Lina's dreams only got worse as the sky outside darkened, and Zelgadis held her tightly whenever she began tossing in her sleep. Sometimes she would moan and shift fretfully before drifting back into a peaceful slumber, but other times she would leap awake screaming without warning. Zelgadis managed to snatch a few moments of sleep next to her before giving up. After that, he went back and forth between the heart and Lina, trying to decide what to do.

Lina wasn't getting better. Her fever had gone up, and her hair stuck to her forehead in damp clumps. She'd started speaking soon after she had collapsed, but he couldn't make any sense of what she had been saying. All he could make out was mumbled apologies and sobs. Zelgadis sighed, wiping her brow with a damp cloth.

Despite several more desperate attempts at figuring out the spell that was placed on the heart, he was no closer to unraveling it than before. Lina was getting worse, and the purple from the heart had started straining towards her. So far the barrier he'd built around it had stopped it, but it was only a matter of time before it burst through. He growled and held Lina closer. It was obviously of her making, but it just as obviously seemed to have started out, at least, with good intentions.

The redhead in question stirred. "I'm sorry," she mumbled, "I tried to save you. I'm… I'm sorry…" Zelgadis touched Lina's cheek, wet again again with tears, and swallowed hard. "I didn't mean to. I didn't mean to lose control." Her ramblings were getting stronger, which only made Zelgadis worry more. She was sinking deeper into her delirium, and he hoped she could claw her way back out of it without lasting harm. Gourry had come in once an hour, but hadn't been able to do much to help. Zelgadis bit back recriminations that threatened to spill over every time the blonde shrugged helplessly. If you were better at your job, she wouldn't be like this, he managed to keep his mouth closed over the angry words. If you weren't such a useless, worthless idiot, she would be okay now.

He knew he was really yelling at himself, anyway.

The only upside of the situation was the possibility that his shield around the heart was slowing down an already difficult healing process for…whatever that thing was. Lina mumbled and fell back into a more peaceful rest, and Zelgadis went back to the third chart he'd made of the spell.

He kept getting frustrated and dropping it, but he couldn't help looking again. It shouldn't have been as… malevolent as it had turned out. Every piece he could identify was white magic, protective magic, and each piece seemed to have been woven well before the tangle had started.

If this was what he thought it was, and who he thought it was, it shouldn't have gone as wrong as this.

He glanced back at Lina. She was curled up, her hair spilling over her shoulders.

"This was the guy you were talking about, isn't it? You were trying to save him from something. What were you trying to save him from?" He slumped back on the bed, leaning into the tangled web of her hair. It still smelled of gore. "You have five different healing spells woven into this. You have eight protection spells, four preservation wards, and even a few luck charms." He brushed the hair from her face, letting his fingertips linger at her cheek. "And if you go deep enough, there are the broken elements of about seventeen different wards against evil in there. What were you trying to fix? What were you afraid would happen?" He sighed. "It looks like you tried to merge a home-made eternal life spell with something to destroy evil already there."

Lina didn't reply. He hadn't expected her to. She probably had no idea he was even speaking.

"I'm guessing you loved him and he was in a lot of trouble. I'm guessing you tried to fix it. I'm guessing it went wrong, and you were forced to do something…final about it, and you tore the whole thing out by its roots with sheer power alone. That's where all these broken off parts came from." He blew at some of the hair that had fallen in his face from Lina's creative haircut.

"I'm surprised at you, Zelgadis. You don't recognize a mazoku when you see one?"

Zelgadis leapt back to his feet, but didn't try to draw his sword. He glared at the slit eyes grinning back at him from the shadows outside Lina's window.

Xellos tapped on the glass. "What, you're not even going to invite me in? That's rude. You should be more thoughtful. Lina would invite me in."

Zelgadis snorted. "Lina's not awake to argue in your favor at the moment, and you don't need an invitation to enter anyways."

"Ah," Xellos grinned. "But it's so much more polite that way." He poked his head straight through the glass before floating all the way into the room, glancing around approvingly. Zelgadis tried to think of Xellos as seldom as possible, but when forced to, he was both comforted and creeped out by how little the bastard changed. They could always expect the same things from him, the same backhanded honesty and slick lies, but never enough to make them stop listening entirely. His appearance never changed, his clothes never changed, even his hair stayed the same.

It made it easier to forget how much time had passed between them, but then, it made it easier to remember everything Xellos had made go wrong for them. Lina sometimes mused that that may be the point, but even Zelgadis couldn't decide exactly what she meant by that. He had a feeling she wasn't certain, either.

"I see you haven't covered the walls in blood yet, Zel. How long is the current boytoy safe, then?" Xellos grinned, and Zelgadis could almost picture the mazoku poking him in the side to see if he'd bite.

Zelgadis grit his teeth, but didn't move. "There is no one else, this time. Did you have a reason to show up again so soon after you goaded Alec into doing things he would later…regret? I doubt Lina would hesitate to rip you in half this time if she were awake."

Xellos smiled wider. "It's not my fault he wanted to press his suit quite so aggressively. You should thank me—I'm also the reason you found out about it." He turned to look at Lina before Zelgadis moved between them. "Unfortunately, I didn't come because I wanted to see your happy smiling face. I came because Lina is pouring out magic as though she has been punched full of holes, and if she dies I won't be able to play with her anymore." His purple hair swung as he laughed at Zelgadis' expression. "You thought she lost her magic because she'd started an early period, didn't you? Did it occur to either of you that if she had, she'd need extra bandages in embarrassing places? No, she's having her energy sucked out of her. You need to stop up the leaks."

Lina lay curled on her side, feebly straining against the sucking, clutching light at her stomach. Purple flames danced there, and she could feel something leaving her like smoke, spiraling up and out and away to…somewhere. Leave me alone. Her legs had gone numb, and her sight was starting to fade. Leave me alone.

It seemed she had always fallen for men who felt they needed something else to make them complete. Oh god, I'm sorry, Damien. Damien, who had been perfect when they'd met. Damien, who she'd left when it became clear that she had stopped aging, and he hadn't. Damien, who found her a century later, changed. No longer aging, but…

I'm sorry. Let me go.

She'd tried to fix him. They're tried to do it together. It was probably why it hadn't worked.

No. She knew why it hadn't worked. She'd been an idiot to try.

She opened half blind eyes and saw his gaping, empty chest as he reached out to rip her heart out in return.

Xellos jumped back and Zelgadis jumped forward as Lina came awake with a scream, clutching her chest, eyes wide. She clawed at him as he gathered her close, sobbed as he stroked her hair, and slowly hiccupped back to sanity. He rocked her, breathing assurances in her ear, but as she started to slip off into sleep again, he shook her gently. "Lina." He whispered, and her half-closed eyes fluttered open again. She looked exhausted, but if what Xellos said was true, sleep would only hurt her. "Lina, you have to wake up." She nodded sleepily, but couldn't seem to focus on his face. He stroked her cheek, but it only seemed to upset her.

"I can't see your face." She whispered, reaching clumsily for him. "I can't see you anymore." Zelgadis gave Xellos a startled look, but he only shrugged.

"She's probably happier not seeing me, anyway," Xellos murmured. He smiled, but didn't seem too happy about it. Zelgadis turned his attention back to Lina.

"It's likely the loss of energy, Lina. It shouldn't be permanent. You have to stay awake while we cast a shield around you. You have to stay awake." Lina nodded feebly, and he set her back down on the bed. She looked as if she'd have liked to clutch at him as he moved away, but she'd apparently heard Xellos' voice, and wasn't going to admit weakness in front of him. Zelgadis drew a careful line of white around Lina, and the lines glowed softly as he joined them. He whispered a few words, and Xellos moved forward to touch the lines as well.

They flared purple.

Far off, there was the sound of something screaming, and then the entire room was filled with a blinding purple light. Lina arched wildly and screamed, her eyes flew wide, and she gripped the sheets so hard blood leaked from her palms. Zelgadis shot a worried glance at Xellos.

The trickster priest opened his eyes, but didn't stop the spell. "Push through. It will only hurt her more not to cut it." Zelgadis nodded and finished the spell, trying to ignore Lina's screaming growing louder and then cutting off entirely. She fell back into the pillows, her eyes closed again. Zelgadis sighed.

"I'm not sure why I'm trusting you. Again." He turned back to Xellos. "You always seem to make more trouble than you fix."

"But I do fix things." The priest sat in the air, smiling. Zelgadis rolled his eyes. "And for everything I break, it's usually not that bad." Zelgadis growled.

"Genocide is 'that bad'. Rape is 'that bad'."

Xellos waved his hand dismissively. "Do unto others and all. I was but an instrument of karma. As for rape, he didn't manage it, now did he? You should have more faith in Lina. You know she's a big girl. She can take care of herself."

Xellos studied his fingernails, and Zelgadis refrained from reacting violently. It would only please the bastard, and so he forced himself not to move. Xellos looked up, his eyes narrowed to slits.

"You two have gotten…cozy."

Zelgadies didn't reply.

Xellos sighed. "It always was easier to talk to Lina about these things. It never occurred to me to ask why." He leaned back, obviously in a sharing mood. Zelgadis wished he would just leave. "She was obviously smart enough and old enough to know what I really was, but she seemed to constantly try to forget. Amelia was always shocked whenever I showed my darker nature, but Lina merely seemed unpleasantly reminded."

Zelgadis leaned across the bed to gather Lina back up in his arms. Her color was already starting to get better. Xellos leered at him, and he looked away.

"Did it ever occur to you that perhaps she'd run across my kind before she met me?"

Zelgadis snorted. "Of course she had. How old was she when she met you? How long had she been practicing dark magic? She couldn't have gone all that time without meeting some."

"Then why wasn't she more hostile? Why did she, if not trust, not immediately distrust everything I said?" He moved closer to Lina, who gave a soft yelp in her sleep and moved further away.

"Zelgadis, what kind of magic did Lina eventually use to drive out as much of the blue demon from you as she could manage? She seemed pretty practiced at it, but oddly hesitant. She made up for the lack of finesse of the spells with a lot of raw power, didn't she? Your demon wasn't exactly evil, but what spells do you think she would have cobbled together if it had been?"

Zelgadis' eyes widened, but Xellos wasn't finished. "Now imagine if you hadn't been immortal, or close to it, from all your magic. What if you were going to age a great deal the moment that demon left you?" Zelgadis was no longer looking at Xellos. He was staring at Lina, then at the heart, and then back at her again.

Xellos grinned.

Zelgadis swallowed the lump in his throat, but his voice was hoarse when he managed "How…How much of herself did she have to add to that spell to keep it going?" Xellos leaned back.

"That's a question you're going to have to ask Lina."

Zelgadis glared at him "Again, you've managed to make things even worse than they were before. Why should I even believe you? And why would you tell me if it was the truth?" Xellos floated just within Zelgadis' reach, obviously trying to tempt him into violence. Zelgadis gripped Lina until she whimpered, and he winced and loosened his hold.

"You were coming to the conclusion yourself. You know I'm right. Why would Lina fall in love with a new-born mazoku, I wonder? And why would she try to fix him if she had? I suppose it doesn't matter anymore. The poor thing has gone crazier than you have, and its only thought is breaking whatever keeps it like this." He shrugged. "As for my reasons for telling you, can't I show a genuine concern for the only friends who have lived long enough to grow on me?"

"Not for lack of trying on your part. You've almost gotten us killed several times over." Xellos shrugged, smiling like a cat.

"Yes, well, you've always bounced back, then, haven't you?" Xellos smiled. "It's darling friends like you who keep my world from falling into the bleak despair it may have been without them." Zelgadis rolled his eyes.

"You only help us when you want to get something out of it." He paused, contemplating. "In fact, you pointed us in this direction even though Lina didn't want to come this way. How far back have you been planning this? Why do you want us here?" Zelgadis was torn between going after the mazoku with his bare hands and holding Lina as far away from the smiling bastard as he could.

"I'm sure I don't know what you're talking about. Oh, look, Lina seems to be waking back up." Zelgadis' eyes flicked to Lina's face. She was still sleeping soundly, but when he glanced back up, Xellos was gone.

Zelgadis frowned. Whatever it was, they were leaving it well enough alone. Lina tended to get close to dead whenever she fell into things Xellos planned, and this was likely to work the same way.

Gourry and Shyphiel were idiots to stay here after their entire clan had been destroyed. As the world became more populated, arable farmland was getting scarcer, but surely even the best land wasn't worth all this. If he ran them out, there would be nothing here Lina needed to protect, and she'd see the benefit of leaving and forgetting about whatever was after her.

Getting rid of Gourry was becoming more and more attractive. He had a wife and child, but that was only two extra people. They were likely to die here anyway, so if he were to choose a more… permanent way of cleaning up the problem, he'd only be speeding up the inevitable. They're be reincarnated, after all. He wouldn't do them any permanent damage. They'd probably be happier somewhere else, anyway.

Lina was sleeping like the dead, which meant if he hurried, he could get everything straightened out before she was even lucid. She wouldn't even know. He'd tell her they had (wisely) packed up and left, and then the two of them would hightail it for somewhere as far away from Lina's former lover as possible.

Zelgadis stood, pulled on his boots and buckled his sword into place. Most humans lasted such a short time, anyway. They bred like ants, and three less wouldn't change anything. He wasn't making a big change, just a little alteration in a complicated situation.

He'd made it to the door, actually had his hand on the knob, before he fell over himself scrambling away from it.

He ripped off the sword and flung it away from him, dropped into bed next to Lina and held her close until all he could see was the red of her hair, and let her presence seep into his thoughts. He pushed the cold, reptilian killer as far away as possible, breathed her in and searched for anything to think about but what he'd been about to do.

He'd been about to murder an innocent family in cold blood. A family that had not only done nothing to him, but had helped him, sheltered and fed him, healed both him and Lina.

There was nothing to excuse it. He'd been about to walk downstairs and calmly slaughter Gourry, Shylphiel, even their son—a child for the gods' sakes—and he didn't even have the fury to blame it on. His thoughts had been cold, clear, and he could almost feel them beneath his consciousness, slipping smoothly into place behind the walls he'd frantically been trying to build against them.

He had finally gone crazy. It had finally reached the point where it had grown into something he couldn't excuse or ignore. He buried his face in the crook of Lina's neck. He didn't want to lose her, but he was going to if he didn't control himself. He would drag her along with him, unable to stop himself, and she had already let him know she wouldn't stop him if he did. She would get pulled down with him, and if he did that, they were going to end up either dead or imprisoned when enough people got enough together to stop them. Of course, they would likely kill off a few countries worth of people before it came to that.

But he wasn't strong enough to leave her. How could he? She'd only follow him, and anyway he was too selfish to let go. Now that he had the part of her he'd coveted for centuries, there was nothing that could make him give it up.

He hadn't realized that he'd been mumbling to himself until Lina opened her eyes and lifted a hand to his cheek.

"If you go around muttering about killing people, Zel, folks are going to think you've lost a cog in there somewhere," she said softly, and his eyes drifted shut of their own accord as he gave himself up to her touch. She leaned forward to kiss him, pulling him gently against her. He let her work her fingers though his tangled hair, let her hold him like a child while he could only gasp and clutch at her hands.

He felt tears on his cheeks and prayed that they were Lina's. His hands shook even as he tried to still them, his breath came short and fast, and his teeth chattered as she pulled the blankets weakly about them. He lie curled against her as she sat up on the pillows, acting like the idiot he was. He'd turned into a monster, and by all rights she should be running screaming in the other direction as fast as her feet would take her, but she lay still, stroking his hair and whispering senseless words into his ear.

"You didn't stop me," he managed, his eyes tightly shut against what he might see in her face. "You knew where I was going. You knew what I was going to do. You didn't say anything." He choked and swallowed loudly. It only seemed to make it worse.

Part of him was disgusted; was this what he'd become? A murderous, soulless villain one moment, a blubbering child the next? And Lina had seen it. She'd known what he was thinking because he'd gone so far around the bed that he was muttering his every thought to himself like a psychopath.

"Why didn't you stop me?"

"If I stop you while you can still stop yourself, it will only make it worse," she murmured into his hair. He moved away, and she let him pull his dignity back about himself in tattered rags. He turned his head while he tried to think of a way to wipe the salt from his face without looking like a schoolboy with a bruised knee.

"Once you can't stop yourself, well, there won't really be anything I can do, will there?" She continued. "You're at least as smart as I am. You're a lot sneakier than I am. Even if I were able to talk you out of something, you'd just find a way to do it without my knowing. So I didn't try."

She had a point. He finally settled for smearing his cheeks with the heel of his hand and turned back to face her.

"I was about to kill Gourry. I was about to murder him in his bed. If you stayed with me after that, it would have ended in more deaths than I can count, yours being one of them, and you know it. You also know I couldn't raise a hand against you. You could have stopped me, permanently." His eyes locked with hers, and she smiled sadly.

"Why didn't you stop me?" He heard the pleading in his voice and couldn't stop it. "I can't control this. If you don't stop me, we're both going to die anyway, and we're going to take people with us."

She inhaled and looked ashamed of herself.

"Because I'm too selfish to do what's best for you." Her fingers played nervously with the sheets, and her head fell to rest against his. "Because I love you too much to kill you even though I know it's what I should do. I'd let you kill Gourry, and I'd let you kill his family. I'd even try to protect you from everything that would try to stop you for me." She swallowed, and this time he knew it was her tears that fell on his face. He wasn't happy about it.

"Because I can't bear to lose you." She whispered into his hair. He shivered and gripped her shirt to keep from crushing her. She took a deep breath.

"I need to tell you what happened the fist time I was here," she stammered. "You deserve to know. You need to know what I did."

"I know you made him this." They both knew what he meant. She nodded miserably.

"I loved him," she whispered, and Zelgadis stiffened. He's long gone, he thought scathingly. He's not exactly a rival anymore. He forced himself to relax and pulled away enough to see her face. She looked broken and guilty.

"I loved Damien more than anyone I'd ever known, but I wasn't getting any older, and he was. I finally made myself leave him, tried to let him have a normal life, but in order to keep me, he made deals with people he shouldn't have. He gained immortality, but he lost too much." She closed her eyes. Zelgadis knew where this was going.

"He became a mazoku." His voice was tight in his throat, and the words barely made it out. She nodded.

"They made him do things that he…would rather not have done," she continued, "but he told himself couldn't say no. Maybe he couldn't. I don't know."

"Many, many years later, he found me again, and begged me to save him from himself. I agreed."

She licked her lips and looked away. "It didn't work. There wasn't enough of him left to save from it, and every time he'd done as commanded, he'd lost more of himself. I tried to push it out by adding more power. I pushed until all I had left was myself, and then I couldn't stop." She let out a strangled sob and hugged her shoulders, drew up her knees and shivered. Her eyes were tightly shut, and he reached out to touch her. She leaned into his embrace.

"I was close. I was so close. If I pushed just a little more, if I added just a little more of myself, I would have been able to push it all out." She opened her eyes. "But by then, there wasn't enough of me left. If I gave any more, if I pushed any more, I wouldn't…" She took a deep breath.

"In the end…I chose me."

Zelgadis was without words. He could only hold her, could only murmur soundlessly against her hair as she let the story spill from deep inside her.

"I tried to pull back. I tried to yank myself out, but he wouldn't let go. I panicked. I reached out and… He lunged at me, and… I pulled him apart." She took a deep breath. "Then I set it all on fire and ran as fast as I could.

"In the end, I never loved him enough to give up myself. After that, if you go back far enough in the history books, you'll find someone who killed a lot of people over a very long period of time. Then I pulled myself together and made rules for myself to keep me from losing it again." She shook him off and took his head in her hands, forced him to look at her.

"I'd give it up. I'd break every rule that keeps me from losing myself, and I would do it immediately, with no hesitation. We would die, and we would die ugly deaths. We'd cause far more ugly deaths than I care to think about, and we would be as far from human as we could get when it finally ended." She shuddered, but she didn't stop. Zelgadis tried to say something, anything, but the words stuck in his throat. Lina trailed a tender hand across his brow.

"I would kill Gourry myself if I had to." Lina said.

Zelgadis stared. Her voice was strong, if unsteady. "I'd try to do it quickly, but if I couldn't, I would do it any way I could. Then I would kill anyone else who was likely to come after him." She trailed off, and smiled sadly. "I'd be too weak and selfish to do anything else."

Zelgadis' breathing hitched as he felt his chest freeze. There was no trace of doubt or hesitation in Lina's eyes, not even a hint that what she said was anything but pure truth. She would destroy herself trying to protect him. Something somewhere snapped and released, and some deep knot unraveled within him. The tension that had plagued him since he'd killed her would-be rapist slipped away and he crushed Lina to him, kissing her franticly. She was as frenzied as he was, wrapping her hands around his face to pull him closer.

He chuckled against her lips and she opened her eyes enough to gaze up at him through her lashes.

"That has to be the sweetest, most romantic, creepiest thing anyone has ever said to me," he managed.

She laughed and pulled him down into bed with her.