The end is finally here! I just want to first thank lickitysplit again for even encouraging me to post this story based off of hers. I'm just so happy that she loved this so much. I'm also really happy that you all seemed to have enjoyed this as well! Thanks you all so much!

~8~

-The Ultimate Sacrifice-

Meliodas had been silently constructing plans and discarding them in his mind repeatedly since he met up with the other members of the Ten Commandments after leaving Elizabeth. He knew he needed to figure out some way to put a stop to the war so that he could keep Elizabeth without worry for her safety. He's gotten a taste of what love feels like and it's not at all what he expected it to be. It's Elizabeth's smile when she looks up and notices him watching him, how bright, bashful, and elated it turns. It's Elizabeth's body, how perfectly she fits into his arms, and how much he's starting to rely on having her there. It's her laugh like sweet tinkling that always tugs a grin across his lips. Love is Elizabeth and he's not going to lose her to this war.

"Meliodas," Estarossa's address pulls him from his thoughts not for the first time. "We are about to reach the Forest. Are you sure there's not something you wish to speak of. You seem to have thoughts centering elsewhere."

Meliodas tightens his jaw and eyes his fellow Commandments all spread out and grouped strategically before answering, "As I told you before, I am just planning ahead as usual." Not entirely false. He is attempting to find a plan that could lead the war to a peaceful climax.

It's unfortunate all that keeps coming to mind is murdering his own Father for the throne.

"Well, if you change your mind…" The grey haired demon lays out the offer and Meliodas is reminded of the possible fact that Estarossa might be attempting to make amends for his blunder before. Meliodas is far past that point however, not that the younger would notice.

"It would appear that they've prepared for our arrival," Gowther suddenly supplies and Meliodas spreads his senses wide already expecting the alliance to be bolstered by the hundreds. And what he feels is just about that and getting stronger by the second as more Goddesses arrive on the scene.

Tension collects in his shoulders as power streaks along his arms. His fingers press into steely fists. Meliodas' expression all but ices off. "Alright. You all know the plan."

"Of course. This is what the Demon Lord has been waiting for," Estarossa with a lazy grin and eyes that sharpens with bloodthirst.

A beat passes as Meliodas steels himself. "Then go." They dash forward in a blur, some blazing in the air, others taking leaping bounds. He can tell before the draft they kicked up even settles around him that the battle has already begun.

Meliodas marches forward at his own pace as his thoughts begin to race and the sounds of roars and screams of the war press into his ears. 'They follow my commands because I'm essentially a tie in to the Demon King.'

His sharp sense of sight can see even from where he strides the crimson soaring through the air, staining the ground, littering dead bodies. He barely even flinches at the idea of the mass of souls being taken, mind too weighed with working through his forming plan. 'So if I go to the Underworld and… take over, I'll be able to give the orders.'

He feels the magic swirling and flowing through the air like an ever changing tide as many fall to the curses of Commandments left and right. But he senses something else as well charging through the air like searing electricity. Like an omen. 'I can stop this. If I just act… now.'

All the angles having been attacked in his head throughout the morning. Meliodas solidifies his resolve with a new blaze that adds life to his eyes. But a sudden sound of tiny wails pulls him to an abrupt halt. They're the sounds of an infant, it's clear. Though what would one being doing way out there, skirting the edge of an all-out war?

A feeling sours in his stomach as he pushes through prickly bushes and unyielding trees to the sound that's so near, hardly even a few yards away. He stops when his feet clear the barrier of a miniscule glade. A drop of agony, regret, sadness, spreads like cracks through his chest as he eyes a woman as white as clouds on a sunny day, so unlike the day they fight through now. She looks peaceful, not a wound on her as her blond hair spills across one shoulder. There's no pain to be had upon her calm visage. She simply appears like an untouched blossom in the midst of war, laid to peace without a soul to call hers anymore.

His brother, Zeldris, does not share such a calm as his face streaks with tears of loss and his arms clutch a tiny baby girl whose wails brought Meliodas to begin with. Meliodas' arrival disturbs the quiet of mourning instantly however as Zeldris' eyes snap up and land on the older. They hold gazes for several heartbeats as Meliodas watches, unmoving, as his brother's eyes become swallowed by a blind sort of rage only a pain so great can give you.

He stands steady, chest tight, while Zeldris rises and stalks towards him with words ragged and dripping with a need for vengeance. "You. You are the reason they are here!" He stops before Meliodas, cradling his crying daughter with trembling and rushed breaths, "You are the reason my wife is… she is gone." The strained words of a man who doesn't want to believe, but is forced to by harsh reality pierces Meliodas more cleanly than any blade ever could. "I'll make you pay!"

"Do you think I want this?" Meliodas' voices, torn and tired, with enough force to make his brother swallow his own words. "I grow weary of this battle. I did not want this war!" He nearly roars as his emotions on fighting barrels through his chest for the first time. He tightens his jaw under Zeldris' searching glare, watching the silent tears that still bleed from his brother's eyes before he forces himself to look away. "Death should have a meaning. This," he spits the word out as if it's a painful curse as his eyes look upon his brother's wife, "This is senseless."

At this Zeldris grits his teeth as he threatens to collapse inward, lifting his daughter so that he cradles her more closely to his chest with a hand carefully at the back of her soft black hair and she finally begins to calm. "I'll make them p-pay then. I'll make Father—"

"No." And he means it, the harsh, firm, command he gives to his youngest brother who turns perturbed eyes to meet Meliodas'. "I never wanted you apart of this war. I never wanted this for you. I will deal with Father."

"And if you do not succeed?" The question is serious and drawn from the power and authority he knows his brother to possess.

Meliodas goes silent, not wishing to answer. He knows if he were to somehow fail in his task, that no other would be better to follow through than Zeldris. "Just find a way to go on, brother. I will end this," he eventually gives before turning away completely with a final nod to Zeldris.

His darkness knits a pair of wings for him to soar with. And he intends to turn his back to the war for the time being and go to end his Father as quickly as possible, but something catches in his keen eyes in the distance. Something pale and glimmering innocence covered in the stains of merciless war.

A feeling comes over him crawling from his head down to his toes, cold, freezing through his veins, and he feels numb, so numb. His chest is heavy with quivers that quickly begin to spread through his body as he continues to stare wide eyed, open and vulnerable. His jaw opens slightly as he utters a name not even a whisper as a pressure builds behind his eyes. As he sucks in a burning, stabbing breath, Meliodas screams her name heart wrenchingly as tears leak from his eyes and he sails over the war that goes silent and still from the power he releases just to reach her.

Elizabeth sags in the arms of Estarossa. Her face is stained in tears, her lips bruised and smeared in the blood she was forced to hack up. Her wings lay ragged and useless on the battle worn ground, feathers missing and splattered in brilliant ruby. Her chest looks to be gauged clean through where her heart should be; though, now it's simply hollow as it leaks her lifeblood, staining her skin and dress heavily. Her skin is ashen, bruised as Estarossa laughs elated at his successful kill and Meliodas would see red if his world were not fading to grey. He would use his bare hands to murder his own flesh and blood if he weren't using them to take Elizabeth from the shocked demon where he falls to the ground and begins to weep.

"E-Elizabeth, please, no." He begs in her matted hair, curling around her cold body as he shivers, desperate for her warmth, her love. She promised.

"Brother, what is this? I killed her for you!" Estarossa boasts from behind him utterly perplexed. "She is the smell that has clung to you. She has been distracting you. Attempting to turn you away from the war! I can sense your waver, Meliodas. I was only helping you."

"You were only helping yourself!" Meliodas strikes out in a voice weighed with emotion, torn from heartbreak. "I will make you suffer. Mark my words."

When Estarossa does not respond, Meliodas clutches a shaky hand to the back of Elizabeth's head and chokes up at feeling just how limp she is in his arms and how broken she feels inside. "Tell the Commandments to return to the Underworld. I will deal with Father."

He doesn't listen for a reply as his eyes fall shut and his shoulders begin to jerk with the force of his pain. "You promised me I would not lose you," he sucks in a harsh breath. "You promised you would love me. I l-love you. So why?" His throat tightens and he almost can't breathe past the waves that continue to tear into him. His hand shakes so much, it only steadies when he brushes it across her hair stuck to blood on her cheek, smoothing it away behind her ear. She's so cold. His love that was showing him what warmth was, was fostering life back into him, is suddenly so cold. So far away even though he clutches her in his arms.

"You know I started to dream again?" He whispers in a raw tone, into the top of her hair, still wanting to share his secrets with her, only her. "I haven't dreamt since I was young, ages ago, and it was… they were about silly human traditions with you… marriage, children, a home." He has to stop when he starts to feel dizzy, his mind too overwhelmed with the fact that she's well and truly gone. "As ridiculous as it sounds, I was going to ask you to be my wife. I w-wanted you to be my wife, Elizabeth!" He ultimately shatters when he doesn't hear the excitement he knows would have colored her tone had she known. He feels all alone when Elizabeth continues to lay still, unreachable.

"Why did you leave me? I'll give you my heart. I'll give you all of them, just please," his voice falls off into a whisper of despair, of soul rending desperation, as he mourns her in the ebb of battle watched by wary eyes and furious Goddesses.

Until one Goddess steps up, her wings sleek and her posture regal. She is not deterred by the waves of volatile energy wafting from his figure wrapped around Elizabeth's. She stops a respectable distance and makes her inquiry clear in her crisp tone. "Would you really be willing to do that, demon Meliodas? Would you be willing to sacrifice your hearts for her life?"

Meliodas goes quiet as his head leans up to face the goddess gazing down at him with eyes a clear, piercing gold. His answer comes unwavering and unhesitant as he thinks of Elizabeth; the life she exuded before was so precious and made him realize what love truly means to him. "Yes."

"Then it shall be done."

He feels a power thrust into him white hot and draining not a second later. They snare his hearts one by one, ripping and tearing through him as his body jerks and he loses his strength like being strained through a sieve. He makes sure to lay Elizabeth gently down as his breaths start to come slower to him with each passing moment. Then the power jerks from his body pulling all seven of his hearts at once and his eyes flutter as his body falls backwards.

He thinks as he lies on the cold lifeless ground fading quickly, that he's only just being kept in the land of the living long enough to see her regain her life, to know that his sacrifice was upheld. And through bleary eyes he sees his hearts being merged into one, something dark and seeping magic, before it's lowered into Elizabeth's body his eyes can just barely see. When the connection is made a pulse of life runs through her so vivid and tinted a soft rosy hue as all of her wounds begin to heal with care. He sees at last a pair of soft downy wings, different from her old ones yet shaded the same, stretch from her back and Meliodas takes his last breath.

He closes his eyes and two tears of relief roll down his cheeks.

~.~.~

Elizabeth takes a frightened breath as her eyes spring open. She's sure she was in a nightmare. The torture, the pain, the laughs, it all couldn't have been real. She sits up terrified of falling back into such a place of torment when her eyes land on a Goddess with piercing gold eyes. The sky above looks so grey and bleak, the ground torn and withered. Her heart aches as she remembers the war with perfect clarity. She was helping as best as she could, not used to weaving through the clash of magic and swords. So if that was true then… Then…

She slams a hand over her mouth to hold in a gag as she looks down at herself expecting to see the evidence of everything that was done to her by Meliodas' brother, but there is nothing there. There is nothing…?

"You were brought back to life through a sacrifice," The clean response coaxes her off the edge of hysteria.

"W-what?" Elizabeth asks bewildered and the Goddess look at her with something akin to pity.

"That one over there sacrificed himself for you."

Elizabeth turns at the words so quickly as her heart accelerates to speeds physically excruciating. She prays to the heavens that it isn't him, that it isn't Meliodas, but seeing him with seven missing places in his chest has her screaming herself raw. She scrambles to him, pulling him to her chest as she tries to use her power to heal him, but the magic doesn't come to her. And no matter how hard she reaches and pulls, and begs and pleads, the familiar sensation does not arise. He looks so young, so peaceful as if sleeping and that only makes her sob harder.

"Take it back! P-please, take it back! He does not deserve this," she cries hoarsely.

"I cannot. That would be going against his sacrifice." She's given an indifferent response.

"Why can't I heal him!?" Elizabeth demands harshly for the first time in her life as her fingers shake at his back.

"Because he gave you his hearts. You have become a Goddess of Love." She receives as a precise explanation as golden eyes watch her mourning.

"Goddess of Love?" She whispers into his golden hair. She closes her eyes as her tears refuse to cease, curling her arms tightly around the demon who gave up everything for her, who made her what she always dreamt of being, but now abhors to her very core. A distant rumble sounds and not a moment later rain begins to pelt down, the beginnings of a storm for once not of her making.

Elizabeth laughs bitterly, frozen on the inside as her hand sweeps through his drenched locks. "A Goddess of Love. If I knew what it would take to become one, I would have never…" She breaks off as a lump threatens to choke her. "I should have listened. I should have stayed away from love. I was a Goddess of Life, but I brought death to you and I'm so sorry Meliodas. I'm s-sorry."

Lightning arcs through the air and thunder follows deafening behind it as wind picks up speed. Elizabeth presses a kiss to his head and shakily whispers, "I promise I'll always love you and one day… one day I hope to meet you again in a better time, in a happier way."

Elizabeth continues to hold him, her blue eyes glassy and lost somewhere far away as the Goddess of Sacrifice finds her own presence no longer needed there. She about faces and strides briskly away, disappearing in a blur of mist.