Love Me, Harm Me

Isolation (protects you)

"Using pain to relieve pain. It doesn't make sense"
- Veronica Roth.

.☀.🌑.☀.🌑.

He couldn't communicate it to her. Not anymore. Really, the problem wasn't that he didn't love her; Meliodas had always loved her. Ever since that first day, catching her bashful gaze through the chain link fence, he had been struck by her very existence. No-one knew about it. His brother didn't know about it. She didn't know about it. Back then it was better that way. Back then he could protect her from it.

Loving someone was never on the cards for Meliodas King. Once he learned the true destiny he'd been given, the dark crown metaphorically placed onto his head by his father, living a normal life had never been on the agenda.

Bag packed with drugs, spending the weekend up in the seaside, school books wedged against a ziplock of cannabis and cocaine, a selfish, solitary life had always been the norm for him. Sometimes he would be up in Brighton, watching as people lit up cigarettes or snorted snow white lines of powder. Other times he was farther north, up in the chilly highlands with a few of his father's good friends, offered the remnants of their needles and ashtrays.

Unlike most boys placed into the county lines, sold into the drug mule game, Meliodas didn't have much choice. Born into it, forced into the role, he never knew any different. Only his mother, bless her poor soul, had tried to stop it; that same year she'd ended up six feet under, a wreath of baby's breath left at her gravestone and left to wither there ever since.

They weren't allowed to visit.

They weren't allowed to love.

Those rules were drilled into Meliodas and his brother ever since they were kids. Having family ties, showing a weakness, was a vulnerability that they couldn't afford. In their world, in the lifestyle handed to them in a grubby buffet of dirty money and clear sandwich bags, vulnerability was to be avoided. Vulnerability led to trouble; trouble led to death. No-one wanted to ended up like mum.

So he hit the streets. Thirteen onward, travelling by the train, bus, coach - whatever his father deemed necessary. By fifteen he was able to regularly attend school, worked for the weekends and was on duty for bank holidays. More money was coming his way; more responsibility was landing on Meliodas' shoulders.

There wasn't anyone to love. There wasn't anyone to visit. Not even mum.

Then he met Elizabeth. Quiet as a mouse, tucked away in the corner as she watched through the fence, filled with awe and amazement, she had caught his eye. How was he supposed to know that it was a mistake to bump into her a month later? Who knew knocking her papers into the wind would lead to such horrible consequences?

Meliodas sure didn't. If he did, he might have warned himself, might have tried to stop himself. This feeling, this pain, simply wasn't worth it.

"You can't love me," An idle whisper. A lonely whisper. Fallen onto deaf ears.

Soft hands, gentle fingers, her lovely smile as she laughed softly. Not much could ever phase her. Not much could ever drive her away. One million and ten methods trialed and tested on her and Meliodas still couldn't get her to leave.

"Don't be silly," She had responded, a lingering kiss burning on his forehead. "I'll always love you."

But really she shouldn't. With the world he lived in, the dangerous games he played, Elizabeth should know better. Really, he shouldn't have let her talk her way into his life again; really, he should spare them both of the pain of falling into the same trap again, only moments away from the inevitable break that would rip them apart once more.

One a million, Elizabeth Liones was his weakness. A love that replaced mum, a love that was worth the risk of what happened to mum. But did he want that happening to her?

A glance. Quick, but one that lasted forever for Meliodas as he bit his lip.

No. Not ever. That gravestone could never be hers.

"You say that but it's not true," Was all he could bring himself to say to her. For the millionth time. The billionth time. Again, the same wane smile, "It's a dream lost years ago."

And then he let her go, went adrift. Now he would leave her alone, exist in his own world while she thrived within hers. Subsisting off the crumbs, the stray rays of sunlight that fought through the gloom, Meliodas would take the little he could just to sustain her. For a while it would hurt; for too long it would hurt. But isolation protects her much more than he ever could.

No matter what, Elizabeth will not end up like mum.