a light kiss to his forehead, a simple gesture that nonetheless seemed to ease some of the tension built up in his shoulders.
"I'm here," she said. "Whatever happens in there, whatever people think, whatever Ludociel finds to blame you for this time. I'm here."
"He always finds something," Meliodas sighed, his gaze drifting back toward the horizon. "Last time it was because I supposedly didn't push hard enough for some tactic during the last council meeting. Before that, it was because I had the nerve to exist in the same room as him for more than ten minutes."
"He's afraid," Elizabeth said softly. "That doesn't excuse it, but it explains a lot."
"Afraid of what? I'm not even on the demons' side in this conflict."
"Afraid that it'll change. That you'll switch sides overnight. That everything we've built here will fall apart because, deep down, you were still born on the other side of this war," Elizabeth answered, her voice as gentle as ever despite the weight of what she was saying. "It's unfair to you, I agree. But it's not just plain cruelty either."
Meliodas let out a small laugh, weak but genuine, finally wrapping his arms around her.
"How do you do that," he murmured into her hair.
"Do what?"
"Make all of this a little more bearable. Even Ludociel, you manage to make him sound almost likable when you put your mind to it."
"I wouldn't go that far," Elizabeth answered with a soft laugh. "Let's just say I'd rather understand people than hate them right away. Makes a lot of things easier, in the end."
"Is that a goddess secret?" he asked, a teasing smile finally reappearing on his face.
"Maybe so," she answered with a wink, stepping gently away from him. "Come on. We can't stay out here forever. They're waiting for us."
Meliodas sighed, a long breath that seemed to carry away some of the heaviness built up during their walk through the command.
"Yeah. Guess so."
They resumed walking, crossing one last hallway before reaching a massive door, guarded this time by two angels whose white wings seemed almost too large for the space allotted to them. One of them inclined his head slightly upon recognizing Elizabeth, genuine respect in the gesture. The other simply observed Meliodas with a polite coldness that had nothing to envy in the soldiers they'd passed earlier.
"They're ready to see you," the first angel announced, pushing the door open before them.
"Thank you, Tarmiel," Elizabeth answered with a warm smile, which seemed to catch the angel slightly off guard, as if he wasn't used to being thanked for something so ordinary.
Meliodas paused for a moment on the threshold, casting one last glance toward Elizabeth.
"Well," he said, finding something like his usual smile again, though tinged with a weariness he couldn't quite fully hide. "Might as well get it over with."
"It'll be fine," Elizabeth answered, slipping her hand into his one last time before they crossed the threshold of the command room together.
"I really, really am not looking forward to hearing whatever Ludociel has to say this time," Meliodas muttered, more to himself than to anyone else, as the heavy door swung shut behind them with a dull, final thud.
Somewhere, in the depths of the room bathed in an almost solemn dimness, a figure with immaculate wings was already waiting, arms crossed, face closed off.
The day clearly wasn't about to get any better.