I have this one au I call sin of withdrawal where basically meliodas has the genius idea that he will never have to be hungover if he just stays drunk all the time and the only way the sins find out is when they hide his drinks. Because despite him being the sin of wrath they haven't actually ever see him mad at anything before. And boy does this work well in making sure they get that sight. He gives feral cat being forced into nice warm hot bath, yowling like it's dying and looking like it too, energy.This is when they jokingly start to refer to his title ax sin of withdrawal, rather than wrath.
Anyway they notice later on he has a similar reaction to being separated from Elizabeth. Then when backstory is revealed they find out the reason for meliodas seeking Goddess Elizabeth's company is that when the DK tried to ban him from drinking/ drugs in general (cause he was spending more time on them than he was on his prince/military requirements) it went horribly and he quit the tc all together, and joining Elizabeth becuse he found out through fighting the goddesses that their magic/energy being the opposite of his meant it gave him a weird sort of buzz feeling when it wasn't being used in an offensive way, which led to his seeking out Elizabeth in order to get magic high which is how their relationship began.
Anyway it's mostly just him being an alcoholic and turning into a frazzled panicked mess when taken away from his sources of comfort and intoxication, eg Elizabeth and beer, and slowly moving from beer to just Elizabeth and then realizing that while his coping mechanisms may have improved his life, it muddled his brain and priorities and he cant remember a big portion of his life, just bits and pieces that his addiction destroyed. Also in this au he kinda forgets he has a brother and when the whole tc vs Mel thing happens it ends different cause they keep trying to shame him for his past actions but he genuinely dosent remember shit and it ends in zeldris screeching red faced and Mel sitting confused like who is this crackhead and what is his problem?
Anyway he eventually starts remembering things but he remembers the memories in order from first to last and therefore thinks of Zel as just a baby and dosent put tc Zel to his memories Zel together until midway through his memories where he still dosent remember why zel hates him (he chose alcoholism and being high over zel and left like human equivalent 14 yr old zel in hel with Satan dad) but does get explained what happened to him by others. But this means that he dosent remember he let Gelda live and she's still alive just sealed, and he only sees his actions through the lens of pain he caused others.
Then he hates himself for his actions regarding Zeldris without the memories to understand the reason he did them. Eventually something something something, i havent thought through this part yet, but i know Eventually meliodas breaks his curse, to which he pretty much immediately tries to kill himself, which also happens around the same time that Zel finds Gelda.
At this point Mel's already half dead, and he starts remembering the last puzzle pieces of his leaving tc and joining Elizabeth. It's revealed he didn't become an alcoholic because liked the feeling of being drunk, but because being drunk was an excuse he felt he needed to justify his feelings of empathy towards those he was ordered by his father to view as insignificant and kill, and genuine care (sibling) love and affection for Zeldris. As at that point In his life he still saw loving relationships / having soft spots for the people he cared about as a personal failure and as a source of shame and disgust. Disgust that he wasn't the warrior his father wanted and couldn't be the strong role model he thought zeldris needed. While DK did try to ban Mel from his intoxication, that wasn't the reason he left, it looked like that from the outside, but the reason he was trying to get Mel sober is because due to Mel using his intoxication as an excuse for his empathy and feelings, The DK believed that if he got rid of that, he would return to how he wanted him. But Mel knew deep down that that wouldn't happen, that he had been kidding himself, and that once he was sober he would become even more loving, mushy, weak and shameful than he was now. He thought that this made him truly useless to his father who he had always wanted to impress, his race he was supposed to protect and to zeldris (Sober lovey mushy Mel would have actually been exactly what zeldris at the time needed, to have confirmation that Mel or even just somebody genuinely supported and cared about him) and therefore left the demon clan to seek Elizabeth, both because he kinda had a crush, but also because he hoped that she would crush his skull into the ground, which would hopefully be enough to kill him and therefore atone for being the way he was.
Instead Elizabeth liked him back (not his plan), and tried to get him to understand that being a person with people feelings wasn't a sin, but his feeling of intense guilt always outweighed her efforts. This is until his discovery of non violent interaction with goddess energy made him high, and also blitzed his memory, allowing him to move forward and form the connections he so desperately wanted with people without his previous mindset of love meaning weakness weighing him down. But when he was to get sober the effect would wear off, and the guilt of self shaming hatred would come back, bringing him back to his previous mindset, where he would then revert back to his angst fueled destruction, which is how Danafor happened. His sin of wrath, or has the sins had Labelled withdrawl, had never actually been a result of loss of intoxication, but at the gaining of memories.
But the 3000 years of memory is still there as hes bleeding out in a cave somewhere, and it's enough memory to change his mindset, for him to finally understand why he did what he did and felt what he felt. How much those feelings of love and feindship mattered to him, how his father's attempts of destroying that happiness was never something he should have looked up to, or felt ashamed of not living up to. And that his guilt for leaving Zeldris wasn't from not being able to be the big evil scary warrior he thought Zeldris needed, but from being to much of a coward to own his feelings and personhood in spite of DK and be the caring brother / father figure zeldris actually needed to have, and that meliodas needed to be, and deep down already was.
He's already dying though, and he's just starting to realize how he dosent "deserve to" and deep down doesn't want to. This is also when Zeldris gets the full story from Gelda, and tracks down Meliodas to reconcile with his perspective, and also hopefully stop him from dying.
Haven't gotten any further than that that but please like it or I'll cry
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