By the time the cottage came into sight (Lina was walking into trees that got in her way by that point) even Zelgadis had noticed something sweet and spicy in the air. Xellos was at the counter in the kitchen, carefully portioning out his catch onto six plates. He had made it with some thick sauce and loaded each plate to the appropriate degree with fresh vegetables. It was all nicely arranged and, Zelgadis admitted grudgingly, smelled like an improvement on the last thing he'd seen Xellos cook; he was willing to lay a hedged bet that he wouldn't die screaming if he ate it. Xellos turned around as they came in. He'd taken a strip off one of Sylphiel's big green swathes of cloth for a hairtie, and had put on his pink frilly apron with the yellow chickie on it and one of his usual smiles. Not reassuring. "Hello, everyone," he beamed. "When you weren't here I thought I'd better cook before Lina-san started eating people."

Sylphiel giggled in an experimental sort of way, and looked upset when everyone else only nodded understandingly.

"Foooood," Lina whined.

Xellos went over to her, dropping his eternal smile. Very seriously, he took her hands and said, "Now, Lina-san, listen, please. I know how to cook for magic-users, even habitual overextenders like you. You don't have to worry about not getting enough to eat. So, please, you'll honor my efforts by eating slowly, all right?"

"Lemme at the food!"

"All right?" he repeated firmly, gripping her wrists tightly.

"Yeah, yeah, whatever."

"Not whatever," he said emphatically, wagging a finger right between her eyes and bopping her on the nose for emphasis. "Slowly. You're not talking to some short-order back-inn greasy-spoon gristle-mincer, Lina-san. If Gourry-san tries to steal your food, I'll smack him. Nobody's making themselves sick off my cooking, right?"

"Fine," she sulked, pulling her hands away and flinging herself into a chair. Sylphiel sat next to her, and pulled Gourry down beside her. Zelgadis approved of this arrangement from the standpoint of preventing food fights, and sat on Lina's left so as to separate her from Amelia, as well. Xellos didn't look quite as happy with the seating plan as Zelgadis was, but he put their plates in front of them and sat down between Gourry and Amelia without a word.

"I'll try it," Lina announced, as though she had decided to do something very brave. "Sylphiel, stand by with Resurrection. Amelia, prepare Recovery."

"Right!" they both nodded, alert and determined.

Xellos looked as though he weren't sure whether to be pleased or offended. He settled on hurt amusement, complaining, "But, Lina-san, do you really think that if I wanted to kill you I'd use something that would work right away and your friends could fix? That wouldn't be very effective. Don't you think I would have taken your paranoia into account? I mean, I put it there, after all." He reached across the table to snag a smallish cube of meat off Lina's place and take a bite in evidence of good faith--he himself had in front of him a plain bowl of rice in broth. "Or are the spells for me in case you don't like the food?"

It was an out, and she took it. "Bingo," she winked, and started eating. She dug in with her usual gusto, probably just to see Xellos cringe, but after the first bite she slowed down to what was for her an astonished crawl. Amelia and Gourry regarded their plates with respect.

Xellos smiled. It wasn't his usual happy little smile; this was a real, self-satisfied smirk. It was the first time Zelgadis had ever felt sympathetic with one of Xellos's good moods.

Shortly after he forked up one of the cubes, his eyes bugged. He'd eaten pastry that was less rich, and porridge that was less glutinous. No wonder Xellos had told Lina to be careful. You couldn't chew this quickly; your jaws would stick together. He had to admit, though, it wasn't bad. Not bad at all. It reminded him of Solarian hot chocolate, the kind no one from outside the area would drink because of the pepper oil it was spiked with.

Xellos watched them eat for a few minutes, pleased with himself. He popped into his mouth the rest of the cube he'd taken from Lina. This time he took time to taste, and his smile slipped. "Too thin," he muttered, dissatisfied. "Needs more starch. Too much broadleaf root."

They gaped at him. He smiled at them all, a little wryly, reached out without looking to gently close Gourry's full mouth for him, and started on his soup.

It took them all nearly as long to finish their meals as it ordinarily would to make an entire table of food and four large mugs of coffee disappear. Sylphiel, Zelgadis, and even Amelia didn't quite clean their plates. Lina tried to steal from them, but Xellos reached across the table with lightning, although not demonic, speed to rap her sharply on the knuckles with his spoon. Then he smiled nastily at Amelia until she made a small 'eep' noise and shoved the last piece in her mouth. Sylphiel and Zelgadis he left alone.

"So, Xellos," Lina said in her 'do what I say because I'm cute--oh, this? This is just a harmless ol' fireball, nice fireball' voice. "You're going to cook for us from now on, right?"

"I'll be more than happy to, Lina-san," Xellos replied in a tone and with an expression so exactly like hers that Zelgadis shivered all over, "just as soon as we reverse that bargain for those demonsblood talismans of mine you have."

She yawned and stretched hastily. "Gosh, willya look at the time! Well, I'm going to bed, see you all in the morning, night-night!" She beamed at them all indiscriminately and zoomed out of the room.

Xellos exhaled ruefully, unsurprised, and stood up to collect everyone's plates. Sylphiel surged to her feet and got in his way. "Oh, no, Xellos-san! This is my home, you must allow me."

"But I cooked," he pointed out, puzzled.

"So you shouldn't have to clean," she returned triumphantly.

Xellos took a deep breath, and they began arguing in earnest. Gourry and Amelia snuck away, lest it be decided that the coveted duty should fall to them. Zelgadis found the discussion entertaining, to a point, but was seriously considering doing the damn dishes himself when Xellos said, very stern, "This dinner is my gift to you, to thank you for yesterday. If I allow you to help, I'll still feel too much indebted to you to be comfortable. Surely you wouldn't want a guest to be uncomfortable, Sylphiel-san?"

Defeated, Sylphiel caved. "Do you know where the soap is?"

"I know where everything is," he answered, with a dark and truly Xellos smile that raised Zelgadis's hackles. In more normal tones, he said, "Good night, Sylphiel-san. Sweet rest."

"Quiet sleep," she returned amiably, and followed Lina and Amelia. Over her shoulder, she called, "Quiet sleep, Zelgadis-san."

"Good night." Zelgadis followed Xellos into the kitchen and leaned up against the charred doorframe. "You're being awfully nice to everyone," he commented, not even trying to keep the suspicion from his voice.

"I can afford to be," Xellos winked. The old expression, combined with the pink apron, spiky ponytail, hands in soapy yellow rubber gloves and round pupils, wasn't nearly as menacing as it used to be. "It doesn't hurt anymore."

"Are you telling me," Zelgadis asked skeptically, "that it causes you physical pain to be nice to people?"

"It caused me, please note past tense, thank you, severe physical discomfort to be around happy people. I haven't minded pain since--well. In a very long time. Have you ever had the flu? Or a bad case of food poisoning?"

"When I was human," Zelgadis said shortly.

"You're still human," Xellos said absently, turning back to the dishes.

"Don't you patronize me!"

"Don't you argue with me. There are only three sentient races: dragons, humans, and mazoku. You may be a different kind of human, like Filia's little friend Jiras, but you're still human."

"Jiras is a beast-man," he said coldly, "and I'm a chimera."

"And Filia is a Golden Dragon, and Valgaav, or whatever he's calling himself these days, is an Ancient Dragon. And it's a good thing she's become his mother, because they way things were going they were going to have an unpleasant shock about offspring in the near future, since Golden and Ancient only share a genus, not a species. But they're both dragons. Of course," he reflected, "Val-kun was mazoku at the time, so I suppose it didn't much matter anyway. My point is still valid."

This was an Opportunity, so Zelgadis let the more depressing subject drop. Xellos wasn't going to sway his convictions, anyway. "How did Valtierra turn back, anyway?" It was an opening gambit, but he had also wanted to know ever since it had happened.

"L-Sama intervened," Xellos chided him, taking off his apron to dry plates with. "You know that, Zelgadis-san. She does what she wants, when she wants, however she likes, and she only pays attention to the rules when she feels like it."

"And is that what happened to you?" Zelgadis asked sarcastically. "You were Miraculously Saved by L-Sama?"

Xellos gaped at him, and put down the dish he was holding. Zelgadis wasn't sure whether his surprise was genuine or not, but his disbelief certainly was. "I'm not the last of my race. You think the Mother loves me that much?" he scoffed. Then his face broke into a glowing expression Zelgadis couldn't even categorize. "You're so sweet! Thank you, Zel-kun!" he squealed, actually squealed, and pounced.

Automatically, he said, "RA-TILT!!!"

Evil was still soft, although rather bonier than it had been, and using nice soap, but now it was warm, too, very warm, and it refused to be dislodged. In fact, it was hugging him tightly and chuckling warm breath into his long, pointed, blue ear. "Lei Tilt doesn't work on humans," it reminded him in a low voice that he felt more than heard. The green tie had slipped and dishevelled his hair.

"You're warm," Zelgadis said. It was the only think he could think of. Something seemed to be wrong with his throat, and his tunic was bunched up funny around the belt, hiked up by maybe a hundred-twenty pounds of slippery bastard.

"A heartbeat'll do that to a person," Xellos replied, still in that low tone.

"...You never answered my question."

"I told you before. Juuousama has always given me everything I needed." There was devotion in his voice.

"You need to be human?"

"I did."

"Why?"

Xellos hesitated, falling away and looking down. "I couldn't stay the way I was. I was killing myself slowly. You--" He stopped, pressed his lips together decisively, shook his head with tightly contained violence, and started again. "You can't imagine. Everything in my life was killing me. Can you kill an undead person?"

"It's not funny," Zelgadis said, and was instantly and privately mortified at the way it almost sounded like a snarl. No, mystified, he meant, not mortified.

"No. Not even close. I had to change, one way or the other. Juuousama decided this way was best. After all, with Mazoku Lords and battalions of dragons dropping like flies and the world as unstable as it is these days, an independent but friendly mystery priest is worth a lot more to her than a loyal and dead general."

Zelgadis's eyes widened. "What was the other option?"

Pale skin tightened over sharp bones as Xellos's left eyelid flinched once. "To make me a true mazoku. A pure-breed, Lina-san would say." A slim, barely blue hand went up, plastering itself protectively under the clasp on his cloak, right where the scar was.

Fascinated, Zelgadis couldn't take his eyes from that pale glove. "You weren't before?"

"A pure mazoku can never go back, except Valgaav's way."

"And you didn't want to? To be one, I mean?"

The hand clenched on Xellos's shirtfront, near-white on black. "You've fought them, but you don't know what they're like. You can't, unless you've lived with them. I could bear it before, when I was almost one of them, when I didn't care about anything, but they're--who'd want to be like that who wasn't already? We priests and generals, and the mid-ranks--none of us are pure. The lower ranks are all obediance. All obedience. Purely ordered things, no chaos in them at all. You need chaos, you've got to have it to have a mind. It's bad enough for a mystery priest to be reduced to doing what he's told--to think what you're told as well, feel only what you're supposed to..."

The hand was shaking now, almost invisibly, in fine tremors, and Zelgadis took a step forward without really intending to. "Xellos," he began, with no idea of what he was going to say after that.

"Zelgadis-san?" Amelia piped up, her voice quivery and very small.

Summary
You can't imagine. back to story

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