summary: she takes one look at the mischievous green-eyed boy before her and wonders if maybe she would've been safer inside her tower. tangled au, bc i hate myself. meliodas/elizabeth

pairings: basically melizabeth…maybe banlaine if im up to it, kiane if i wanna roll the dice.

sidenote: do you ever tell urself ur not going to do something and then you totally do it and ur like 'fuck'.

this is that thing.

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That clock – is most definitely mocking her.

The golden chime will swing back and forth, back and forth, tricking her into believing that the passage of time is happening much faster than it actually is.

Lying, deceitful clock. She'd get revenge on it one of these days…

Her toes dangle off the edge of the window and she breathes in the summer breeze. The grass below is teasing her, like the evil clock, begging her to come down and touch it, to let her hands run through it…

"It's too early for this," she speaks, and hops off the ledge to the kitchen table. Because that's all that her life was – just finding another distraction. Another meaningless task, another hour, another day…

She sweeps away the cynical thoughts with the dust on the table, into the dust pan and out the window.

How sad is it, she envies the way the dust can float away into the sun, while she stays trapped in the tower.

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"-and that, my dear, dear brother." Meliodas finishes, swinging the crown around his arm like a hula-hoop. "-is how you steal a priceless artifact."

"A lot of big talk from a guy who's barely five foot two," Estarossa laughs, swiping the crown off of Meliodas's arm. It's a beauty alright – thousands of years old, and gilded with the Liones family crest and opulent gems that could only be found in story books.

"Shut up, you two. We're still within the kingdom, if we get caught, we're dead." Zeldris hisses, peering past the stony column they were positioned behind. The guards were scrambling about, too focused on the fact that the crown was missing to notice the three thieves dipping past the houses and roofs.

"Lighten up, Zelly. You're the one who said we should take this little number anyhow," Estarossa whistles, sliding the crown in the pouch he was holding. "It's not everyday you call a little family get-together."

Meliodas grins. He hasn't seen his brothers in a while – and with due reason, as well. If his memory served him, last time he saw Estarossa, he ended up with a broken arm and walletless. Zeldris was a bit more reserved, but he'd had his moments, of course, like the time he left Meliodas to the wolves – literally, a pack of snarling, hungry wolves – and didn't show up again for another year and a half.

"Oh, stop! Look at this!" Estarossa suddenly declares, even though they are seconds from escaping the kingdom unscathed. "Ooh, look at how young you look, Zeldris!"

Estarossa holds up, quite proudly, the wanted poster of his younger brother, a frowning Zeldris who looked to be about seven years old.

"Give me that," Zeldris demands, growling at the low-quality picture and tossing it off the bridge.

"They're not very good at capturing my personality – and my hair is not that wild, thank you very much." Meliodas drawls, crumpling the poster into a ball and throwing it behind him "Oh, well."

"I think I look pretty sexy," Estarossa comments, before discarding his poster in a similar way to that of his siblings. "Where too next?"

"We make a pit stop at the Boar Hat." Zeldris commands. Meliodas smiles slightly, he has always had such a controlling personality, perhaps that's why they never got along all that well. And Estarossa…well, he was just a lazy idiot. There wasn't much else to say about that.

"Oh, sounds good. Say, does that one guy still work there, oh, what's his name…Bard? Ben?" Estarossa starts.

"Ban." Meliodas answers, without realizing. He spent a lot more of his time at the Boar Hat than his brothers did, he knew almost everyone there by heart and even worked there most of the time. Not that his brothers would know that, he liked to keep to himself, plus, he didn't wholly trust them.

"…right. He makes a mean duck stew, though, think he's still at it?" Estarossa narrowly avoids a black arrow that swishes past his face. "…oops. Looks like those damn holy knights caught up to us."

"This way," Zeldris leads, curving the path they were taking through the trees, a trail too difficult to tread for anyone on horseback. Meliodas jumps over a fallen tree and wonders how long it will take to lose them, they were quite an annoyance, those holy knights.

They run for a solid five minutes before the snapping of tree branches behind them falters – they are alone in the woods, finally.

"We gotta climb up this cliff face." Estarossa points out. The cliff is sharply vertical and looks almost un-scaleable. None of them brought a rope.

"It's no use trying to climb it manually," Zeldris says, "somebody give me a boost."

Estarossa lifts him up with ease. Zeldris's hands aren't nearly close enough to the top.

"Dammit Meliodas, get over here and help!" Zeldris growls. Meliodas cracks a bemused smile and nods. He climbs (ungracefully, if he may add – taking plenty of caution to step on as many of his brother's limbs as possible) up to the top and he is the first to reach the top of the cliff.

He stands up and dusts himself off, surveying the scene around him. Not bad – the view would only be better if he had his own private castle and servants, but baby steps, baby steps…

"Quit yer gawkin' and pull me up," Zeldris gruffly requests. Meliodas peers over the cliff face, his two brothers completely out of commission.

Truly, if there was any better time to do this, he would do it then. But the opportunity was practically dancing in front of his face, naked. He had to take it.

"Sorry Zelly," Meliodas says, turning around and starting on his leisurely way through the woods. "My hands are full."

The last thing his brothers see of him is the shimmering, priceless crown wrapped around his arm as he disappears into the brush.

"Damn you Meliodas – if I ever get my hands on you, I'll kill you!"

Meliodas laughs at his younger brother's anguish.

"Catch me if you can." He calls back, before he disappears completely.

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"Oh, no…" Elizabeth laments, no matter what angle she looks at it, it's all wrong.

"It looks fine to me," Hawk, Elizabeth's pet pig, consoles, even though the lamp looks much, much less than fine.

In her rush to clean everything up for Vivian's arrival, Elizabeth tripped and knocked over one of her caretaker's most prized possessions, a rare lamp from the Isles of Sorna. It was shattered into several different pieces, and there was only so much glue could do for the object.

"She's going to be so upset with me!" Elizabeth cries, flopping her weight onto a chair and holding back tears.

"Don't cry Elizabeth, it was an accident!" Hawk attempts to cheer her up fail.

"I-I know, but I don't want to make her angry!" Elizabeth sniffs, wiping her eyes dry. For all she knew – Vivian could appear that very moment, the best she could do was patch up the lamp and hope for the best.

"Elizabeth? Where are you?"

…Too late.

"Quick! Hide!" Elizabeth whispers to Hawk. Her mother didn't exactly shine upon the idea of pigs, frankly, she hated them.

Hawk is quick enough to dart under a chair as Vivian approaches the living room, a stern expression written across her tight features.

"Well, well…you've certainly tidied the place up since I last saw it…" She says, and Elizabeth wasn't too sure on whether or not it was a compliment. She drags her finger across the table in search of dust, and is pleased when she finds none.

"Mother-"

Vivian cut Elizabeth off sharply. "Ah-ah-ah, remember what I said about calling me that? it makes me sound…old…" Vivian's expression turns sour.

"R-right. Vivian, well…I have, I-I mean, something to ask you…" Elizabeth stammers nervously, skirting around the broken lamp so that she was standing in front of it. What she didn't know, wouldn't hurt her, right?

"Honestly Elizabeth, you'd think by now you wouldn't stutter so much…" Vivian comments, glancing at her dry skin in the mirror. "Come now dear, fix me up."

Elizabeth obediently reaches forward and touches Vivian's forehead, letting her magic heal away any damage to Vivian's body. Vivian sighs lovingly (towards Elizabeth or her magic, she wasn't sure) and relaxes into a chair.

"Now, what was it you wanted?" Vivian asks, combing her light brunette bob to the side experimentally. Elizabeth eagerly grabs another chair and pulls it up close to Vivian, eager to share her wish with her caretaker.

"W-well, remember last year, when I asked if I could go outside the tower for my birthday?" Elizabeth begins on a slightly sour topic.

Vivian's face goes dark. "Yes. I do. You aren't still on that, are you? I've told you hundreds of times, your magic is too valuable to be lost into the hands of mortals."

"Y-yes, of course. But, now that I'm eighteen-"

"No buts, Elizabeth. You belong in this tower. You are the last of your kind – you must protect the line of the druids." Vivian incessantly reminds.

"But if you go with me-"

"What did I just say," Vivian asks, dipping her pointed finger under Elizabeth's delicate chin and staring directly at her. "You will never leave this tower. It's where you belong."

Elizabeth felt her heart crumble. That was her only dream – to leave the tower, to see the outside. She wanted it more than anything else in the whole world.

But Vivian said that was selfish, and maybe it was, but didn't she deserve to be selfish, just once?

"Y-yes mother. I mean Vivian." Elizabeth corrects herself miserably.

"Good girl. Now, make me a cup of tea, will you please? I'm parched."

"Yes Vivian."

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Meliodas wipes his brow, smile never failing to dissolve from his face. Yup. Estarossa and Zeldris were going to kill him.

Of course – they'd never find him. He'd be halfway to Camelot by the time they got anything through their thick skulls.

He whistles nonchalantly as he ducks through the trees, wondering to himself what exactly he'll buy with what the crown pawns off for. Millions, he could only hope.

Maybe he'd buy a bar. He always wanted one, the Boar hat was practically his already!

His smile droops a bit. Right. The Boar Hat – he'll probably never see it again.

His thoughts are rudely interrupted by the appearance of a veil. And it isn't a wedding type a veil that you may recognize, but it was one Meliodas's magically trained eyes recognize as a magic veil.

"What on earth are you hiding?" He muses, waving his hand over the concealing spell curiously. It was a fairly high-level spell, he knew for sure Merlin could cast it, but he hadn't any sort of indication as to why someone would use it in the middle of the forest.

Curiosity getting the better of him, he takes a step forward, past the veil and into a valley, thinly landscaped by trees and grass, and even a small creek. It was pretty – a good place to settle after retirement.

It seems that someone had a similar idea, because right smack in the middle of the valley was a tower, easily about thirty feet high, and quite small in room space. Perhaps someone lives there?

Of course – if someone did live there, they were hiding something precious. A visibly challenging spell like cloaking magic was only used in dire situations – this tower was protecting something.

"Well, well, well…" he drawls musically, shoving the crown into his bag and cracing his knuckles. "What have we got here?"

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ouch.

second sidenote: i don't normally write present tense, so it might be a little bit rocky at first.

review to save the life of (one) writer named me who cant stop starting stuff she evidently wont finish.