Limbo

(Another Slayers Try Fanfiction of Xellos and Filia)

By Amber S./"AmberPalette"

I claim no ownership of the fandom of The Slayers, including the portrayed characters Xellos Metallium, Filia Ul Copt, Val, Lina Inverse, Beastmaster Zelas Metallium, Deep Sea Dolphin, General Riksfalto, Jillas, the Water Dragon King/Aqualord, or Milgasia.

This is an unpolished exploration of a fandom that I have recently come to love. I have researched BOTH the anime and the manga, but not to great depths--so please don't flame me for errors. I have done my best for accuracy.

The story is meant to illustrate my perception of the popular love/hate romantic pairing of Xellos and Filia, a pairing which is strongly implied in "The Slayers Try," the third season of the Slayers television series. I have found little satisfaction in reading the majority of the XellosXFilia fanfictions floating around the internet. They either glorify an unhealthy sado-masochistic undertone in the couple or they make unrealistic changes to Xellos and Filia's characters, turning him into a saint or turning her into a demon. Not a one of these solutions is, to me, in accordance with the canon of the anime or manga, nor is it a satisfying read. So I decided to put forth my own portrayal of the pairing.

Other fanfictions that address this couple that I would recommend include "The Crackpot Cafe," written by member Kara Metallium.

Enjoy, R&R!

CHAPTER TWO: SELFLESSNESS

They tell you where you need to go
They tell you when you'll need to leave
They tell you what you need to know
They tell you who you need to be

But everything inside you knows
There's more than what you've heard
There's so much more than empty conversations
Filled with empty words

And you're on fire
When He's near you
You're on fire
When He speaks
You're on fire
Burning at these mysteries

Give me one more time around
Give me one more chance to see
Give me everything You are
Give me one more chance to be...

Cause everything inside me looks like
Everything I hate
You are the hope I have for change
You are the only chance I'll take

When I'm on fire
When You're near me
I'm on fire
When You speak
And I'm on fire
Burning at these mysteries
These mysteries...

I'm standing on the edge of me
I'm standing on the edge of everything I've never been before.
And I've been standing on the edge of me
Standing on the edge

And I'm on fire
When You're near me
I'm on fire
When You speak
(Yea) I'm on fire
Burning at these mysteries... these mysteries... these mysteries
Ah you're the mystery
You're the mystery"

--Switchfoot

Ever since that first night, when Xellos had come strutting in on her sporting full battle armor, had predicated the drawbacks and the seductive wonders of a romance between them, and had indirectly admitted an emotion anathema to a mazoku's existence, bimonthly visits rapidly became monthly visits, then weekly ones.

Filia soon found she didn't even need to consciously call for the enigmatic priest-general. Simple half-attentive thoughts summoned him. Grape jam or an iris bloom that reminded her of the hue of his ungainly yet elegant hair, something that smelled spicy-sweet like him, a witty retort between two ceramics shop customers that he might employ—any casual rumination on Xellos, and there Xellos was, with a crackle or a fizzle, setting down his crimson-stoned staff, throwing his cloak over some chair, comfortable and casual as he could be, strolling round Filia's shop, poking at the wares, fixing himself some tea on her stove, casually brushing her lips or neck as he walked past. Depending on the traffic of customers—usually at inappropriate times, rather than those mindful of decorum—he might epilogue such physical touches with hands that smoothly roved to other parts of Filia's body, or he'd beckon her up the rickety wood steps to her bedroom.

Whether she flushed violently and tried to give his face a resounding smack, or vaulted into his arms in consent, was a matter of her own mood, and either seemed to satisfy him immensely. Either made him delightedly laugh.

It was as if he had always done this, as if no saturated history of animosities and scathing words had ever existed between them—like he was utterly indifferent to anything of the sort. Xellos was, of course, a creature for whom the fire and brimstone of justice, poetic vengeance, righteous loyalties, and the sort were all obsolete, or, perhaps, never significant in the first place—so it was easy for Filia to see how this new, pleasurable, convenient set-up, in which tiresome eye-scratchings between them were boring and passé, might be readily adopted by the mazoku.

And Filia admitted that she loved it too. It was easy, peaceful, reassuring, this constant, quiet, breezily smirking presence that was Xellos. He was more powerful than anyone she had ever met—more powerful than any of the other mazoku created by the five sublords of Shabranigdo, so said Lina Inverse— so, provided he felt as favorably toward her as it seemed, there was little question as to her safety from all other dangers, and, by extension, the safety of her adoptive son Val, and their fox servant, Jillas.

Though that was the odd thing. Lately, Xellos behaved in a strangely impassive, pleasant way toward the infant Val, as well—a harmless baby now, but, in a former life, Valgaav, the tortured but vicious mazoku-ancient dragon hybrid servant of the late, unlamented mazoku lord, Chaos Dragon Gaav.

Filia remained cautious when Xellos and Val mixed, despite the satisfaction of having so formidable an ally as Xellos. Her lover had once displayed keen contempt towards Valgaav, the mazoku Seigram, and all other servants of the scheming Gaav, sole child of Shabranigdo to break away from, and try to overpower, his siblings. It was eons of strife between Gaav and Hellmaster Fibrizo, another obliterated child of Shabranigdo, that had aggravated the War of the Monster's Fall.

Xellos had been, Filia grew to grudgingly admit, just another pawn in that ancient war, however mighty a pawn he was. According to Lina, he had been sent to undo threatening acts set in motion by Gaav, had been ravaged and nearly killed by Gaav himself, and had then been "loaned" to Fibrizo by his creator, Greater Beast Zelas Metallium, to execute even more orders against Gaav which were, to him, both foolish and troublesome—but beyond his power to disobey.

So Xellos was justified in his exhaustion of Fibrizo and his loathing of Gaav and servants—it was even anticipated of him. But it was Filia's duty to raise Val sheltered and nurtured, far remote from his anguished past life. She was atoning for the murder of Val's ancient dragon race by her golden dragon race. And the constant presence of Xellos, who had relentlessly hunted and nearly killed Val in a sneering frenzy when the child was still Valgaav, was not entirely conducive to this end.

And yet there Xellos stood nearly every visit, over Val's little makeshift bed, making irreverent faces and noises at him, smirking when the baby giggled. Occasionally, as if he were bored and it were an interesting new fancy, Xellos even picked the child up. He would feed Val some of the mushy oatmeal that Filia had fixed to wean him off his bottle, curiously cocking his head at the baby all the while.

Wrinkling his nose at the smell of Val's diaper and handing him back to Filia, with a chirping quip of "I think he's leaking."

Another day, coming upon Val sleeping on his stomach on the floor, plucking some of the tuftier down off of Val's expanding, growing black wings, and murmuring approval at the progress of his molting. "Fascinating how fast these things grow, isn't it, Filia?"

Still another day, sitting on Filia's porch, painting idle pictures with tongues of fire from the end of his staff as customers wafted in and out, sitting in a cross-legged yogi pose, while a tired Val, who had been watching in fascination, slept with his head plopped against one of the mazoku's knees. Not waking, or moving, the child, when Val did this.

Totally, for all Filia could see, impartial and unconcerned about Val's former identity or current presence, neither welcoming nor banishing the child's attentions. Being, if it were conceivable, fair to Val.

It did not settle wholly with the dragoness, who had grown far less naïve in the past year, but she did not question the ease and lack of conflict for now. Perhaps someone as old and experienced as Xellos might see outdated grudges as too effortful, in the vast scheme of things, to maintain forever.

Days passed untroubled by eventlessness, just enlivened enough by a peppering of squabbles. Such quibbling was usually the product of Xellos's softer-edged but relentless teasing, of something naïve, obnoxious, or prudish that Filia had said or done ("Oh my heavens, Filia, I see your little white panties when your tail pops out, and you call yourself a lady!"). He apparently loved the challenge of their verbal sparring, and, though it fatigued her, something about the constancy of his pestering, followed by her superficial outrage, was oddly comforting to her as well.

But Filia was still not prepared for blast of wind, deluge, and vertigo that followed those months of repose under the eye of the storm.

It had been an open-aired spring day, warm-baked with the prologue of summer, when Filia felt that familiar mixed surge of anger and pleased anticipation that meant Xellos had arrived. She was perched on her ladder repainting the letters on her shop sign, Jillas steadying the base with each gloved paw. His feet were planted amidst an unruly outgrowth of cattails, lavender, honeysuckle, and invasive dandelions, complaining bitterly that bees were stinging his paws. Filia had left the plants untamed since Xellos's winking suggestion a couple months back that, sometimes, natural landscapes held greater beauty than a well-tended garden.

And lately, Filia sensed, the choking, fierce determination, the ceaseless popping-up, in all manner of places and circumstances, of weeds, had a kind of beauty all its own. She reckoned that Xellos was a type of weed. Xellos was a dandelion. The yellow was overrunning her garden, curling itself around her flowers, ingratiating itself everywhere imaginable, and she found it beautiful. Gods save her.

So she flushed a pale pink at the fox's whining, and hushed him. "I think Xellos just dropped in," she commented, trying to make it sound casual, but her voice trembled a bit.

Jillas loudly groaned, bleakly scratching his eyepatch. "Oi bet 'e's gone and ettin' all moy sammiches in the oice box, mistress!" he shrilled. His neckhairs bristled. "That thievin' scoundrel, no-account monstah, always had it out for Lord Valga—"

"He doesn't eat regular food, Jillas, and he doesn't do things without necessity, and I'll thank you NOT to discuss Val's previous life, when I want him freed of the burden," Filia chided. Then she added under her breath,"…though I bet Xellos IS hungry." Slight distemper at this notion filled her; it meant Xellos would be tiresome today if he needed a meal of negative sentiments, if he needed to be parasitic, if his mistress on Wolfpack Island had not recently given him any missions of trickster or mercenary nature that might fill his astral belly.

She began to descend the ladder when a clamorous crash inside her cottage caused all the birds perched on the pediment to take flight. Filia gasped, and wobbled, nearly falling on Jillas. "Oh my!" she shrieked, stumbling inside, Jillas at her heels. Her pupils dilated slowly in the dark; she had not lit candles that day, preserving the wax with the use of the streaming sunlight.

She made out a familiar tall, slender male form crouched over her potter's wheel, using it to brace himself upright, an entire shelf of pots that she had fired the day before demolished in pieces around his feet.

It was obvious that he had destroyed them on purpose.

Presently he lifted his head, opened his eyes, and twin slit amethysts stared blankly at her. His smile was tight and bland. His free arm was wrapped around his midriff, the long hem of his robe covering his midsection. There was a sheen of sweat on his forehead.

"XELLOS!" Filia roared, tail curling and twisting behind her. She stamped her booted foot. "Couldn't you have fashioned some OTHER way to make me mad and get a meal, besides DESTROYING my merchandise and livelihood? WELL? Val has to EAT, you know! He's a growing boy!"

"Stupid monstah," Jillas muttered. "Oi has teh eat too."

The mazoku didn't respond to either of them. His expression didn't change, didn't acquire the air of malicious delight or mischief typical of relishing a feast of negativity, except for the slightest, almost relieved, loosening of his smile. He didn't straighten. In fact, his knees slightly buckled, and he sat down shakily on her wheel. Yes, he was definitely sweating, profusely. His hand shook as he covered his eyes, still open and slightly glazed.

It was then that Filia realized something was very wrong. "…Xellos?" She hastened to his side. She saw that he was hiding something. A wound. "Let me see your stomach!"

"Nah." His eyes closed behind the hand. Still the smile. His voice was hoarse, but cavalier. "That's not suitable behavior towards a lady."

She was not amused. "NOW!" She seized his arm, pried it off his middle, and cast aside his cloak. She nearly cried out in shock. For where a torso should be, a jagged hole ripped almost completely through his midriff. She could see her potter's shelf through him. Blood soaked his cream silk turtleneck, and she had to force herself to remember that it wasn't real blood, that it was just an additional ruse, an illusion, of the physical body he chose. But the hole in him was no illusion. He was deeply injured. Tears sprang to her eyes and the urge to vomit rose in her throat.

"Bloody 'ell! Gaav spare us!" Jillas backed away, rushing upstairs, presumably to hide Val and himself, thinking an imminent danger that had brutalized someone as powerful as Xellos must be approaching.

The thought had crossed Filia's mind too. A shiver wracked her vertabrae.

The mazoku managed to laugh, brittly, shaking his head and shrugging. "You should see the OTHER guy," he croaked. "Who is, incidentally, dead…so, relax." He grunted, and, with a little wave of the hand that had been covering his eyes, caused a ray of black light, and then his habitual red-tipped staff, to materialize on the ground near them.

"Xellos…" Filia stammered, seeking composure, bracing him upright. "I…Don't you think you should go to YOUR home to heal from this?"

"I've botched a mission for Beastmaster Zelas." His smile disappeared and his tone became more solid. "Was supposed to get some information out of a troublesome underling of her sister, Lord Deep Sea Dolphin…and the fellow was…ah, er…so ardent in his opposition that I had to kill him before he killed me, and, unfortunately, before I got the information. Tight-lipped little troublemaker, he was. I had Lord Dolphin's general intercede on my behalf to deliver my ah status report, but…I really don't think I'll be welcomed pleasantly at Wolfpack Island, not until Lord Beastmaster has digested the news for a day or two. No, I've come here for a spot." With a winsome gaze up at her, he leaned his forehead into her arm, like a puckish child asking for more cookies. It made Filia's heart race as he concluded, "You took care of me before when I was injured. Encore. Take me to a bed, please."

Filia nodded slowly, mustering the restraint to exercise her mental faculties, for once, before her emotions. Perhaps motherhood had exacted such gravitas on her. Maturity. "Let me get your staff so you can lean on it." She retrieved the long, twisted wooden object, its sphere beginning to glow red, like a bloody fiery womb, as if affronted by her alien touch. Indeed, the wood burned a little in her fingers, as it had the last time she had held it—the last time Xellos had underestimated an opponent, Valgaav, and fallen under her care—until she handed it to him, and it immediately ceased its smoldering.

Xellos nodded, driving the end firmly into the tile floor of the cottage. "Thank you, Filia." He stood, steadying himself, and began, with the dragoness's aid, to trudge toward a spare cot under a window that Filia always kept in the back of her pottery room.

Filia was astounded that, despite being soaked in a very convincing illusion of sweat, Xellos still smelled like fresh summer and spicy-sweetness. Like, as she had mused earlier, dandelions, like freshly rained-upon earth, a pinch of playful pure vanilla overlaid with dark, intoxicating incense and musk. How did he manage to be so alluring, even now?

He was incredible.

He was her rite of passage into something other than wide-eyed and simple childhood, into a recognition of grays, middle-grounds, and multivalence. He was her doorway. Her state of limbo.

And suddenly, walking alongside this strange and beautiful creature formed from darkness, Filia felt the urge to cry again—not in disgust, or worry, or rage, but in gratitude, and in celebration of her own metamorphosis because of this unlikely catalyst that was Xellos the mazoku. She was almost religiously transported by this epiphany and she wished she could embrace him.

He seemed to sense some sort of powerful feeling in her—a mixed feeling, a bittersweet one—it first made him cringe, and then impishly, mysteriously, smile. "Sweet, cathartic Filia," he chuckled, as they reached the bed, his eyes closed, his voice breathy, wry, even a little dismaying for her. "Always so passionate, heh. So delightfully predictable."

Her cheeks lit on fire. "I'm sorry, my mind wandered…"

"Evidently," he croaked, slowly lying back on the bed.

"…Actually…I was thinking that I was …really quite glad for your presence…even though you drive me mad sometimes." Her voice was barely above a whisper.

"…Really. Maybe you're NOT so predictable." Xellos's smile became that of the cat devouring the canary, and he opened his eyes, and began to elaborate.

But then abruptly he jerked, arched his back, and yelped. More pointless sweat, pointless because she knew what he really was, but out of the habit of deceptive appearance, beaded his forehead and shirt. He gritted his teeth. "Ahhhh, damn. Enough small talk, I am afraid. This needs fixing rather quickly, if you please."

This time Filia did not stop and think. Every cell in her screamed with empathy and pathos. "I don't have the skills to heal you fully, but-but Milgasia, m-my hermit elder in the Kataa Mountains, he can heal you! I will call and persuade him! I will! It may take an hour or so though…so if pain can sustain you for that time, then…then here!"

She ran, seized a shard of shattered ceramic, and made the tiniest of cuts across her palm. Real red blood, not his fake blood, but her own real sacrifice, so noble to her in that moment of mental unclarity, bloomed out and trickled down the spaces between her fingers. She showed it to him, eagerly. "Here, it hurts, do you feel it? Do you feel better?"

Xellos had gone very quiet when Filia had begun babbling of her plans to heal him. Now, like a striking snake, he came to life through his weakness and seized the wrist of her injured hand in his own gloved fist, so tightly that she winced.

"FILIA. Don't."

His voice was unexpectedly loud and severe and his face was stormy. Just as she always felt the need to call on her thoughts in his presence, so too did it seem she inspired emotional demonstration in him. But she didn't know why, at the moment. He should be pleased by her actions.

She started to cry, hard, a flood, at his displeasure. She sank to her knees, her wrist still in his grasp.

"Look at me," Xellos snapped. "Silly creature, I said LOOK at me." He waited until she obeyed, and then, in a voice that was far more level, but somehow still sharp, he mandated, "If you do that sort of thing when I am around, then what I have done, and plan to do, for you, at my own cost, is pointless. And Filia, I don't like to do pointless things. Filia! Stop crying and listen. If you ever do something like this again," and he shook her by the wrist, just slightly, to indicate what manner of self-harmful action he meant, "then I will LEAVE you for GOOD." His eyes blazed ruby with that stern promise.

He did not look at the small spattering of her blood that he had caused, by shaking her wrist, on the floor.

Did not acknowledge it, even once.

"Dragon. Are you listening to me?"

Filia's head spun with confusion. Surely there could be nothing that a creature whose sole purpose was selfish pleasure, destruction, and chaos, would love more than to see a willing victim suffering on its behalf. It was just a little cut, a tide-over! She had never intended to offer great agony for him—gods, or had she? And if he was telling her NOT to, did this mean he was doing something…

Protective?

Selfless?

Was that conceivable of his race? She had been taught otherwise. Yet…

"Filia," Xellos was lying down again, his breathing ragged, his hands clutching the sides of the cot and his limbs trembling. Still, he summoned patiently instructive tones now. "Go bandage your hand and call Milgasia. I can wait an hour."

The hour passed quickly enough. Filia hovered constantly over Xellos's cot wringing her hands while he writhed, twisted, and grit his teeth. She left him only to bandage her palm, summon Milgasia, calm Jillas down, and check on the still-sleeping Val.

Milgasia arrived without fanfare, simply striding through the front door, clad in all white robes reminiscent of the garb of a Hindu ascetic.

His mid-back-length mop of hair was a deeper burnished gold than Filia's, a sign of far greater maturity—such maturity, in fact, that he was a century or so older than Xellos. His skin was a hue of fair cinnamon and his eyes were a shrewd canary yellow, and as he knelt by Xellos's bedside, he riveted them on the form of the agonized murderer of his kinsmen with a regal, analytical sort of coldness. "Daughter of Bazar Ul Copt, what do you mean me to do by sparing this monster's life?" His voice was like wind rustling the leaves of a late august tree. He was most intimidating, in a quiet sort of way. "Your father would weep to see this day."

"Why, hello to you too, Milgasia," Xellos scoffed through gritted teeth, burning amethyst eyes open and glaring. He made no effort to veil his biting condescendence toward his old enemy. "DO keep insulting your protégé, you haven't cast shame on the names of five generations of her forefathers yet. I mean look at her, she's still got the dignity to stare you in the eye." Then the mazoku paused to curl into a ball as a fresh wave of pain washed over him. "Ow, triple-shit," he grunted, breaching his habitual politeness to spit a profanity. Then he fell silent.

This cessation of baiting and insults was perhaps fortunate, for Milgasia's expression of icy contempt had grown to a point where he appeared ready to stand, refuse aid, and glide out of Filia's cottage. "Don't pretend to feel indignation on Filia's behalf, creature of chaos. Surely you must be getting a square meal out of all of her discomfort."

Filia shifted weight, hiding her bandaged hand, suddenly, with deep shame. No, that had not been the case. After all her derision of Xellos, he had not fed on her like some gleeful tick, not this time. Embarrassment and indignation swirled inside her tight stomach.

"My, my, dragons certainly do a lot of unnecessary gabbing, don't they?" Xellos shakily scoffed.

His eyes drifted towards Filia, witnessing her humiliation, then snapped electrically back on Milgasia.

They were a hotter color, suddenly.

He continued, "And yet, little thinking, and even LESS knowledge, accompanies your endless verbiage. You know nothing about my…regards…towards Filia. Now, my dear ignorant lizard, have you come here to scathe Filia over romantic relationships that she has every personal freedom to orchestrate, and to laugh as I die, or have you come here to fulfill her request that you heal me?" He smiled demeaningly up at his sole savior, cocking his head to one side against his pillow, as if genuinely curious about Milgasia's answer.

No one could accuse Xellos of lacking brass balls.

Milgasia continued to stare at the infamous mazoku down the end of his long, straight nose. His skin looked a little grayer for a moment. He drew a deep breath, demonstrating remarkable restraint, and, once again, addressed Filia. "Romantic relations? With this thing? Filia…as if an alliance with him alone were not enough!"

Filia didn't confront the charge. "Please just take care of him, Milgasia," she bleated.

"That is really what you desire? Or has he threatened you otherwise?"

"Xellos has not made a single threat against me. It is complicated, Milgasia."

"As are all things of substance," Xellos murmured. "Purity is overrated."

"As are you," Milgasia retorted, a bit more viciously. He shot to his feet. "Filia, you will regret sparing him. Let him die. You will thank me, someday in the future."

"Milgasia, NO, please!" Filia seized the hem of his robes and fell nearly prostrate before him. "PLEASE! You CAN'T!" She thought on Val's words, his words of bottomless sorrow, and exasperation, and lamentation, when he had been Valgaav, words which carried a grain of painful truth, and she added, "SOMEONE must cause this endless swinging of pendulums, this…back-and-forth warfare between gods and monsters, to END! We have ALREADY faced near destruction at the hands of a maoh from another universe because of this idiotic fighting!"

Behind them, Xellos made a surprised and appraising sound in his throat at her proclamation, but said nothing.

"And is that why you let him into your bed? Sweet, naïve child. Don't fear, Filia." Milgasia assumed a paternal, reassuring air. He touched the crown of his subordinate's head. "This thing of darkness will not harm either of us right now. He is too weak, and anyway, he wants to lull you into a state of trust. He won't do butchering in front of you, not now. He knows how it would upset you."

Now Xellos snorted. "You overestimate my generosity, and you underestimate Filia's strength. If I felt the need to kill the only person who, at the moment, can mend me, heh, you would have been eliminated by the instant you showed up at my bedside. When have I ever been anything but pragmatic and efficient, Milgasia?" The mazoku priest-general stretched a long, sinuous arm up behind his violet head, gingerly, but effecting that cavalier quality for which he was eternally infamous. "And anyway, Filia can handle a great deal. This I know. It is one of the most fascinating things about her. I cannot help admiring it." He snickered. "I'm somewhat amazed that you have overlooked such an asset as she. More proof of the foolishness of her elders and her gods."

Filia felt her cheeks growing hot. She clutched tighter to the foot of Milgasia's robes. She had never known Xellos admired her, in that strange manner of his. Admiration required, in a way, more sacrifices, more serious commitment, than mere attraction alone—more, even, than love alone. It threw still more kinks into the clockwork of this moment.

"You see how he baits and then lures, Filia?" Milgasia rumbled, his eyes having become burnished ore at Xellos's expert jibes. "How he seeks to divide and conquer? Let him die, I tell you. His words are empty!"

"For 'empty' words, they sure irritate the hell out of you," Xellos sneered. The air around him seemed to darken with hatred.

"PLEASE STOP!" Filia screamed. "Please, ENOUGH!" She felt like such a child, such a foolish, helpless child—for all her growing, all her weathering, over the last few years' events. Like a foolish child vainly begging her ancient, viciously quarreling parents to kiss and make up, rather than, simply, a grown woman persuasively seeking aid on behalf of the man she loved.

The man she loved. The monster. But the title felt contrived.

"You had better think twice about renewing animosities with me, Milgasia," Xellos hissed calmly through Filia's hysterics, still smiling. "Or pray to your Fire Dragon King that I don't somehow survive."

Filia began to whimper. She had never felt such urgency, or rage, and not known to whom she should direct it. "Please, please," she whispered, to no one in particular.

"A useless prayer," Xellos added, and Filia froze, and quieted, as she felt silk against her cheek, as a gloved hand, Xellos's, calmly brushed it, "because I now have more than one reason to survive. Whether you believe me is your mortally imperative choice, Milgasia. Heh."

"I think I can chance it," the dragon elder replied frostily. Smiling, as well. "I would chance anything to see an abomination such as you wiped off this world for good. A golden opportunity."

Xellos laughed. It was a hollow sound, spawning goosebumps on Filia's forearms and thighs. Yet still he stroked her cheek with his index and middle finger, so tenderly, just barely reaching her, attending calmly to the bursting emotionality that was so central to her, and so alien to him. He seemed to cherish it, somehow. "It's alright, Filia, get up. Don't beg to him on my account. He is undeserving, this witless wonder. But I'll find another way to fix myself."

"I won't let you die!" Filia protested. She grabbed the hand that touched her, crushed it in her grasp—exposing her bandaged palm in the process. "I'll try anything!" She was horrified at her own words, but they came as naturally as breathing.

"I won't let you cut yourself again for my sake," the "abomination" crooned. He ran his thumb across the back of her bandaged hand. "My silly dragoness. I won't take the unnecessary risk. Remember how I hate those?"

Milgasia froze in his path out the door, and turned. His expression had changed considerably. He thundered to Filia's side, and seized her wounded hand. He stared at the bloodied bandage for an eternal stretch. "Gods. Filia."

"Forgive me, Milgasia," Filia sobbed. "It was stupid, so very stupid, and I won't do it again.."

He didn't seem to hear her; he was glaring with all his might at Xellos. "…You refused to accept the…gift…of her pain, even at your own detriment?"

"It appears that way, doesn't it?" Xellos congenially smiled. His eyes closed.

Migasia's eyes, in turn, narrowed. "That is an awfully idyllic proclamation."

"Perhaps, but you can't prove that I don't care for her, can you? You cannot prove that the impossible never becomes probable."

"…No. I cannot. Very well, Xellos. I'll heal you. I will act on faith, and not reason, just this once. Filia, I hope you and I do not live to regret this day."

"We won't," Filia pledged, determined to believe it.

Milgasia stonily laid his hands on Xellos's midriff. The mazoku gazed levelly up at him, but his hands clawed at the bedsheets in anticipation of an excruciating process.

"Only white magic can be used to cast healing spells. It is my understanding that this much white magic may kill you, dark creature," Milgasia remarked, as warm orbs of light collected in his palms. His face was kinder now.

"Not if you go slowly," Xellos pointedly trilled back. Already his muscles were tightening, despite his composure. "Ah, the bitter taste of tonic."

"Very well. Brace yourself, then."

Xellos closed his eyes. His nearest hand slid, just barely, against Filia's bandaged palm, as though instinctually seeking some negative energies with which to counter the white magic, in her pain. But, just as he had earlier, he withdrew from the temptation at the last instant, leaving her untapped.

Her eyes filled again with tears. She squeezed her mazoku's shoulder, tightly, with her good hand.

He turned and faced the wall as Milgasia's healing magic reached its crescendo. Abruptly, almost savagely, he cried out, and it chilled Filia, because Xellos never demonstrated such uncompromising agony. He struggled viciously, for a moment, against Milgasia's painfully mending grasp, then remembered himself, collapsing back against the bed. He seemed to howl just like one of his creator's rugged northern wolves, as Milgasia began to pull back, and to dim the light of the healing spell.

Feeling sorrow as she had never felt before, Filia seized Xellos's tousled, spasming violet head in her arms and held tight. The gesture, and perhaps her anguish for him, had an almost mesmerizing effect; he shuddered, went limp, and seemed to fall asleep in her arms.

Milgasia drew away from the couple, and stood. "That is as much as I dare do. More might do a mazoku harm rather than good—but at least he is on the mend now." He drew a handkerchief from his robes, dabbing his forehead like some heroic physician. "I have never had to draw on so much power to heal before….the astral body is far more complicated to heal than the physical body. See to it that he is not moved for a week. And Filia. Be careful."

"You be careful, savior of demons," Xellos croaked, apparently as alert as ever through his bedraggled and suffering state. He mustered a grin, even a brittle chuckle. "I pay back debts, Milgasia. I owe one to the Dragon Aqualord to this day, and plan on paying it somehow. If you should wish to accept a favor from a mazoku, I will do you one…"

"Just treat her with respect and dignity, dark one," Milgasia severely retorted, nodding sharply at Filia. "Deserve her. That, I think, is more favor than you can handle, in and of itself."

Xellos opened his eyes, and said nothing. The very oxygen in the room seemed to crackle with intensity. "Mm," the priest-general finally replied, and no more.

"…Milgasia. I thank you." Filia rested her forehead against that of her universally unlikely lover. "You will see that there is a reason behind all this."

"I pray earnestly that you are right, daughter of Bazar Ul Copt," her elder replied, before teleporting to remote lands, and leaving the dragoness to her doubts.