Author's Note: Theme #75. Continued from Clipped Wings.


Totally Smashed.

Xellos was still stewing from his last encounter with Filia. Being called a slave by a lizard who did not even possess a hundredth of his power was not sitting at all well with him. She was just spewing nonsense and didn't even understand half of what she was saying. Yes, that was right. Unfortunately this was probably the eighth time he'd told himself that and the matter didn't seem any more likely to leave his head.

He had to suppose that from a certain perspective, namely Filia's, she was actually correct. But that was only in the way that all creatures were subject to the whims of those more powerful than them. She wasn't any freer than he was, she just wasn't aware of it. We're all under someone's heel; that's just a fact.

It wasn't, to be perfectly honest, a fact that was making him feel any better.

It was the pity that had really gotten to him. The idea of someone like her pitying him was almost too much to bear. He'd witnessed pity before, but it being directed at him was a galling and utterly foreign experience. Being pitied was not a pleasant experience. After all, pity was just a disgusted kind of love.

This… wasn't a productive line of thought. But he kept running through the same old tracks and was unable to put it out of his mind or move on to anything new. At this point, he just wished he could stop thinking, if only for a little while.

It is in this mindset, Xellos observed grimly, but with irony, that mortals drink.

Of course, Xellos himself occasionally partook in alcohol. It was a… social thing. Humans are much more inclined to make deals over drinks. Not drinking would've made them uncomfortable and, in any case, the more he'd drink the more they'd drink and the more they drank the easier it was to strike a deal.

But it wasn't the same thing for him. Not having a blood stream to build up alcohol in, he was simply left to enjoy the fine flavor of the beverage while anyone who drank with him enjoyed the effects of inebriation.

Then again… it was all just a matter of processing chemicals, wasn't it? He could do that. When the mood struck her, Lord Beastmaster certainly seemed to manage it. With flourish.

He should… probably check this out. If only to develop a better frame of reference for the experience. Xellos was all about developing better frames of reference.

He phased out.


Some time later Xellos found what he was looking for. He walked into a bar which wasn't quite seedy, but definitely on the seedy side. It was seedy-esque; certainly not a place that would make it into a tourist pamphlet top ten list, but on the other hand, they probably actually washed their glasses. The lighting was low and depressed inside; a sharp contrast from the bright, snowy day outside where couples were walking arm in arm, carrying heart-shaped objects. Apparently some sort of late winter festival devoted to love was going on. Perhaps the rejects of that ceremony turned to look at him in a glassy-eyed way as he entered and then turned their attention back to their drinks.

He walked up to the bar, rapped on the counter and asked the bartender to fetch him a bottle of whatever the locals used as paint thinner. Normally this kind of behavior would at least have earned him the cold shoulder in such establishments and at most sent a chair flying at his face, but this bartender hadn't lasted as long as he had without learning how to feel people out. Priests could always be trouble when they drank and this one looked like trouble already—not in the usual scarred, tattooed, grimacing way—but a kind of trouble nonetheless. He passed the newcomer a bottle and a very small glass without a word.

Xellos poured a generous dose into the glass with a steady hand and downed it in a way that got the attention of the more competitive clientele of the bar. It tasted awful, but he knew it would start tasting better when the caustic substance starting burning away taste buds. He took another drink and the quality seemed to be marginally improved. It was even better on the third go.

He was starting to worry that he'd gone to all this trouble for nothing. He wasn't feeling any different and the stinging encounter with Filia weighed upon his mind just as much. He reached for the glass again and missed, but chalked this up to being lost in thought. He managed to grasp it on the second try.

The morose silence of the room was broken for a moment as a sigh that was more of a groan from some rose up. Xellos followed the gaze of every man in the room toward the window. The windows must have been dirty, since his view through them was rather blurry, but he could make out a young woman holding a box given to her by a young man. She moved quite animatedly, putting something from the box onto her finger and throwing herself into his arms.

Xellos turned back to his drink. He didn't know for sure what number drink this was at the moment, but that hardly mattered. What he did know for sure was that watching the courtship rituals of humans wasn't doing anything to improve his mood.

Filia probably would've thought it was sweet. If she'd been there she would've sighed and clasped a hand to her heart. Maybe if she was really drawn into a fit of emotion she'd take out a handkerchief and cry into it over the romance of the situation. But no… if she'd been there with him she would've been too absorbed being disgusted by the bar and its customers. Yes… she'd feel disgust, but not love as well… not pity. No pity for them, but…

He looked up in time to see one of the bar's patrons giving him a half smile. It wasn't a nice smile, and not only because it was on a grizzled prospector's face and therefore missing a few important teeth. It was an unhappy sort of smile, but one that bespoke a fellow feeling. The man lifted his glass, said: "Wimmin'," vehemently and took a drink.

Xellos looked at his own glass. "Wimmin'," he was forced to agree, and drank it down.


A few hours later and even Xellos's new friends from the bar (to whom he owed a great debt of thanks for teaching him a series of amusing songs) thought that he'd had enough. Now he was roaming around at the stage of drunkenness where calling on an ex to give her a piece of your mind and/or beg her to come back to you seems like an excellent idea. After a few misses he managed to teleport to Filia's door.

Before Filia had even managed to get out her quintessential 'what are you doing here?' (with perhaps a confused addition of '…and why are you using the door?') Xellos had declared in what, in his mind, was a clear, reasonable voice: "I don' need yer pity!"

For a moment Filia was taken aback, then she sniffed the air and was really taken aback. "Are you drunk?" she asked disbelievingly as he lurched past her and into the house.

"No," he answered belligerently. He walked into nothing and fell down. "…Maybe a li'l," he admitted from the floor.

"You can't be drunk," Filia said, as if she could order the facts away. She clomped over and tried to pull him up. "That shouldn't even be possible!"

"Well if I am itsyer fault," he said reproachfully, immobile despite her efforts to get him on two feet again.

She grunted and pulled but he wasn't moving, instead she ended up falling to the floor next to him where she shrieked at him in utter aggravation and demanded: "How is it my fault?"

He extended his index finger and narrowly avoided poking his own eye out. " 's secret," he said.

She slammed her hands against the wooden floor in frustration. "I demand that you sober up immediately!" she ordered.

Xellos actually might've been able to follow this somewhat ridiculous command if he'd been in any state to see that it was a good suggestion. As it was, he reached out and touched the clenched and angry face in front of him. "S'okay though," he said in drunken rumination. "S'okay 'cause… we're the same."

After a brief moment of uncertain she slapped his hand away. "What are you talking about?" she shot back in utter bewilderment.

He hoisted himself up unsteadily on his own steam and walked on, using his staff like a cane as Filia scrambled to follow him. " 'Salright, 'salright," he kept muttering to himself. "Yer the same 's me."

"I am not the same as you," Filia said forcefully. "What do you mean by that?" He stumbled again and caught himself on her sofa. "Xellos!"

"Filia," he said, at first it was an answer, but then he seemed to get stuck on it. "Filia, Filia, Filia. For some reason 's nice to say." He climbed onto her couch and quieted.

Filia watched him with growing horror for a moment. "No," she said, crossing her arms. "You are not sleeping it off here. Absolutely no way!"

There was silence from the form on her couch. She stepped back. "Absolutely no way," she repeated, but to herself. She couldn't just let someone that evil spend the night on her couch, could she?

She drew closer once again and reached out a tentative hand, as if ready to recoil in case he awoke and made more bizarre proclamations. She touched his forehead gently and swept his bangs out of his face. His eyes were closed, not in his usual insincere squint but in the slumber of the seriously drunk.

"What could've possibly gotten into you?" she asked softly.

She hesitated for a moment, then reached up for the quilt that was draped over the top of the couch, pulled it over him, and stood up. She dimmed the lights and went up to her room.

He was going to have a lot of explaining to do when morning came.

…And a monster of a headache.