Dragon Dolor: Chapter 1
"Depression"
Dislcaimer: Slayers does not belong to me. Yeps.

Four hundred years...Filia sighed as she set her tea cup down on it's matching saucer. Usually tea would calm her down a bit, and so she had made it with the hopes that it would soothe her troubled mind. Unfortunately, it had caused her to think even more than she already was. About the past. Lina, Gourry, Zelgadis, Amelia. All had departed from the world a couple hundred years ago after leading full and happy lives, as far as humans go. After four hundred years, she had hoped that she would have forgotten about them by now. But of course she could not, because whenever the thought of her being the last golden dragon crossed her mind, she remembered the slaughter of the rest of her race, and then she would see the faces of her old friends as clearly as she had seen them on that horrific day.

"Filia? You home?" a voice called out as Filia heard the front door close. She shook her head to clear her mind, as well as the tears that were beginning to well up in her eyes.

"Yes Val, I'm here," she replied. She pushed her chair back and flinched as it scraped loudly against the wooden floor, the proceeded to clean up her tea things as the last of the ancient dragons wandered into the room looking pleased with himself. He gave Filia a kiss on the cheek as a greeting, the same kiss she recieved just about every day for the last few hundred years, and leaned back against the table casually.

"Protecting this town is too easy," he said smugly, yawning for effect. "Soon I'll have enough gold to get you that vase you wanted..." He noticed that she was cleaning up though she hadn't finished her tea, and his train of thought immediately shifted. "Filia-san, are you okay?" he asked, his eyes concerned. She shook her head and forced a smile; he only called her Filia-san when he was worried about something...or when she scolded him. But that was another matter entirely.

"I'm fine," she said, trying to sound cheerful, but a squeak in her voice betrayed her emotions. Val wasn't fooled for a moment. She had been acting like this for the past hundred years or so, and it was getting worse every day. He didn't understand why, after three hundred years of happiness, she would become drepressed so suddenly. He reached out for her to pat her shoulder, but she had already turned with her things and was hurrying to the kitchen. "I'm fine, I said!" Val shrugged half-heartedly and left Filia to her thoughts.

* * * * *

Filia sighed as she heard Val leave. Great, now I've upset him. She honestly didn't know what to feel anymore. She had raised Val as best she could, acting as his older sister and teaching right from wrong. She hoped. But he was now the spitten image of the man - no, dragon, she corrected herself - that he was before he was reborn and she had gratefully taken the chance to atone for the sins of the golden dragons by raising the last member of the very race they had sought to wipe out so long ago. He had never called her okaa-san or onee-san; never referred to her as family, but never treated her as anything more than family. She had not lied to him, not really; the events that had happened over four hundred years ago were pretty much legendary and keeping the information from him as well as her role in it would have been impossible. But he didn't remember what had happened, and she had watered the events down when she told him the sad tale.

She never, ever referred to him as Valgarv. As far as she knew, he did not know of his past life at all. She let him think that he was Valgarv's son and that she had named him after his dead father. She hadn't actually told him that, but when he had asked her if that was the case, his eyes shining with youthful interest, she had agreed with that theory before she could get the better of herself. Looking at him today, she couldn't decide if that was the right thing to do or not. Her heart filled with remorse whenever she saw him, and that sadness grew as he did. She did not know if she loved him as a sister, or if she loved him out of pity, or if she simply loved him. It was enough that she loved him at all, she supposed.

She felt a pang in her heart as she longed for someone she could really love; someone who could help her race flourish again. Once she died, the golden dragons would be extinct. Once Val died, the ancient dragon race would meet the same fate. It would be foolish for her to think that she could ever get together with Val; that would be too...weird. And it wouldn't help either of their plights, either. If only she could find someone...

Suddenly, Filia jumped as she heard a voice coming from directly behind her - a voice that was not Val's.

"Greetings, Filia. Been awhile, hasn't it?"

(To be continued....)