Blue
A Slayers Fanficlet
By A. Stitt

Part 3

Speak of the angel, at the frozen lake, near her cottage dwelling…
Filia has been prattling in a high, manic voice that could strain any crystal in a ten mile radius for the past hour: without any interruption by Zelgadiss.
It is like an estrogen-induced filibuster.
"I'm not really hungry anymore….who needs picnics… Are you? No, you really don't eat with that body, do you? Neither did Xellos, I mean…I mean I'm just used to men who don't eat human food is all….I think we should ice skate! Should we? I never have. Have you? Of course I may fall a lot but you can catch me and it will be lovely….yes, let's ice skate…"
"Do you know how?"
"No, but I can learn, you an show me, like I said you can catch me and it'll be grand somehow I just know it, I promise not to change over to true form and crack us both through the ice!"
She turns to him and confronts a daunting dose of calculated blankness. "Zelgadiss, you don't talk very much, do you?"
His smile is at least apologetic. "No, I really don't. Is there something you wanted me to do differently?" He bends to lace her skates for her, avoiding glancing up her skirt with a chastity that she should find admirable. But his steel-wire hair brushes her thigh, nicking her thick cotton tights. She jerks away as Zelgadiss calmly continues, "Problems of communication ought to be solved early. With Amelia, it was best that I let her talk and talk without interrupting. Perhaps you are different?"
The very question strikes a chord of profound guilt in her gut. It is considerate and blunt all in one stroke, and it cuts her strangely to the quick—far more effectively than his hair runs her pantyhose. Filia was never quite so aware of her own self-absorption before, with Xellos—Xellos who argued back, who snapped or cackled, or even chastised, when he felt her rigid disapproval.
Xellos's taunts had been a weird comfort to Filia—acknowledgment of her strength and sufficiency facing an adversary, her endurance and her zeal…and disavowal of her pettiness.
With Zelgadiss, a man of neither theatrics nor silver tongue, a man of pragmatism rather than artifice, there is no indulgent bickering.
His arid wit stings Filia's bulldozing, paradoxically naked soul.
Sandpaper and baby skin.
Neither gracious evasion, nor tolerant teasing, of her less flattering features: no Xellos. Only the rehearsal of brutal honesty: only Zelgadiss.
Wait: only? ONLY? No!
The dragoness's stomach curdles. This was not meant to be a comparison of former and present lovers: particularly not one that cast former lovers in favorable light. "No, y…you're fine! I just…enough about me! What are you up to these days, Zel…gadiss?" She gulps audibly.
The nickname has died upon birth.
Because phonetically, it is identical to that of that infuriating former lover whose memory hangs thick and alienating above them both even now.
It's not lost on Zelgadiss, every bit a brilliant mind. But again that chafing aloofness dictates his actions, and he merely nods at her blunder, and proceeds. "If we dwell on that topic of discussion we may return to the person who is clearly heavily on your mind, Filia." He straightens in one rigid motion, like a tin soldier just before it is fully unwound and freezes in place. Another serene, beautiful, and oddly cold mannerism.
"You mean…oh yes…he was the one who destroyed all those Claire Bibles, wasn't he?"
"Yes." Unnervingly, Zelgadiss doesn't elaborate. His granite jaw grinds, and his pewter eyes glisten with a carefully adjusted glaze of nonchalance. "So you WERE thinking about Xellos just now." Again the apologetic smile, though this time Filia can't imagine why Zelgadiss is sorry.
She feels herself sweating under her armpits and between her thighs, and in other unsightly and uncomfortable locations. "Let's skate," she mumbles, grateful for the canary-hued curtain of bangs in her face. She is not sure whether her eyes are moist, but the blurring of the snowy landscape is fairly incriminating.
The chimera catches her arm as she falls, extravagantly, on her hindquarters. Her tail shoots out from her dress, buffering the fall, but Filia still bursts into tears that are now unmistakable.
"Look," and the wintry world reels as her chivalrous suitor hoists her upright, "you don't have to pretend that this is working, Filia. I'm thinking about somebody else, too."
"N-no! Don't let's give up just yet! Please!" She turns and flings her arms around his cold, hard waist.
And then she kisses him. Forcefully, coldly, and without feeling—on the mouth. And she thinks on how hard his mouth is. How unyielding, and unplayful. How unlike Xellos's. And it depresses her.
Zelgadiss stiffens still more, pulling his lips off hers with the smacking sound of a wet suction cup. "I'm sorry, but what are you doing?" He is genuinely perplexed. "Oh of course. No…listen, it's okay…please, Filia, relax. It's okay…I swear it is…" He fishes in his pocket and proffers a handkerchief.
Filia takes it and sobs more because he is being so proper, instead of making some teasing yet adoring remark about how beautiful she is with raccoon-like streaks of mascara under her eyes.
Like HE would.
Damn HIM.
"Filia…" Zelgadiss sighs, jaw audibly grinding again. "You've got to stop crying."
"I'm ludicrous! It's me—it's who I am!" She squeezes out these words between her fangs, hitting his chest, both pectorals, fiercely, twice, as the hot tears rain in angry, grieving torrents. "You're supposed to find it endearing! Not just blandly observe it! You're supposed to make some snotty remark about how ludicrous I am, then say you LOVE ME ANYWAY! No matter WHAT! MAKE ME FEEL LIKE YOU'RE NOT DOING ME ANY FAVORS, ZELGADISS! MAKE ME FEEL LIKE THE FIRST MOMENT YOU SAW ME YOU'D HAVE TAKEN ME, AS I AM!"
He watches her for a long moment. Then he whets his lips, and they shine like hematite. "I thought you accused him of being unable to say that word."
Filia is horrified, rendered still and silent in the middle of her tantrum. "…who? I mean…what word?"
"Love." Zelgadiss cocks his head, and his expression finally softens, and carries a kindness that makes Filia breathless, and reminds her of why Amelia was so lucky.
Amelia.
Left behind. Former. Like HIM. Like Xellos.
"You're NOT thinking of me right now, are you?" she hiccups.
"No." He is so very fair, and honest, to admit this now, at the beginning, before rebound becomes a far more profound error. And Filia is beginning to find it desirable about him. But the fact remains: He said no.
"I need to be shorter."
"Yes."
"…Softer. With black hair. And enormous eyes."
"Like a child's. Trusting, waiting. Do you know why I love her?"
"Why?"
"She laughs for me. I don't laugh. I can't. I find it nearly impossible. Amelia laughs for me. I dream about Amelia's laugh, and I tell her to store up laughter for me in a gold box in her spirit while I'm journeying for a cure for my body. It's a silly noise, like the bubbles in a hot spring. A stupid noise, even. But gods, Filia. It saves my soul. And I've cut it off unforgivably. I broke the lock on that box and robbed her of all her laughter when I left her. So I need to stop. There. I guess I can talk a lot if I try, huh?"
Filia covers her mouth and looks away, still in the chimera's embrace. The moonlight casts eerie, forlorn shadows of their forms. Lonely even when entwined.
"Now do you see why I said it was okay to talk about him?" Zelgadiss breathes. "Just do it, Filia. Perhaps this is what our date was meant to achieve all along."
Something inside her caves like a landslide down a very slippery ravine. She succumbs. "…I don't like the flowers you gave me tonight."
"I know."
"I'm sorry."
"Don't be. I'm glad you hate them. More glad than you can possibly know."
"He can't say 'love,' you're right. But…"
"But he can show it." And Zelgadiss parrots the very words Xellos spoke, in the throes of profound emotional pain, earlier that evening. He reaches up and makes two precise swipes at Filia's eyes, ridding her of the mascara and tears staining them. He smiles, quietly and encouragingly.
"…Yes. I've been careless. I didn't know he had a heart to break. No…I did…I did…I won't let myself off the hook…he made Val a night light when Val had a nightmare and was sobbing…he held my hair back when I threw up one of the first times we dated…and then he rocked me all night and gave me chamomile tea for my stomach…I knew he had a heart to break…and I did, I broke it, I had a childish fit and I broke it….he looked awful tonight. Awful. I've hurt him. I accused him in an unforgivable way…"
"Of what?"
"I admitted to him that the Supreme Elder during the Darkstar Campaign was my father…"
Zelgadiss makes an incredulous noise in his throat.
Filia bows her head. "…and then I accused him of being so self-centered that he wouldn't have spared my father even now, knowing he was my father, for my feelings, if it were against his own needs…I said that he wouldn't even cut his hair to save me…"
Zelgadiss chortles. "Sorry," he adds, on the receiving end of a chiding glare. "But that was a good one. He's so dandy-vain about that damned purple hair, hah!"
"No…it was awful…so awful of me…"
"Filia, look…hah!... sorry…look, I suspect it was more of a mutual wounding than that. I can't imagine Xellos didn't throw some zingers of his own. He can be the cruelest sort conceivable."
"But it needs to be healed mutually, on the same token. And…no. He isn't cruel to me…he abstains from that…he's a…Val and I call him a vegetarian mazoku….because he won't feed on our sorrows, or our miseries, or even our anger. Nor will he willingly produce those energies by his own actions. I've underestimated him. And if Amelia's laugh alone 'saves your soul'…well, then…"
"That is true. Though we have our work cut out for us. Perhaps we should become charter members of the Take Back Your Old Lovers Support Group."
Filia laughs wetly. "Amelia will take you back. Amelia is forgiving. Endlessly so."
"And isn't Xellos?"
"I thought you hated Xellos. I thought you always expected the worst kind of behavior from him."
"Pretty much. But Filia…you said yourself that you are different in his eyes."
The dragoness finds herself giggling softly, carried away on a ridiculous and sweet memory. "Do you know," she begins, suddenly feeling light, and warm, and boisterous, "that when Val turned four, I was totally broke because the sales on my Greek line of teacups were super low, so the day before his birthday, Xellos and I went to buy him a cake at the only pastry shop in town…and," she giggles loudly now, flinging her arms wide while Zelgadiss holds her by the waist and softly smiles, "and the priggish old baker wouldn't let us have a cake with Val's favorite color …there were twenty pink cakes and Val wanted a green one, and the baker wouldn't make any new ones till the twenty pink ones were sold, and I couldn't AFFORD to buy all of them to get her to make a new green one…so Xellos…HEHE…Xellos antagonized the baker, and then he ATE ALL OF THE PINK CAKES on the SPOT…and the baker was so taken aback and shaken that she made us that green cake…HEHE and Val was so happy that year with his grotesque green cake…Poor Xel, his tummy was so fat and full and sore all through Val's birthday…but Val was SO happy with his cake, and I think it was his best birthday ever, and that was all that mattered to me, and so it mattered to Xel too….!" At last Filia dissolves into laughter that feels quaking and strange, too intense, on the border, too of tears. But after she has cried a little longer, while Zelgadiss holds and pats her, she feels that buoyancy, that hope, return. "I love him so much."
"I can tell," says Zelgadiss, who has an appreciative look on his face, as well. "I'm…actually…more impressed by Xellos than I have ever been. Thank you for that…EXTREMELY odd…but touching…anecdote."
Filia's hand, still covering her mouth, traces her own lips pensively. She nibbles on a nail. "He says my soul is blue. I guess only a soul mate can discern another soul mate's color…"
"I guess so. In fact, I'd stake a sure claim on it."
Filia's scaly golden tail curls around Zelgadiss's arm and squeezes it affectionately. "Thank you," she murmurs, leaning against him.
"MOMMY." A young, thin, high voice pierces the night air. Both adults turn their heads in time to see a flourish of black feathers and a small, aqua-haired, topaz-eyed child landing in front of them. His little face has the keenness of a fox's and the sweetness of a puppy's: Val. "What are you DOING? Where's Xel? I came home early coz I had a bad dream and…and I need your goodnight kiss…and Xel oughtta read me a story…." The child casts a mutinous, territorial look up at Zelgadiss, who promptly disentangles himself from Filia. "I don't want HIM to read me a story," he adds darkly. "He might poke out my eyeballs with his hair."
"Valteira," Filia hisses quietly, bending to embrace her adoptive son. "Honey, that's rude!"
"No, it's not." Zelgadiss is broadly grinning, for the first time all evening. He even chuckles, a quiet, rustling baritone sound. "I didn't eat twenty cakes on Val's behalf. It makes perfect sense, Filia. It's all going to be okay. Everything is making sense again. I'm heading out, Val. You and your mom have some story-time, alright?"
The child only glares back through cascades of his mother's dandelion hued hair, squeezing her tightly, squeezing the smell of this interloper out of her pores.
Filia turns sheepishly to face her magnificently crashed date, and it is her turn to smile apologetically. "Er, I'm sorry, he's terribly protective of me…"
"I'd not have it any other way," Zelgadiss grins. "Are you alright getting back inside by yourselves?"
"Completely," Filia replies, shining.
"Kay. Then BYE," Val spits pointedly.
"Of course—I have someplace to be myself," Zelgadiss concedes, waving at the cuddling pair of dragons. He does not even pause to remove his ice skates: He glides down the frozen lake, around a bend, and out of sight.
Gently smiling, and lifting her child into her arms as she sits to remove her own skates, Filia is fairly certain the city of Saillune is the skating chimera's destination point.

An extraordinarily tall woman stands up at the front of the warm, dark-lit tavern. She shakes out her blue-black waterfall of hair, her long-lashed lapis lazuli eyes narrowed in a slightly drunken attempt at shrewdness—which comes across as near-sighted squinting. She bridles her chest, baring a scantily-clad body that ought to exist only by the hand of an excessively hormonal male sculptor. A black-gloved hand flies coquettishly to her kittenish lips in a fit of humor at the entering Lina's expense: "WHY LINA, alone AGAIN, are we? This is why you shouldn't have ditched me in Zephilia with your sister when you were barely sixteen and gone trekking around the Red World with that baboon, Rowdy Gabriev's grandson! WUHHHhoohoohooho, WUHHHhoohoohoo…"
"Naga, that laugh is beginning to border on obscenity." The petite sorceress with flame-tongue hair collapses into a chair near Naga's table.
"Good! Splendid!" Naga clasps her hands, enrapt, evidently, at her own obscene nature. A delicate pink blush appears on her ivory cheeks.
Lina sighs. Sometimes she hates how gorgeous all her female friends are. "I'm not alone, by the way. I brought a friend who needs cheering-up as much as I do."
"A MALE friend…?" Naga lurches towards Lina, and one of her few endearing traits—her genuine pleasure at another person's good fortune—shows through in her shining expression. She stumbles over a bar stool. "Oops…"
"Watch it…no…"Lina's eyes narrow. "Not THAT type of male friend. A man, though, yes. You met him briefly before. My mazoku friend."
"Oh that, Xanalliptus…Xucchini….Xe…X-something Metal-Aluminum…"
"Xellos Metallium, Naga."
"YEAH, him. Didn't he try to kill you once?" Naga hiccups. "Isn't he some manner of sociopath all powerful demon thingie?"
Lina summons patience, and feels a pang of nostalgia at the fact that she had to muster just such a virtue frequently on Gourry's behalf. "It was just business. Orders. We have an understanding. He just broke up with his girlfriend. He's pretending to be the heartless bastard type, since that's the typical response from a mazoku, but he's languishing like hell. So I brought him here with me. He's just getting something his ex's son made him."
"Gotten soft on your friends, have you?"
"Can you imagine losing the people you love most?"
"Amelia just did." Naga arches an eyebrow. "Don't lecture me on the issue. That pile of steaming rock-feces, how dare he walk out on my painfully naïve kid sister…."
"Alright, I won't lecture ya…since I'm such a 'softie.' And ew, by the way."
"WUHHHH-hoohoohoo. You're so weird, Lina-poo."
"Why does everyone add some stupid suffix to the end of my name?"
Before Naga can counter, Xellos's smokiest voice interjects behind them, "Because you're so easy to goad, Lina-kins. Ahhh. Yes. I really WAS rather hungry. Thanks for that appetizer of annoyance."
"Whatever." Lina rounds on Xellos's form, inspecting him. Nothing's different, except for the fact that his black, Greek-meander trimmed cloak is reinstated, if off one shoulder. His hair, too, remains messier than usual. "….Hey…I thought you were pickin' something up…?"
"I have it." And he closes the topic, with a tight little smile. He brushes his bangs out of his eyes, which, as testimony to his hazy-mindedness, he leaves unguardedly open again. "Ah. And you'll be the charming Naga. Enchante, I assure you." Blandly, distractedly, Xellos takes Naga's regally thrust-out hand and kisses the top of it.
Naga's expression has changed. It's as sharp as Xellos's is vague.
For the second time that evening, Lina marvels at a blatant role reversal.
"I really remember you now," Saillune's unknown ex-crown-princess remarks.
"People don't easily forget me. I either leave a distinct impression, or I kill them." Xellos is glancing around for the bartender. He sits. He curls his legs up under him, then draws his knees to his chest. He folds his arms on his knees, steepling his fingers, like a praying mantis.
"You're the dragoness's boyfriend," Naga pushes onward, mercilessly. "That's the woman that assface Zelgadiss was going to see tonight."
Lina gasps out loud. For Naga's own safety, she gestures at her, wildly, but covertly as possible.
A single line, deeply cut, forms between Xellos's perfect black eyebrows. A frown, and a composed, refined frown at that.
Naga gets the feeling there's quite a bit of cerebral activity teeming behind that carefully calculated blankness. Quite a bit, which he is expert at hiding.
She can fix that. She smirks and slides into Xellos's lap. She presses her most outstanding physical features against his chest.
Lina gags. The rest of the tavern howls and catcalls as the extremely attractive pair of dark-haired creatures become entangled.
Xellos has a little more color in his impassive cheeks, but otherwise his face is still superhumanly bland. "Yes?"
"So…my sister's fiancé and your ex…" she purrs. "What a shame. They mean well but they just don't fit, do they? I think I shall probably castrate him sometime this week for breaking my sister's heart." She reels back her head and lets loose a high, haughty giggle that mimicks the cry of an exotic and colorful bird.
Xellos's face becomes, if possible, blanker. "Ah." He shifts weight under Naga, expertly wiggling out of her grasp, like some eel. "Jolly good for you. If you'll excuse me…"
"That's funny," Naga persists, fixing glistening azure eyes on his profile. She traces it, softly, with one black-gloved finger. "Not that we've had much of an acquaintance, but I always thought you were a wild one under that…absurd politeness. I never thought of demons as …blasé in bed."
"Sorry to disappoint." The acid in Xellos's voice could melt skin. He smiles point-blank into her face. It's not a friendly gesture. Still no dimples, muses Lina.
"See here, Mr. Metallium. I'm picky with my lovers…"
"Oh, gods…" Lina mumbles, head clutched in hands. She foresees prompt world destruction upon the sexual union of the pair before her.
"And," Naga proceeds as if not hearing, "I have singled you out. You're a lonely gorgeous man. I'm a bored gorgeous woman. We're both perfectly single. Let's have at it." And then she wraps her long and ludicrously perfect marble thighs around his waist. "Not in public, of course. I'm not tasteless. Take me to my room at this inn. Lina will…go find Gourry and frolic about in his chambers." She makes a dismissive gesture, apparently oblivious to the homicidal and animal grunts emanating from Lina's table.
Xellos casts Naga's thighs the gaze of an art dealer who has just stumbled upon a yet-undiscovered ten-foot oil painting by an Old Master.
He shifts weight again, once, twice. The movement is not fidgety, but rather sleek and smug. A hungry leer builds on his face as Naga calmly, seductively strokes his hair.
Then her lips part and move toward his. She rears up onto his chest.
A look of discomfort crosses Xellos's face, as if something sharp is sticking him.
And he teleports to the opposite side of the tavern—by himself.
"Sorry." He sounds slightly husky, and very breathless, but other than that not a hair on his head is disheveled.
"Sorry?" She casts him an arch glare. Her indignation is regal.
"The problem with your otherwise brilliant plan, Miss Naga, is that I am not single. I'm taken. I'm not a human, I'm a demon. It's already extraordinary that I care for even one person aside myself. I've cultivated that caring for a certain woman and her son for a long while. It would be foolhardy to blow it all now." Xellos's lip quirks. "And anyway, you'd not be happy if I admitted I was picturing you just now as blond, with pointy ears, and smaller..ah well…" He whets his lips, his eyes conspicuously avoiding her chest.
Naga's smile in return is surprisingly serene. "I understand," she says. "Nothing would make me happier than if you won Filia back. Amelia is suffering right now, and that idiot chimera needs to remember where his loyalties lie."
Xellos nods; it's like a period at the end of a clincher sentence—it needs no elaboration. So he vanishes, with a whisk of wind and a physical shimmering-out.
"Now THAT is self-control," Naga comments at the place from which he has teleported, seizing her brandy bottle.
Lina stares accusatorily, and amusedly, at her female companion across their two tables. "You did that on purpose. You knew he'd say no." She flings it out before Naga can compose a clever cover-up.
The self-christened White Serpent's eyes narrow. "I don't know what you're talking about. He's a very attractive man…demon…thingie…"
"Something I'm not denying. But Naga the Serpent has ten attractive men waiting in the wing. For what it's worth, it worked. I bet my life savings in gold coins that he's going to Filia's. You're a good big sister. Looks like everything's going back to how it should be, and soon."
"…Whatever you say, Lina." Naga sips daintily on her brandy. But under the hand that cups the glass and hides her mouth, she's grinning very impishly indeed.
The grin fades, and Naga's eyes take on a considerable keenness, when a certain chimera, clad in ice skates, enters the bar, approaches her table, and breathlessly demands, "Where's Amelia?"
"Fast work," Lina snorts from her table. "Oh, and hey, Zelgadiss."
The chimera narrows his eyes first at the entire tavern gawking at his outlandish appearance and dramatic entry, and then at the tiny sorceress in particular. A decided smugness descends upon his features. "It may interest YOU to know that a certain hulking blond, and I do NOT mean my date this evening, thanks, is wandering around with a rather conspicuous red handprint on his face just outside the tavern the next village over. Alone. As in, by himself. I ice-skated right past him."
Lina purses her lips. Her burgundy eyes glisten puckishly. "Tellim where your sister is, Naga. He's a good man. Always did make a great sidekick."
"Ha ha, Lina," Zelgadiss grunts mirthlessly at her back, as she flies from her chair and out the tavern door, leaving elder sister and prodigal lover to spar, and work out a fond reunion. The sound of Zelgadiss's grumbled apologies and Naga's reedy cackles follow her outside. She has a feeling Zelgadiss and Amelia will be re-negotiating the names of their first and second-born children before the night is over.
"Hope you're winning back your other piece, too, Xellos," Lina murmurs as she runs.

Val awakens to the smell of citrus, spice, and rain: the smell of dad, dad with the playful ways and the hidden eyes and the forever smile, who has been gone for painful months. Dad who taught him to tie shoes, who helped him learn how to fly, who did everything from clean up his puke to eat twenty cakes on his fourth birthday. He gasps softly and reaches out in the dark for mom's best boyfriend ever, who became dad, whom he misses. "Xel?"
"Correct!" A lean, solid form hovers over him. Arms lace loosely around his body and squeeze. "Morning, sleepyhead." Dad smells like earth and sweat today too. It's unusual. And dad's hair…why isn't dad's hair swishing in Val's face, and tickling his nose, like usual, when he hugs him.
Val opens up bleary honey-colored eyes and looks up into dad's face. Those eyes widen.
"Xel…you look different…"
Dad chuckles. Soft, melodic, high. Val is so used to it that it's like a lullaby soothing him back to unconsciousness. He smiles and nestles his head against dad's chest, where a necklace that he made dad last Father's Day safely hangs.
"Yyyeah ahaha…I know I do. Go back to sleep, buddy," Xellos's voice comes from somewhere over him. "I'll be here when you wake up."

Filia wakes up and has a very odd thought:
What is that smell?
It's like sweat and dirt, only muted by more pleasant things like flowers and spices. It wafts in her window. She rises, scowling, wondering if Jillas or Gravos has too long neglected a bath.
She rises from bed, in just a pale blue nightgown and pink satin robe. Her bare feet land on many small, crunchy things. She resists the urge to envision something disgusting, like a colony of dead ants, and shriek. She looks down slowly through her disheveled frosty lemon bangs.
Seeds. All kinds of seeds. Various sizes and shapes. And with them, bulbs. Hundreds of thousands of them—all leading down the stairs.
Filia recognizes the impish, paradoxically sweet and yet seductive work of one former lover when she sees it. She swallows audibly. "Xellos?" She calls the name timidly. She had intended to go looking for him that week…damn him for always making the first move…always knowing her so well…always anticipating her so keenly…
She bites her lip until her fang pierces the flesh, and then she swallows back the little rivulet of blood, chastising herself for her nerves. He will not get the better of her!
The bulb and seed trail leads into that selfsame patch in the back of Filia's garden where mums had been fruitlessly planted—and all died—that past autumn day, when they had broken up.
Filia now comes upon an entirely transformed ten-by-ten foot space of earth. Tenderly prepared by a creature of destruction, a garden, a thing of growth and newness, has been sewn. Rows of bulging mounds are ploughed. Nothing but soil yet. But soon, the possibilities!
Filia drops down on her knees and covers her mouth, and stares at this incredible peace-gift for a long time. Never would she have expected Xellos to apologize first. And yet…
Xellos appears inches from the knelt-over Filia's face. She is bombarded first by a close-up of his chest. His cloak is tied lopsidedly like a barber's bib, the red brooch missing. There are odd slivers of purple all over his clothes. She looks up, and soon discovers why.
His hair is short. Clumsily chopped off, above his perfect jawline and his ears, which are surprisingly cute and small. He looks so much more ordinary that way, like any other careless early-twenties guy. Not like the fourth most powerful mazoku in the known world. Not like someone who could easily, heartlessly buck a romantic fling and move on. Not like a thousand year old man. More like a boy hopelessly smitten by a girl.
Filia is unable to hide an absurd mixture of amusement and horror at the sight of her lover with one of his grandest and most appealing features severely compromised—for HER.
Clearly Xellos reads this on her face. His ears, now exposed, and the one feature on his face that he could never quite control, are a telltale blood red. He has to know the dead giveaway of those ears. The fact that he allows them to be openly visible to her makes his silly gesture all the more endearing.
"So what do you think?" he asks, followed by a singularly dopey chuckle.
She falls in love with him.
Again.
Of course she already IS in love with him, and always will be…
Details, details…
Filia attempts to give Xellos an objective appraisal, but she can feel her mouth twisting up into some sort of huge, grotesque, lopsided grin. "It flatters you," she says. Her voice is shaky with laughter, and something else.
"Oh shut up. I know it looks hideous."
"I think you look wonderful."
"I can make it grow back pretty fast."
"That might be a good idea…but I still think you look wonderful."
They stand there staring at each other. There is something desperate about the silence between them.
The color of his ears cool but his eyes, opening, sadden. "Ah, Filia. I wouldn't have done this for anyone else. This, or a lot of other things…"
"You're the one who stormed out, not me," she whispers. "How can you doubt my devotion to you?"
"You're the one who leapt into someone else's arms."
"I had to…I was going mad. All I could think about was you. Just ask Zelgadiss. It was just a distraction from feeling like I'd lost myself when you…"
"I don't make the same mistake twice, Filly. And I don't surrender something that I want…need…" His eyes flutter closed with that admission. "…without becoming singularly nasty and stubborn about clinging to it. You have no idea how amazing you are to me. How amazing WE are to me. Unnatural, and yet essential, against the grain, and yet perfectly fit. I had not realized how much I had incorporated you into the equation of my existence until these past several weeks, when you were missing. It is the first time, I think, that a mazoku found hell on earth to be undesirable. Do you have any idea how hard it is for me to admit this? I should not need you—I, free, evanescent, restless, self-sufficient—but I do. I need you very much. Why in hells should I fight a fact ever again? It would be…"
"Illogical." She smiles so very tenderly at him. So very fondly. "You always talk too much."
He gnaws on the side of his lip. "…Yeah."
"…When did you decide to come back?"
"Amelia's big sister made a pass at me, but as she was, er, trying to climb into my lap, she pushed up against this and I felt it." Xellos pulls out a grotesque little charm, hanging around his neck by an unmemorable metal chain, fashioned of half a pinecone, water fowl feathers, seeds, and other natural objects.
It's a necklace that Val had made him for the previous Father's Day.
So it's precious.
"I don't ordinarily wear it to work, but I…felt a need to, yesterday. And it reminded me of what I want most."
One of the things that Filia hates (and loves) most about Xellos is how he can erase all his transgressions over a given period of time by simply looking at her a certain way.
Even more infuriating is the fact that this is the only way that he persuades her, cajoles her, both innocently and unintentionally.
He really has no idea when he's doing it.
It is perhaps indicative of the one genuine bone in his proverbial body. Over their years together, he has started to do it more and more often. It has to mean something.
That expression, that unintentionally heart-melting expression, is indescribable. And he is giving it to her now.
"Open" is the best word for it, but that doesn't quite do it justice. Maybe "naked" is a better word. It's a certain look that starts with his exquisite amethyst eyes. He opens them. In these moments, they remind her, bizarrely, of a virgin shyly undressing in front of a judgmental new lover: willfully vulnerable, willfully at the mercy of that judge. His face slackens into a strange, sweet calm—a resignation, an allowance of his feral and free self to be wholly captured and, in more ways than one, dismembered.
It's naked surrender. That's how to describe it.
His ears are red again, too.
"Oh, Xellos, stop looking at me like that," Filia chokes.
"Like what?" Just as she suspected, he is genuinely taken aback by an accusation of any particular facial expression. He looks ruffled, even annoyed. "I was just…"
"I love you."
"Oh YEAH? WELL I…what?"
And she launches herself into his arms, knocking him over in her exuberance. They fall with an undignified squish into the mud.
Xellos laughs—his high, reedy cackle. "Ahaha! Filly—"
But he is unable to elaborate, because she is kissing him—hard, pressing, hot kisses. She is thinking on the yielding and playful nature of his lips, and he is thinking on the warm, cushioned feel of her lips. A perfect fit.
Her hands comb through his now short purple hair.
She pulls back from him after a moment, both of them heaving for breath, her hair swishing in his face and tickling his nose. He sneezes as she asked, "Tell me about this patch….darling, you made it for me all by yourself, didn't you? A mazoku cultivating a green thumb!…God bless you."
"Haha, I hope not….OW….don't swat me, I meant to the blessing, not the green thumb…OKAY yay for blessings too!" He wriggles around ferretishly under her, getting comfortable there in the mud with his beloved blue soul lying on top of him. "This garden is most strategically constructed, actually, Filly."
"Oh? Do tell." She settles down against him, cheek against his. She marvels at how long his black eyelashes are, how they tickle her skin.
He marvels at how soft her cheek is, like a fresh Chile peach. And how much hair she has, and how it's all around him, flaxen, like iced lemonade, like fireflies and dandelions. "Well….everything you see here has something to do with what I associate with you. Places I've been carry these herbs and blossoms…so I went around all night fetching them, brought them back with me…made what you see here…"
"Oh, Xellos…" Her voice is already trembling.
"Wait, wait! No tears just yet. Keep those." His lips brush hers as he continues to explain, tracing an invisible ribbon from mound to dug-up mound. "Dogwood and gorse, for durability, because my dragoness, you are a survivor…elder, for…hehe…zealousness…aahahaa I planted a LOT of those…ow…haha don't hit me…OWHOW, don't PINCH me EITHER…Alder…for the healer in you…it's known to cure fever…hawthorn for hope…nightshade for truth…poplar for courage…snapdragon for..hehehe presumption…no, darling, I just thought it would be cute to have snapdragons in a dragon's garden….hehehe…agrimony, a sign of generosity and gratitude, and good at detecting witches, the next time Lina and her friends drop in for a surprise dinner, heh…buttercups…for cheerfulness and childhood, because you are my sweet and naïve one…cornflowers because how can I not think of your eyes when I see them?" He pauses to whisper this in one of her pink, pointed ears, to chuckle as she shivers, and nibble on it, before continuing. "Daisies…because put them under your pillow, and they will cause you to dream of your lover." Another ear-nibble. "Hmhmhm. I liked that one too…dandelions, yes, the weed, that weed you say reminds you of me, because they are 'love's oracle,' and no matter how many times you pick them, Filly, or how many of them there are to pick, 'he l-l-loves me'..ahh..will be your final answer, if you are thinking on me."
"Don't say 'love,' it hurts you," Filia hiccups, around long-since-flowing sobs. She seizes Xellos's shirt front and inhales him so deeply that she hopes a part of him will stick forever. Oh, this man! She grabs his face in her hands now, all but smooshing it, in a fashion comical under any other circumstances. "I KNOW you love me. Oh Xellos! You idiot! Don't hurt yourself! Oh, damn you, this was the most wonderful gift I've ever received, and it made me cry!"
"Ahaha, well, Filly, you know, you made me cry too."
Filia pulls back, pale, shocked, her hands releasing Xellos's face. "What?"
"Oh, c'mere. C'meeere. Hehe. Silly shy thing. Stop angsting…ahaha. That's the dragon I lov…alright! I won't say it! But it's getting easier and easier to say That Word, you know. Anyway. Ask Lina. She saw it."
"Never again. I won't make you cry ever again."
"Well…honey, my slate's not exactly clean. I mean…"
"What do you…Xellos." Her tone changes, shifting not so subtly from nurturing to chastising. "Xellos, tell me what you're hiding."

"What? Oh gods."
"No, I just….Filly. Blast. Watch this get me exiled again. Heh. Oh well. You have this perverse capacity to make me tell the whole damned truth about every stupid thing…. Look. I kissed Lina. Once."
"…I kissed Zelgadiss. Once."
"…I'm sorry."
"Me too."
"I didn't enjoy it at all." He traces world maps along her back with his finger. Because she is his world anyway.
"Me neither…! Because…his lips weren't like…" She mumbles something and lowers her cornflower eyes, cheeks ruddy.
"Awww-haw…like mine…?" He cups her chin, grinning most fiendishly.
"Shut up." She hides her face in his neck.
"Ahhahahah. But that's the best part! Because I didn't enjoy kissing Lina because her lips weren't yours, Filly. Nobody's lips are yours, so why bother doing myself a disservice committing to anybody else? It wouldn't make sense. You know how I am about that kind of thing." His vulnerability retreats behind a cutely pompous air of nonchalance.
Filia sees through it like a laser.
There is a pregnant pause.
And then Xellos goes still and limp, and moans, and lulls to the side, and arches his back, because Filia has decided to be the impish one: Filia is seeing if that claim is true, and is slowly, wetly, hotly kissing every inch of flesh from her lover's ear to his collarbone.
Die, nonchalance! DIE! And efficiently by female lips, at that!
"Just doing a little test…" she breathes.
"If you don't stop that, Val will see us doing something naughty," he croaks, fairly writhing in ecstasy there in the mud. "Soon even. Oho! Stoooop…" His eyes roll up in his head.
Yes, the nonchalance has kicked the bucket.
Filia's muffled giggling is singularly wicked. "I love this haircut. It allows me easier access to your weak spots…"
"I don't have any…nnn…weak spots…"
"Bullshit…"
"Ahaha! Oh my…you swore, you swo…rrrrrmmm…"
"Mmm. Do I have you at my mercy, Priest-General Metallium?"
"Oh hells…nnn…how does the song go… 'you remain my power, my pleasure, my pain'…not that you really cause me pain on a regular basis…well I mean it's all relative…nnnn…I mean mazoku like pain so…I mean wait that sounded smarmy and masochistic, scratch that…"
"Hehe, shhhh. It would seem your soul-mate has you pinioned in the mud, good sir."
"Heh. It would seem so."
At last Filia draws back, ceasing her amorous assault on he who has confirmed, in his riddling, playful way, that they are in fact soul-mates. "I feel it bears reiteration, Xellos: I love you."
Smokily he gazes back at her, rearing up a bit. Their noses touch in a poignantly innocent interlude, an Eskimo kiss, another of his maddening and wonderful self-contradictions, even as his eyes seduce. Filia feels her eyes brimming at the almost painful way that she adores him, and at the beauty of having the longing for their reunion so wholly fulfilled. The jigsaw puzzle pairs are snapping back into place.
"Yeah. And. Am I…showing it?" He breathes.
Showing what no mazoku is allowed to speak without penalty of death. The forbidden words: that he loves her. Oh. He has no idea how much he is showing it. She's amazed at how a creature as wise as him can be so naïve about certain things.
"Yes. Oh, sweetie. Yes. You are, you have, you always do. That was my mistake in this. Even Zelgadiss noticed that." She tugs him upright. They stand together, arm in arm, covered in mud, walking through the garden, marveling at the lumps of soil that will bear all kinds of green and new and exciting things. Marveling at how there can always be something new for two such as them to look forward to. "…Hey, Xellos."
"Yeah, honey?" He's cracking his neck, and shaking the dirt and seeds out of his horribly short adorable hair.
She restrains herself from kissing his beautiful neck again in order to convey something very important. "I've decided on my favorite color."
"…oh yeah?"
"Yeah. Want to hear?"
"I await with bated breath, dearest."
"Pink…"
He groans. "Listen, Filly, I…"
"And blue. Both of them."
"….Oooohhh."
"Think you can work with that?" She lays her head on his chest as they walk. They aren't in robotic, cloned step. She even steps on his toes a couple of times. But their pace is identical. Harmonious. A perfect match. "Think we can work with that?"
Xellos chuckles, a deep, and rumbling, and delighted sound, and it climbs higher and higher until it is like bubbles in a sparkling champagne glass.
A sound, in its own way, of quiet rejoicing.
Of compromise and trust, for the one we put first, even before ourselves.
"Oh, yes. We can work with that."
He kisses her forehead, and smiles.
And the smile has dimples.